What a difference 14 days can make.
A few weeks ago, farmers like Walter Tappauf were looking at dust-dry soil. The land was the driest it had been in years, he said, and many farmers were preparing for a miserable growing season.
Now, after a few rainstorms, Tappauf says the ground is just right for seeding. "We've got moisture, and we've got [the plants] off to a good start."
Tappauf, who farms about 15,000 acres west of St. Albert, is one of many farmers cheering the recent rains this week as they start seeding this year's crops.
The dirt's wet enough for seeding, Tappauf said, but not wet enough to bog your equipment down with mud. "Up until now, our conditions have been just about perfect for germination."
He's already about a third of the way through seeding. But pastures will need a heck of a lot more rain in the months to come to get up to strength, he said. "This is kind of a teaser."
Lucky break
Alberta's had something of a lucky break with the recent wet weather, according to provincial soil moisture specialist Ralph Wright. April is normally a dry month, with most of the year's precipitation falling in late May and June. "Well, we got lucky. It's not even May yet and we've had our turnaround."
There's been a massive improvement in moisture levels throughout Sturgeon County as a result, Wright said. Whereas most of the county was at one-in-25 year lows at the start of April, many areas are now up to one-in-three year lows. "You're probably not bad for seeding now."
Ranchers are still hoping for more water to fill their sloughs and dugouts, said Rod Scarlett, executive director of the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, but if they got that much, that'd interfere with seeding. Many farmers will have to truck in water for their cattle this month, he predicted.
The top foot or so of dirt may be wet, Tappauf said, but everything under that is still dust. Farmers will be reliant on timely rains for the rest of the season, since their crops won't have any water reserves to draw upon.
It's certainly a change from years ago when farmers had to work their land because it was too wet, he says. "Now it's like there's never enough moisture."
Canola everywhere
May 1 is traditionally the start of seeding in the county, Tappauf said, and most farmers are planting as much pea and canola as they can. "Canola's still the only thing that's got a price you can make money on," he said. "Cereals are basically a loss."
Prairie farmers expect to plant another record crop of canola this year, according to a recent Statistics Canada survey, with some 16.8 million acres planned for seeding this year — 4.7 per cent more than the previous year and the fourth consecutive year-over-year increase. Albertans planned to plant about 5.1 million of those acres, or about 100,000 more than last year.
Durum wheat, on the other hand, was going nowhere but down. Prairie farmers planned to plant about a third less wheat than last year, according to Stats Canada, with Albertans planting about 48 per cent less.
Most Alberta farmers keep a lot of canola in their crop rotation, agreed Scarlett, but there's a limit as to how much they can plant. "It's really difficult keeping canola on the same piece of land year after year," he said, as it sucks up a lot of nutrients and creates a risk of disease, such as clubroot.
Low soil moisture levels will put these crops at greater risk of failure if there's dry weather, Wright said, but there's no guarantee that the weather will be dry. Alberta typically gets about 50 millimetres of rain in May, he noted.
For detailed soil moisture maps, see the AgroClimatic Information Service at www.agric.gov.ab.ca.
