For the second year in a row, corn growers around Taber are dealing with damaged crops, thanks to hailstorms this summer.
As a result, fans of Taber corn could end up seeing fewer ears available at their favorite stores later this summer. According to Jim Johnson from Johnson Fresh Farms, the storms this year have been detrimental to the corn crop. "The first one (hail storm) we saw this year was the beginning of June, which is strange for us as that is not really typically our hail season. We had quite the storm roll in and just to the south of me we had a tornado touch down at Barnwell. About 200 acres of our sweet corn crop was affected by that hail storm. We had different levels of maturity in that field so the stuff that was smaller and seeded later actually recovered quite well. The crop that was planted earlier, that was quite a bit taller, larger plants, bigger surface area for the hail to damage, we lost all of that. All and all we lost about 150 acres of sweet corn this year."
Johnson confirms that his neighbours also experiencing the same issues and it will affect the corn availability later this summer. "Where our supply will get tricky is, the field that got hit for us was our mid season field, so we will be out and about the same time as last year because our early field is fine." Sounds like corn will be available very soon. " We are looking to fire up down south Thursday, and possibly get up towards the Edmonton area Wednesday, August 5. The Johnsons learned a good lesson from last year and split their early corn crop to two different areas so there should be corn available early but it may be difficult to find later in August.
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