DECEMBER 2019 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
3 Peace faces worst grain harvest in 30+ years
Crop losses average 50% as weather prevents harvest
by PETER MITHAM DAWSON CREEK – Grain
crops in the Peace were shaping up to be excellent this year, but winter weather once again foiled efforts to get the crop off. “We just had no extended periods of time to harvest,” says Rick Kantz, a Fort St. John grower and president of the BC Grain Producers Association. While some fields are 60% harvested, the total remaining for the region as a whole is closer to 50%. “It’s the worst conditions
I’ve seen in 30 years, and I don’t think anyone recently farming has ever left this amount of crop out on the ground,” he says. The growing season itself was good, “We had lots of rainfall
throughout the summer, so it was a great growing season that way, but by the time fall came there was still so much moisture in the ground the crops weren’t drying off,” he says. “They still felt they had some moisture they could do something with.” Cool temperatures
compounded the challenges, and then waves of rain and snow arrived, forming a tag team that added further moisture and left farmers unable to get into their fields. “We’d only get two or three
days of harvest, and then we’d be shut down by rain or snow for a week,” says Kantz. “Anything we did get off, it didn’t come off dry. Everything is going to need mechanical drying of some sort.” This doesn’t help quality, or
marketability. With markets challenged by China’s ban on imports of canola and pulses from Canada and prices depressed, it’s set to be a challenging few months for producers.
“Until some of the markets
improve, you’re going to have depressed ability to ship, and
what we do have to ship is needing extra conditioning before we can ship it,” says Kantz.
While cash advances can help tide producers over and crop insurance claims can be filed, the cash doesn’t cover drying costs and the challenge of planting rutted fields come spring. Meanwhile, the advance still needs to be paid. “The added costs in a wet
year are extreme compared to a dry year, in a drought situation,” says Kantz. “So far as any extra programming to help with the cost of rutting in the field and mechanically drying the crop, they’re just pointing to the existing [business risk management] programs that are in place.” “The ministry has an
excellent team of dedicated professionals that help BC farmers manage their business risks, and any producers with questions about protecting their incomes in the Peace or anywhere else in BC, should contact them. They are there to help,” said a statement from the BC Ministry of Agriculture when Country Life in BC inquired about the situation. The ministry didn’t provide data on the number of notices of loss filed, saying only that its staff were working with producers to assess and process claims. “There are more producers
who have completed harvest than there are those which haven’t started,” it noted, accentuating the positive. That’s little comfort to
producers caught out by the weather, which marks the fourth year of challenges for Peace region grain producers. The region has 250 growers farming 300,000 acres. Three years ago, an
unprecedented October 1 snowfall cut the harvest short, leaving producers to swathe what remained and hope for the best. By some estimates,
855.737.0110
Einbock Tillage Equipment For Organic Farmers
HOMBURG Field Tile Drain Cleaners
info@reimersfarmservice.com
www.reimersfarmservice.com
AGAINST THE GRAIN: Rain and snow left grain producers in the Peace unable to harvest half their crop. RICK KANTZ PHOTO
about 15% of the canola crop remained in the field the following spring, by which time rains had made it hard to get on fields and start planting. Some producers left acreage unseeded due to the delays.
The snow came even earlier
last year. A cold snap on September 11 dumped a short-lived snowfall on many farms around Dawson Creek. Many producers were able to salvage their crop, but there was a significant number of production insurance claims related to frozen canola and excessive moisture on peas.
Proudly offering quality farm equipment and wholesale farm product delivery across BC.
“We are definitely in a cycle
of extremes, no doubt about it: cycles that we’ve never had to deal with before,” says Kantz. “We need varieties that are going to mature earlier and still produce enough product that we can feed the world. We can get varieties that mature earlier, but they only produce half of what’s needed.” Publicly funded research to
help producers identify helpful varieties that will help them address shifting weather patterns is tough to secure. While the industry does undertake trials of new
varieties, they’re limited in scope. “It’s still a challenge to get funds to be able to plant them in BC, because BC is a small producer in the grain industry in Canada,” says Kantz. “It’s the least sexy of anything out there. It’s the feedstock for the chickens, for the hogs, for the cattle, the fish.” But with a short harvest in BC and across North America, livestock producers may feel the value of their grain creeping up. “I suspect there’ll be a
market correction upwards on feed grains,” says Kantz.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
