Recent rains were welcomed by farmers but it may have come too late for some.
“We’ve got substantial rain and I’m ever grateful for that,” said Brenda Knight, whose family farms near Alix. “However, there are some very big decisions to be made going forward.
“Germination was patchy. It was sporadic. Do you re-seed? Do you let what’s going to happen, happen?”
Knight said her family members will be getting together this weekend to decide what to do with their silage. They will have to decide whether to plow under what’s there and restart before the mid-July seeding deadline.
“Do we hope something recovers? The decisions are still out there and they are really tough decisions.
“So the rain has come but in a lot of cases, it was still too late. In a lot of cases, the damage was done. And what came up was stunted.”
Hay yields are likely to be way down, which means supplies will be low and that means more demand for feed, which usually pushes up prices because of the supply-and-demand equation.
“And pasture recovery. As always, I guess we’re in Mother Nature’s hands right now.”
Knight said a neighbour’s wheat crop has headed but is only about a foot high. “What is he going to do with that?”
Crops are “unbelievably short,” she said. “I’ve never seen it (like this). As I drive down the road I look (and think) how can that be headed out. And, of course, it’s not full head either because it didn’t get the rain.
“It’s still a tough situation. Very tough.”
Jeff Nielsen, who farms just east of Olds, agrees the rain was too little and too late for some.
“Rain is always a blessing,” he said, adding that the recent extended dry spell will have already taken a toll, especially on crops planted early.
“There’s crops there. But as you go further east there’s a lot less crop there,” said Nielsen. “There’s a lot of early-seeded crops that didn’t germinate properly. They’re stunted.
“We had four inches of rain last week and one inch this week. But that won’t produce a crop, you have to remember that. We still need more rain.”
Right now, farmers are taking a “wait and see attitude,” he said.
If dry conditions persist, and what has come up starts to brown, many may harvest early to get what they can out of their fields.
The Alberta Crop Report released on Friday said the rain that fell across the province — ranging up to 175 mm (six inches) — “has substantially improved surface soil moisture conditions in most regions”.
In Central Region, 40.1 per cent of major crops are reported good or excellent, compared with 21.9 per cent a week ago. Last year at this time, 87.6 per cent of crops were rated good or excellent, according to the report compiled by Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation and Agriculture Financial Services Corporation.
The report says “some wheat is reported to be heading out prematurely and early canola is starting to bolt. The eastern half of the region is still challenged by dry conditions and there are reports of poor canola emergence.”
Precipitation varied across the region, with the west half getting up to 127 mm (five inches) while the east side got hardly any.
“Pasture and tame hay growth may be revitalized in some areas with the moisture, but the recent rains may be too late for some fields to recover. Conditions decreased 11 and eight per cent, respectively, and are currently the poorest in the province.”
