The harvest is coming late to the region this season due to wet summer weather, and some farmers around St. Albert are concerned about the damage the water has done to their crops.
Farmer Walter Tappauf said they have just had way too much rain this season.“We put a big grain dryer in, but it's barely dry enough and the fields are mud. We put four-wheel drives in our combines and we can barely still get through some of the fields and some of them are half drowned out,” Tappauf said.
Usually by the end of August, Tappauf – who farms wheat, canola, barley and oats – said they usually have around 3,000 acres harvested. This year, they only had 800 acres done. The farmer said it will take another two weeks for the wheat to ripen up.
“Which is still more than most people. Most people have nothing done.”
Tappauf said the late harvest isn’t a big problem, but the quality of his crops is diminishing.
“The malt barley is basically wrecked because it's getting weathered,” he said.
“The peas are a disaster,” Tappauf added, noting the weather has bent the stems and made them flat. Peas are hard to harvest in that shape and are about one-third of the crop they should be.
The farmer said the problem with starting the harvest later is that the days are getting shorter and the risk of frost is elevated.
“If you get one frost, that will downgrade all the wheat,” Tappauf said. “This is one of the worst falls I've seen as far as the length of crappy weather.”
Tappauf said the year isn’t going to be a total wash for his farm, as they are large and well established, but he worries about young farmers who are starting out who could lose money this year.
Wayne Groot, who owns a farm around St. Albert, said he is starting his harvest around 10 to 14 days later than usual because of the wet conditions.
Groot said this year he has been lucky and has lost only two to three per cent of his crop to the wet conditions, with not too much damage.
But Groot said other farmers in the area have likely lost a lot more to the wet conditions and he is sympathetic to those farmers who might be having a tough season.
Groot, who grows potatoes, wheat, barley, canola, peas and quinoa, said his crops look pretty good where they haven’t had too much water and expects an above-average haul this season.
“That’s my impression right now, but you don’t really know until you get in the field,” Groot said.
Groot, who has been farming for 35 years, said there is no such thing as a normal year in farming but said so far this year's crop looks promising.
According to the Alberta Crop Report, which was released last week, the amount of dryland crop quality rating at good and excellent sits at 44 per cent for the North West region, which is below the provincial average of 67 per cent and 16 points behind the region’s five-year average of 60 per cent.
For the entire region, which includes Barrhead, Edmonton, Leduc, Drayton Valley and Athabasca, the harvest has yet to begin and producers across the region are concerned access to their fields will remain limited due to the wet conditions.
The report said anticipated yields to spring wheat are above the provincial five-and 10-year average and barley is eight points below the average and five points below both the five- and 10-year averages.
Canola and pea numbers are similar to the provincial five- and 10-year averages.
