Not even a tornado could prevent a Saskatchewan farmer from completing fieldwork

Jul 24, 2017

Clinton Monchuk even provided some commentary as he sprayed

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

Farmers aren’t strangers to working in adverse weather but one Saskatchewan producer took the practice a step further.

Clinton Monchuk, a farmer from near Lanigan, Sask., was applying a fungicide to his barley crop on Friday afternoon when he noticed the weather begin to change.

“There was a very, very dark, almost black cloud that was kind of hovering to the west of me where I was spraying,” he told The Weather Network.

The twister touched down for between 15 and 30 seconds, Monchuk told The Weather Network. He estimated he was about 3km away from the tornado at the time.

Monchuk put his equipment on auto-steer, took out his phone and recorded a video documenting his experience.

“…it’s getting windier,” he said in the video. “It looks like, right now, the tornado is dissipating. It was a little wider up top before but you can see how the clouds are twisting and turning above.”

Monchuk could’ve easily parked his equipment right then and there, but a little bit of wind wasn’t going to slow him down.

“It wasn’t raining,” he told Global News Saskatoon, adding that he called his family to ensure his children were in a safe spot.

A total of six tornados touched down in Saskatchewan – two north of Lanigan, one north of Jansen, one near Quill Lake, one near Fishing Lake and one between Wapella and Rocanville – on Friday, according to Environment Canada.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.