Crop insurance can only do so much for Canadian Prairie farmers, who not only have been unable to harvest crops last fall due to heavy snow, but also cannot properly begin seeding their fields as scheduled due to poor soil conditions.
The snowy spring has been nothing but trouble for farmers operating in the general area. In Alberta alone, about 486,000 to 607,000 hectares of mostly canola and wheat lay unharvested, said government crop specialist Harry Brook.
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Reuters reported that ICE Canada canola futures have gained about 10% in the past three weeks.
Ken Degner, a farmer based in Barrhead, Alberta, said that the reason for this increase is likely due to the 1,350 acres of unharvested canola, wheat and barley sitting out in his snowy fields.
“I don’t know what I can do,” he remarked. “Who expected it to still be snowing end of April?”
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Degner’s unharvested crops represent 90% of 2016’s plantings and are not insured for this type of risk, Reuters noted.
While it is not unusual for central Alberta to have crop left over to harvest in spring, the high amount of unharvested crop is staggering, Brook pointed out.
“Potentially, it could be a big deal,” Brook said.
According to Brook, most crop planting in the Canadian Prairie happens in May, but this year it could extend into June. He warned, however, that planting later raises the risk that cold nights in late summer could damage immature crops.
Even if farmers delay their crop planting, they still have to contend with Central Alberta’s wet soil. The area’s soil was left oversaturated after receiving twice as much precipitation as normal within the period between March 22 and April 20, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reported.
Farmers will need about six straight weeks of dry weather to harvest last year’s crop and to make the soil suitable for seeding, World Weather senior agricultural meteorologist Drew Lerner explained.
“It is very disconcerting,” Lerner told
Reuters. “There’s a lot of folks that are going to get hurt.”
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