By Ed White
REGINA, Saskatchewan, July 24 (Reuters) – Even as floods, tornadoes and hailstorms hammer the Canadian Prairies, farmers are seeing the best crop conditions in a decade halfway through the growing season, according to EarthDaily’s analysis of satellite and agronomic data.
The extreme weather has not lessened, but a years-long drought that left thousands of farmers across the vast prairies struggling to produce a crop has eased after bountiful spring rains provided enough moisture for the crop to germinate. Warm summer weather has sped crop development.
“The vast majority of the western prairie is ahead, and looking pretty darned good,” said Nick Ohrtman, global crop analysis lead for EarthDaily, about the entire Prairies region. The region, equivalent in size to the farmland of Western Europe, has been hit hard since 2020 by drought, which slashed yields and ravaged farmer finances.
The 120 million acres of prairie farmland produce the world’s biggest canola crop, are often the largest source of spring wheat, and the main global supplier of myriad smaller crops, including lentils and mustard.
Ohrtman’s firm analyzes an array of agronomic indicators to assess the agricultural situation, from soil moisture conditions to the state of the vegetative canopy on the fields to the weather in micro-regions, much of it using satellite data.
This year, most farmers have received beneficial rainfall, reversing periods of extreme dryness that hit large areas in recent years, providing not just enough moisture for the present needs of the crops but also building reserves that could carry many all the way to harvest. A few more showers could allow most farmers to produce an excellent crop.
VOLATILE WEATHER
However, local weather shocks have hit specific areas, including major hailstorms, tornadoes and flooding from excessive rain. While those won’t have a major impact on overall prairie crop production, the impact can be severe for individual farmers.
Farmer John Kowalchuk of central Alberta is among the unlucky ones. A July 4 storm hit three-quarters of his wheat, barley and canola acres with pea-sized hail and probably cut yields on those fields by about half.
“It was looking really good until the hail,” Kowalchuk said.
The combination of heat and moisture is creating volatile weather unlike that seen since the droughts began. Humidity stores heat, so when it gets hot with high humidity explosive events like tornadoes and hailstorms become common, with supercharged air creating localized dangers.
Central Saskatchewan farmer Rob Stone is in a better situation, with good moisture and sufficient heat helping his crops speed ahead.
“It’s going through the stages like we’ve never seen before,” Stone said of the plant’s growth. But the conditions increase the risk of fungal disease, he said.
“We’re used to the blast furnace. We aren’t used to a (steamy) sauna.”
Strong yields of Canada’s high-quality spring wheat, canola and pulse crops would be welcome news for global buyers at a time when production prospects are deteriorating in other major growing regions.
Crops have taken a beating because of climate change-linked severe weather across Europe. A heatwave in France and from Spain to Ukraine has reduced potential yields, and Russia’s spring wheat crop faced problems from a cold spring, frost and seeding delays, making for the smallest area seeded in decades.
The El Nino weather phenomenon, which arises from warmer ocean surfaces in the eastern Pacific, can be a problem for Southern Hemisphere crop regions like Australia and South Africa, Ohrtman said, due to dryness and heat.
(Reporting by Ed White. Editing by Emily Schmall and Sanjeev Miglani)
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