'Pretty harsh' year for farmers, yields below 5-year average
The end-of-season crop report for the province showed low yields, dipping well below the five-year average.
On Monday the province released the crop report for the end of the season, showing significantly lower yields than an average year, around 37-per-cent lower, with the exception of malting barley and oats.
Across the province crop conditions were “pretty harsh” through the summer, said Ward Toma, general manager of the Alberta Canola Producers
The scorching heat and dry weather this summer caused challenges for producers, although Toma said southern Alberta got hit the worst with the heat.
“It got really hot at the same time for everybody,” Toma said.
Through the rest of the province, the season started off strong, Toma said, with good soil conditions and ideal weather in June, so many crops were well on their way to a bumper years.
But the heat wave in July, which saw temperatures soar above 40 C across the Prairies, fried and dried out almost all crops in the province.
In southern Alberta, conditions for the year started off bad and quickly got worse, with little snowfall in the winter leaving the start of the planting season already dry. The heat wave dried out any moisture left in the soil and producers were left with little crop for harvesting.
The silver lining is that crop prices are very high right now, Toma said, so producers can sell half their crop at double the price and salvage their income for the year.
But for other producers, who had signed contracts to deliver crops but weren't able to harvest them due to the weather, they will have to pay out those contracts at the new high commodity prices.
And while the high prices right now are helping producers salvage a terrible year, Toma said there are concerns looking forward to next year.
Supply-chain constraints and high prices are making the price of seed, fertilizer, and other supplies needed to get next year's crop in the ground very expensive. If crop prices don't hold up into next year and drop by harvest time, producers could be looking at another difficult year.
“That's becoming a bigger problem as we get into the winter - it's getting really expensive to grow grain now and a lot of people are seeing these record-high grain prices as an anomaly,” Toma said.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Prince William and Kate release photo of daughter Charlotte to mark ninth birthday
Prince William and his wife Kate released a picture of their daughter Charlotte to mark the princess's ninth birthday on Thursday.
Ontario man loses $1,500 applying for Nexus cards on social media
The trusted traveller program between Canada and the United States is extremely popular and almost two million Canadians have a Nexus card.
NEW Facial reconstruction reveals what a 40-something Neanderthal woman may have looked like
Scientists studying a Neanderthal woman's remains have painstakingly pieced together her skull from 200 bone fragments to understand what she may have looked like.
Concerns about Plexiglas prompt inspections at some Loblaws locations in Ottawa
Inspections are underway at more than one Loblaws location in Ottawa after complaints were filed about tall Plexiglas barriers.
Weight-loss drug Wegovy available in Canada starting May 6
The makers of Ozempic say their weight-loss drug Wegovy will be available to patients in Canada starting Monday.
Five human skeletons, missing hands and feet, found outside house of Nazi leader Hermann Goring
Archeologists have unearthed the skeletons of five people, missing their hands and feet, at a former Nazi military base in Poland.
This Canadian restaurant just lowered its prices. Here's how it did it
A Canadian restaurant lowered its prices this week, and though news of price tags dropping rather than climbing sounds unusual, the business strategy in this case is not, according to experts in the field.
NEW Companies letting customers opt out of Mother's Day ads
In an effort to balance the profitability of Mother's Day with the pain it causes some people, some brands are offering customers the choice to opt out of Mother's Day email advertising.
NEW A mother's hopes to free her son from a Syrian prison is revitalized by a new human rights report
Just days before the seventh anniversary of the day Jack Letts was thrown in prison with thousands of suspected ISIS fighters, his mother, Sally Lane, delivered a small stack of envelopes to the headquarters of Global Affairs Canada in Ottawa.