Saskatchewan farmers are ready to resume harvest in many parts of the province following weeks of heavy rainfall. Gerrid Gust farms east of Davidson. He was finally able to get onto his soggy fields Thursday, and begin putting canola in the bin with a little help from his grain dryer. “Two inches of rain. A couple days later we had five inches of rain. A couple weeks later, another inch of rain,” Gust said. “It’s like eight inches of rain right in the middle of harvest, where we’re not getting the production we need in the daylight.” Gust isn’t the only one feeling the added stress of harvest delays this year. The most recent government-issued crop report says 32 per cent of Saskatchewan crops have been harvested, well behind the five-year average of 71 per cent. “We’re about three weeks behind where we’d like to be,” Gust said. “And it’s just sort of what happens. It’s not optimal, but it’s part of the business. It’s not what we want. Normally, we’re done harvest by now. You get the Facebook memories and it’s like, ‘oh, we’re done.’” Scott Hermus farms in the Melfort area and says this year is a totally new experience for him. Unlike some farmers in his area, he wasn’t able to get on the fields and start harvesting earlier crops like barley before the rain began falling. “We’ve had harvests prolonged into November before on the back end, but we’ve always started,” he said. Even with a grain dryer at his disposal, Hermus says his samples were still too wet to put in the dryer, which forced him to continue waiting since the start of the month. “We like to see wheat at 20 per cent (humidity) before we kind of run it through the dryer. The closest we were at was 21. So, we took a sample of 21 per cent wheat, and then we were saying, okay, the next day we’re going to go rip it off. And it rained overnight,” Hermus said. “It just consistently rains on it so you can’t get anything going.” Gust and Hermus say watching their crops stand still for weeks as rain falls and potentially damages crops is an uncomfortable feeling with the equipment and manpower ready to go. Hermus is concerned about his wheat, but already knows his barley has lost some value. “We didn’t get that off either. We could have maybe potentially made a malt. It’s now a feed, for sure. It’s sprouts in the head,’ Hermus said. Potential losses are coming at an increasingly volatile time for farmers. After settling the canola tariff dispute with China earlier this year, high commodity prices followed, which could have made for a profitable year for many farms. However, record high input costs have followed in the wake of ongoing trade disputes between the United States and Canada, throwing any certainty in doubt. “Very optimistic for good prices going forward, which we’re going to need because everything’s going to be very expensive and it’s just going to get more expensive as the tariffs kick in, as well,” Hermus said. “It’s the geopolitics of it all,” Gust said. “Indian tariffs, Chinese tariffs, the Trump tariffs. It’s not helping anybody do anything with any predictability.” According to Environment Canada’s weather forecasts, sunny and above seasonal temperatures are in store for many parts of the province as the race to finish harvest resumes across Saskatchewan.
