Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's latest drought monitoring map shows dry conditions across most of the Prairies.
AAFC's agri-climate specialist Trevor Hadwen says since April 1, the driest regions of the prairies have certainly been in southern Alberta, as well as the northern Peace regions, with some parts of the southwest and west-central part of Saskatchewan, as well as the south central region in Manitoba.
This is not the first year of drought for many of these regions, they went through a very significant drought in 2021, had a reprieve in 2022, and are back in it now.
Hadwen says with no real rain it reduces the soil moisture and the amount of reserves that we have available for those plants.
"So that really starts to be a concern for crop producers, the bigger concern that we have is the livestock producers., and some of the native forages and some of the conditions with the hay lands. Our hay supplies have been depleted over the last number of years of drought. So feed availability is a big issue, water supply has been depleted. So we're seeing producers struggle to find enough feed or water for their livestock. Those pastures out there have really been hit hard through multiple years of drought, and the hot conditions this spring really impacted them as well."
He notes the last drought map shows data up to June 30th and conditions in many areas have gotten worse with the hot, dry, windy conditions over the last few weeks.
Overall, he says as we move through the growing season, we're going to start to see more and more impacts on the agricultural sector if we don't see some timely rains and more frequent rains.
"The long-term forecast and the seasonal forecasts from Environment Canada both show fairly dry conditions in the summer and very warm conditions. So we're dealing with both that warm and dry conditions. So as much preparation to deal with that as possible going into the fall and the winter, especially for livestock producers, the better off they're going to be."
To hear Glenda-Lee's conversation with Trevor Hadwen click on the link below.
Source : Pembinavalley online