Rainfall levels track above normal

Aug 28, 2024

Rainfall levels for most of Westman continue to be above average this growing season, according to Manitoba Agriculture’s latest crop report.

Of the 36 communities or monitoring stations tracked in the report between May 1 and Aug. 11, just four have received less rain than normal.

Mountainside had seven per cent less rain than normal while Boissevain, Oakburn and St. Lazare were one per cent below normal.

Another community, Kola, is reported to have received a typical amount of rain while the rest of the stations had above-normal rain to varying degrees.

The wettest spot in Westman is said to be the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives’ Brookdale Farm site just north of Brandon at the corner of Highway 10 and Provincial Road 353.

The crop report said that the 345 millimetres of rain it received is 55 per cent above normal.

The second-wettest location in Westman is Shilo, which received 343 mm of rain — 54 per cent above normal.

Carberry is third on the list, having received 318 mm of rain. That represents 43 per cent more rainfall than normal.

The only other community that received more than 300 mm of rain was Wawanesa, which had 307 mm since May 1. That’s 38 per cent above normal.

While precipitation has largely been above normal for Westman, temperatures have trended slightly below normal.

The crop report lists the number of growing degree days, a measurement of how much heat has been accumulated by plants to help them grow.

Just six monitoring stations saw normal or above-normal growing degree days this season: Brookdale Farm, Carberry, Ingelow, Minnedosa, Shilo and Wawanesa.

The community with the lowest number of growing degree days was Oakburn, which received 13 per cent fewer than normal.

Some agricultural producers in the province struggled to get their crops planted on time due to heavy rainfall early in the year, said Jill Verwey, president of Keystone Agricultural Producers.

She said that some parts of the province, like the Interlake and around Dauphin, were hit harder than others.

“There certainly were some producers that were affected where they didn’t get anything in or half of their crop didn’t get seeded,” said Verwey, whose own farms are in the Portage la Prairie area.

“If you were speaking to the province overall, the statistics really weren’t alarming. But if you happen to be in that area where it was hit with a lot of moisture, then it could have had a negative impact.”

Harvesting for spring crops is only just starting, she said, and yields appear positive so far, though it is still early in the process.

In southwestern Manitoba, she said there wasn’t as much moisture when the crops were filling in. Combined with the wet spring, she said that could potentially mean lower quality yields or lower protein in cereal crops. However, that won’t be determined for a few weeks yet.

Overall, Verwey said the additional moisture helped build up water levels in the soil after a dry 2023.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”