Canada's durum, spring wheat, canola and pulse crops have been fighting an intense and expensive battle with widespread crop diseases provoked by the first wet year this decade.
"We sprayed everything with fungicide this year," said southeastern Saskatchewan farmer Jake Leguee, who grows about 19,000 acres (7,689 hectares) of crops, including durum, wheat, lentils, flax and spring wheat. "It becomes big dollars pretty quickly."
The sudden influx of diseases in early summer posed a grave threat to the quantity and quality of crops in Canada, the world's leading exporter of canola, durum wheat, dry peas, and oats, and a leading exporter of high-protein spring wheat.
The disease wave resulted from an extremely wet spring and early summer, which loaded soils with moisture, creating perfect conditions for fungal diseases when it became hot and humid.
Farmers were left with a tough choice of whether to invest more money in crops that aren't expected to be profitable this year due to high fertilizer and other costs, or whether to double down and protect whatever crop is there.
Leguee bit the bullet and invested $6 to $20 per acre in fungicide in order to protect the plants. "You do what you have to," he said.
That appears to be a decision many farmers have taken, according to inputs dealer Ray Redfern of Brandon, Manitoba.
"It was a must-do. They elected to continue to invest money in the crop," said Redfern, who had thought farmers might pull back from spending on fungicide because crop profits have collapsed and finances are getting tight.
"Many farmers are getting to the end of their operating line (of credit) and they're running out of cash flow," he said.
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