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Sean Stanford's wheat farm just south of Lethbridge, Alta. falls within the far left corner of Palliser's Triangle — an expanse of prairie grassland encompassing much of southeast Alberta, a swath of southern Saskatchewan, and the southwest corner of Manitoba. The area is named for explorer Capt. John Palliser, who in 1857, famously declared the entire region a wasteland — so hot and arid that no crops would ever grow.
A second rural municipality in Alberta has declared an agricultural disaster because of drought this spring as beef producers head into summer, a period typically of less rain. “We haven’t seen the total effects of the drought,” said Stan Schulmeister, reeve of the County of Paintearth east of Red Deer. “But the agricultural producer that’s strictly dealing with livestock is going to find it very difficult to find feed this year because it’s almost province-wide, the damage to the hay crop and so on.”
Low water flow in the Bow River has forced the Eastern Irrigation District (EID) to issue a water use restriction for the County of Newell. The EID says they have seen a dramatic drop in average river flow levels in both the Bow River and Highwood River this year. In a typical year flow in the Bow River starts to drop off by the middle and end of July. This year the EID says the Bow River dropped by the beginning of June.
Water is often the most crucial factor in controlling crop yields. The amount of water used by crops can be affected by several factors including the availability of stored soil water, amount of precipitation during the growing season, crop rooting depth and various environmental aspects such as day length, amount of solar radiation, humidity, temperature and wind.
Water, water, everywhere. That may be the case elsewhere but the Okanagan Valley has always had its water challenges. The drier, southern part of the region sees an average of 250 mm of precipitation per year, while the northern part and higher elevations see an average of 400 mm per year. Kelowna Airport, for example, receives 298 mm of which 102 mm (34 per cent) falls as snow.
The earth under Dennis Lebow's gumboots is saturated. He's in the Salinas Valley in California, about an hour south of San Jose. The valley is often referred to as the "salad bowl of the world" as it's one of the most productive agricultural areas in the U.S. Most of Canada's lettuce, strawberries and tomatoes are grown in its fertile soil, according to California's Department of Food and Agriculture.
A grain farmer near Fort St. John says he and other growers are struggling as drought conditions continue to impact northeastern B.C., resulting in some of their poorest yields in years. "There was very little crop because everything got dried out," Malcolm Odermatt, a farmer and president of the B.C. Grain Producers Association, told CBC's Betsy Trumpener. "The plants went into survival mode … we're not going to do a big yield. We're just going to get a few seeds. We had absolutely no rain."
Farmer Richard Bosma points to an armpit-level felt pen mark on the wall of his milking barn to show how high the water rose during the catastrophic flooding on his Fraser Valley dairy farm almost a year ago. "So there were about 54 inches of water here at its peak," he said. In another barn, Bosma introduces assembled media and politicians to Miracle, a black-and-white, hay-munching calf that earned its name by arriving in the world immediately after its mother was rescued from the rising water.
Despite seeing promising crop yields this year, there's a heightened sense of pessimism among Alberta farmers as the harvest season wraps up. Farmers said that barley and wheat crops were great, but the excessive heat and above-average temperatures over the summer created issues for other crops, like canola — and it's leaving them worried for the year ahead. "The crop utilized every ounce of moisture that was in the soil this year to produce what we got and our farming practices helped us produce what we have," said Larry Woolliams with Airdrie-based Woolliams farms. "But there is zero reserve."
Farmers and other producers in southwest Saskatchewan are experiencing dry fall weather. The lack of rain in some areas is causing "moderate to severe on-site water shortages," according to the latest provincial crop report. "It's just setting us up again for a questionable start for next spring," Garner Deobald, the president of the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association, said. Deobald said most places have seen below average snowfall for the last three or four years. He said the Ministry of Agriculture needs to monitor water quality.
