After a few days’ break due to rain, Korey Peters is back harvesting his crops.
“Two-thirds done wheat,” he told Global News Thursday, adding that amounts to roughly 25 per cent of the total harvest at Herbsigwil Farms in Randolph, Man.
“You never really know until you start harvesting,” Peters said. “We thought our wheat was going to be maybe a little above average, and it just wasn’t. So once we started harvesting, we realized it wasn’t as good as we were hoping, sometimes there’s really not much you can do in the end.
“It’s Mother Nature’s decision.”
Mother Nature has been particularly inconsistent this year, according to Keystone Agricultural Producers Vice-President Jake Ayre.
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“Quite a mixed bag this season. We’ve had varying amounts of precipitation across the province,” he said. “Yields ranging from very good to excellent to poor. That’s, again, varying on moisture.”
Earlier this year, the RM of West Interlake declared an agricultural emergency due to drought. The province then stepped in with support for livestock producers, but the area continues to be the driest region.
Meanwhile, some farmers in the Russell area are dealing with the aftermath of a recent hailstorm, an “odd” occurrence so late in the season, Ayre says. Some in the southwest got their first frost recently.
“There’s a little bit of damage there, but for the most part people will be out looking today to see kind of how that affects their crops that are still out in the field.”
China’s 75.8 per cent tariff on Canadian canola has only added to the uncertainty.
“It’s another stress that you don’t really need to think about when you’re focusing on trying to get your crop off for this year,” said Ayre.
Peters says it’s not as simple as switching out canola for another crop next year.
“A lot of things go into those decisions, and I think people don’t always realize that. They just think, well, just don’t grow it. But we also have to take into consideration our crop rotation,” he said.
Peters pre-sold some of his canola harvest before the tariffs went into effect.
“Now the rest that we’ll have left over, it’ll just sit in a bin and we’ll kind of watch the price and decide when we want to sell an open market,” he said.
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