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Flooded fields after heavy rains slow start of harvest in south-central Manitoba

On the edge of a wheat field east of Poplar Point, Man., water had pooled more than 30 centimetres deep this week, swallowing rows of crops.

Producer Carl Stewart says his 2,300-hectare (5,800-acre) wheat, canola and soybean farm has been hit with more rain in the past two weeks than the rest of the summer combined. Some storms brought almost 80 millimetres of water, flooding fields and making it tough to get equipment in for harvest.

Stewart's farm is about 30 kilometres east of Portage la Prairie, an area that normally gets 73 millimetres of rain in August. After being hit with 100 millimetres of rain overnight on Aug. 20-21, it's now had 115 millimetres this month — 157 per cent of the normal monthly total.

That will hit his bottom line this year, said Stewart.

"We're going to have to leave some acres behind, and unfortunately those acres are the ones that go to the bank, not to our creditors," he said.

A section of wheat on the farm has been flattened by the rain, slowing down combining. The wheat sits so low to the ground, dirt comes up as they harvest.

Another section of the farm has so much water it's been hard to get equipment in. Stewart estimates his farm is a week behind in getting crops of fields.

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Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.