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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • NOVEMBER 2017


Peace grain yields good, but drying needed Producers hoping for a return to normal conditions after two wild years


by MYRNA STARK LEADER FORT ST JOHN – Harvest 2017 in


the Peace was nearly complete by mid-October. “A few people are done and


everybody else has a day or two,” reported Rick Kantz, who farms north of Fort St. John and is president of the BC Grain Producers Association. “There’s a few farmers that have a little bit longer than that but we’re getting close to being done.” After a wet fall in 2016 and a very


wet spring that delayed seeding by three weeks and left some acres unseeded, farmers in the region escaped an early frost this fall. Yields are pretty good, but the majority of grain crops need to be dried. Kantz says it was helpful that fall


weather co-operated and there was wind, which enabled a few days of nine-to-midnight combining. “We didn’t take any wheat off that


was dry. We’ve got a few loads of canola that’s dry but most everything is tough to wet,” says the experienced producer.


Kantz will dry some, aerate some and bag some to let the elevator dry it. Other producers have fewer options. “Most guys might have aeration but


there’s very few with dryers and the dryers that are out there, the farms have long outgrown their dryers and drying capacity,” he says.


That means added fall and winter


vigilance watching for spoilage. He anticipates that the elevators will be drying most everything they ship and even blending will be limited because there won’t be enough dry grain to blend. “Considering our late start, yield- wise it is going to average to the plus- side of average but there’s going to be a lot of extra costs to get the stuff dry and maintaining it. That will be the challenge.” Ironically, last year Kantz didn’t need to dry any grain. “A guy always ends up with some


grain like this, but you don’t end up with 90% usually,” he explains. Over at his farm on the outskirts of Dawson Creek, Ross Ravelli finished


harvest but with only 30% of his 800 acres seeded, combining was quicker. He was finished in less than a week, but he didn’t start until October. “Dad always used to say, and I


believe him, that you should get most of the harvest done in September and get the last 25% in October,” he said from the tractor where he was still tilling canola straw. Yields were about average plus or minus 10%, so not a great year but not nearly as bad as things looked earlier. Ravelli swathed his canola, which was about 90% of his crop, in mid-September. “The canola and the barley – the later seeded stuff – is really good, above average in quality and grade. The quality on the barely is awesome and the canola is all No. 1 dry, no green, so it turned out really well,” Ravelli says, adding that there was less pressure on him due to his conscious risk-mitigation strategy to not plant. Instead, he opted for crop insurance, which paid out $50 per unseeded acre since he seeded less than 80%. One reason for the choice


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was that he had about a third of his 2016 crop still in the field this spring. About a quarter of that had to be worked under and had no value in what’s been two years of challenging farming.


“I consciously went into spring and decided that I wasn’t going to push my crop and have a one-year problem be a two-year problem. In the end, it would have worked out but I decided not to do that,” he says. With 40 years of experience


farming, he says he’s lucky to be in a financial position to make these decisions. The guaranteed income paid for chemicals, spray and some of his rented land. “I thing people are surprised how it turned out,” he reflects. “I’ve never seen a year like this where it was so wet in the spring for so long. The crops really responded way better than I thought. Average is not what you shoot for but this year it seems like a real bonus to get that.” “We’re hoping that next year, things will be back to normal, whatever normal is,” he says with a smile.


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Shaw is the new research director for the BC Grain Producers Association. Originally from Nova Scotia, Shaw didn’t grow up on a farm but decided to attend the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (now the Dalhousie Faculty of Agriculture). Summers in Manitoba working on potato research broadened his interests. Graduating in 2010, he set off for New Zealand where he worked with potatoes, pasture and cereal grains. He returned to the University of Manitoba to complete his M.Sc. and headed for England. Cereals were his primary focus in England, in addition to some sugar beet and pea research. A couple months into the new BC job, Shaw says he and his girlfriend are glad to be back in Canada and living in Dawson Creek. “Coming here, I want to advance my career and have more impact on the research I am doing.” Shaw has spent the


majority of his time since arriving in September combining BCGPA research plots in Fort St. John. He’s looking forward to some winter office time to plot strategy and target 2018 research to ensure it’s relevant to the area.


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