Spring flooding of rivers, creeks, municipal and provincial ditches and fields that turned into lakes, preventing draining of both open ditches and tile drains delayed spring tillage and seeding. Flooded ditches and tile drain outlets made even many tile drained fields look like lakes. It became almost impossible to exchange full season hybrids for earlier maturing seed because most farms were trying to do the same. Some fields were never tilled or seeded.
The federal agriculture programs have had a bad reputation because in a mixed farming operation, when milk sales are blended with crop sales, very seldom is there a payout. Even provincial crop insurance only starts to pay out on most farms after a 20 per cent loss.
If an immature crop is insured for grain but then salvaged for use as forage, then the salvage value is reduced from any crop insurance payout. This change in use must be approved by a crop insurance inspector before any action is taken by the farmer or crop insurance may not pay at all.
In a year like 2017, harvest days of any kind are a very short window. If a farmer got lucky and cut his hay exactly at the start of a three day no rain period and could cut and harvest his crop within that three day period (haylage was the only way) then that farmer got good feed.
It was 32 days before the next rain-free period. If the farmer missed that short window, then his hay was cut more than a month too late for good quality.
The farmer that was lucky enough to harvest first cut in that three day window, will they get the second cut in good shape also? If he didn’t, not only was his first cut lower quality, but he missed getting a second cut completely.
Fall wheat (planted in good weather last fall) was a Pontiac farmer’s best crop, if that field didn’t get winter kill or get flooded out in the spring of 2017.
Much of the spring applied fertilizer was leached down by never ending spring rains and the crop’s root system was very shallow because of saturated soils. These crops never got the full benefit of the fertilizer applied this spring and some field crops never rooted deep enough to reach that leached fertilizer. Some spring applied liquid manure also leached down below the crop root zone.
A few very well drained heavy soil fields didn’t leach as bad and if the farmer was lucky enough to get that field planted early between rains, the crop looks super.
Most fields are very uneven in both height and maturity and will be lucky to make fodder.
If farmers filled in claim forms with crop insurance every time that the weather stayed wet another few days, that might be a full time job this spring and summer and the staff at crop insurance would not get any sleep.
Even as crop insurance cut off dates for planting each crop approached, the farmer had to make another huge decision in variety; a different crop, or just abandon part or all of some fields for the 2017 season.
Many farmers added to their tile drained acres once the outlet ditches were low enough that they could be drained into and the field would carry the heavy tile drainage machine. This was often too late for planting a spring crop. Sometimes the farmer and the tile drainage contractor couldn’t wait for an engineer-approved plan; but water usually runs downhill if it gets a chance.
If a farmer had crop insurance he must work very closely with the inspector and include him before any change is made and get any claims in well before any date that crop insurance has set.
Farmers must work closely with farm organizations, municipalities, MRCs and politicians to get drainage ditches and culverts upgraded to adequate size to accept any water runoff (surface or tile drains) even in an extremely wet spring.
We could blame the farmer for not getting his crop in on time; blame the province or municipality for not building ditches with adequate capacity, cuss because of the wet spring, or just speak to the banker and ask him to “stick with you” for another year and chock it up to another very different, difficult year!
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon
on land that has been in his
family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
