OCTOBER 2018 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
Snow puts the brakes on Peace
grain harvest Promising start to season ends in crop losses
by PETER MITHAM FORT ST JOHN – Grain
growers in the Peace had hopes for a good harvest dampened in early September as a low pressure system dumped inches of rain then snow across northeastern BC. Shortly after Labour Day, a
weather system that brought relief to crews battling wildfires crossed the Rockies and dumped 4.5 cm of rain on the region in three days. Then, temperatures dipped and on September 11, the Fort St John weather station reported 6 cm of snow that stayed for two days. “What looked like a really,
really promising year is turning out to be very disappointing right now,” says Irmi Critcher, who with her husband Barry farm 4,000 acres of grain and oilseeds southwest of Taylor. “There’s quite a bit of moisture around now. It’s completely hampered the harvest situation here.” This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Speaking in July, Rick Kantz of the BC Grain Producers Association said the spring rains delivered good moisture to get crops going, although they also hampered the ability of farmers to get into fields and apply crop protection. With seed in the ground and the soil drying out, the early signs were positive. “Overall, the crop is looking
pretty good,” he said at the time. “If we get a couple more inches of rain towards the end of July, we’ll have a good crop.”
And rain it did. Downpours on July 20 and
22 delivered more than 5 cm of rain, sparking flooding in some areas. Skies cleared of cloud in August, but then smoke billowed in from wildfires to the west and blocked the sun, which some say delayed ripening. “The crops were really
good. There’s a real good growth on the crops. The only thing is that for some reason they didn’t mature as fast as they should have,” Critcher says, though she’s sceptical of the smoke’s role. What she does know is that her pea crop, which should have been harvested in August, was still in the field when the snow hit. “They just went completely flat with the snow, and they’re laying on really wet soil right now and they’re just not drying up,” she says, adding that oats were not much better.
The farm is usually half
through harvest by early September, but this year about 15% of the crop was in. While the Critchers have a dryer for barley and other grains, moisture levels in some of the crops remain off the charts. And even if they did harvest at elevated moisture levels, the combines might not like it. “When there’s so much
moisture in the grain and in the straw, it doesn’t chop properly, it doesn’t thresh properly, it hangs up on the sieves, it hangs up in the augers, you can’t get it out of the truck,” she says.
The scenario is similar to 2016, when 23 cm of snow arrived October 1 and didn’t go away. This year, the snow may go away but the crop
3
Winter arrived early in BC’s Peace region, catching most if not all grain producers by surprise. Canola, seen here near Fort St John, and peas were hit hardest, but all crops suffered. IRMI CRITCHER PHOTO
might not dry down. “It’s a slightly different
scenario, but the same results – your quality goes down, and it’s going to be a difficult harvest and you might not get the whole thing,” she says. “It turns more into – I shouldn’t say ‘salvage operation,’ but that’s what it feels like on some crops.” Just how much will be
saved and how much salvaged was still unclear a week after the snowfall. The crop insurance office in
Dawson Creek had received approximately 70 claims by September 21. The majority were related to frozen canola and excessive moisture on peas. Critcher, for her part, is
staying optimistic. “We can’t say the final
outcome of it yet, because we still have a window of about four weeks,” she says. “Obviously, every farmer will go after the crop that is out in the field right now, to the best of their ability.” But she also knows the
weather could always deal another blow to the crop. “You can’t ever count on it until it’s in the bin,” she says.
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