This year’s warm, dry winter has some farmers worried about hay, says a local farmer, but most are kicking back and enjoying the rare heat.
Sturgeon County has been warm and relatively snow free over the last 90 days, according to Alberta Agriculture’s AgroClimatic Information Service. Temperatures have hovered around one-in-six and one-in-25-year highs for much of the region, bringing with them dry spells usually seen only one out of every three or six years. Soil moisture reserves were hovering at one-in-three-year lows as a result.
But you won’t find many farmers sweating about it, says AndrĂ© Montpetit, manager of Sturgeon Valley Fertilizer. “Every farmer I’ve talked to is kind of enjoying it.”
The warm weather is easier on cattle, Montpetit notes, which means they don’t have to eat as much. It’s also much easier on farmers, many of whom are used to hauling grain when it’s -30 C.
Wheat and canola growers aren’t worried either, said provincial forage, grazing and beef specialist Grant Lastiwka — their crops aren’t in the ground yet and are more reliant on spring rains than winter moisture.
It’s the hay and winter wheat growers who might be in trouble, he continues. Forage crops such as alfalfa are perennials that go dormant during the winter and sprout in the spring. These crops will be short on soil moisture this year if trends continue, which could delay their growth. Without the usual blanket of snow for insulation, they will also be more vulnerable to winterkill.
“I can see at least a setback,” he said of this year’s hay crop, one that could mean higher costs for ranchers. Farmers may want to start looking for extra pasture now, he said, and should consider seeding more annual crops as feed.
Crop weather maps are available at www.agric.gov.ab.ca.
A new study from an agricultural think-tank suggests that Canadian ranchers may be losing $130 million a year to the ethanol industry.
The George Morris Centre, an independent agricultural think-tank based in Ontario, released a new study on ethanol and Canadian livestock late last month.
The U.S. ethanol market has a considerable effect on the world’s price of corn, says study co-author Al Mussell. Canada’s is much smaller, but still affects local prices for feed wheat and corn by creating additional demand for them. “The effect of our ethanol policy is completely at home.”
Mussell’s research suggests that Canada’s ethanol industry, which is backed by a federal mandate requiring five per cent of all gasoline to come from renewable sources, increases the price of feed grain by about $5 to $10 a tonne in Western Canada and by about $15 to $20 a tonne in the east. This costs Canadian producers about $130 million a year, he estimated.
That might not sound like a lot in a $9-billion a year industry, Mussell said, but it is. Hog farmers made about $10 on every pig in 2010, for example, but could have made $2 to $4 more were it not for ethanol. Cow farmers similarly made $26 a head, or about $12 less than they could have without ethanol.
Feed prices can account for up to 75 per cent of the cost to raise a hog, Mussell noted, so these price hikes are significant.
“This creates collateral damage,” he said, including higher livestock costs that push producers out of the industry.
In a news release, the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association said that Mussell’s report “grossly overstated” its conclusions and exaggerated the effects of biofuels on commodity prices.
Mussell called on the federal government to curtail its support for ethanol and to reconsider increasing the amount of ethanol in gasoline to 10 per cent, as has been proposed.
Mussell’s report can be found at www.georgemorris.org.
