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By Chris Brown

'Crops are devastated'

Local farmers facing a ‘desperate situation’ with no end in sight to heat wave, drought

Jul 16, 2021 | 4:05 PM

CYPRESS COUNTY, AB – Local farmers say they’re at a tipping point as hot and dry conditions have them facing the possibility of not making a crop this year and looking at financial hardships that will be difficult to recover from.

“Our dryland acres are in, basically, in a desperate situation,” said Nichole Neubauer of Neubauer Farms. “We’ve had very limited rainfall the effect is compounded by consecutive years of drought. We’ve had below-average precipitation with very minimal snowpack since 2017 each year inclusive and the hot dry temperatures are creating a situation where crops are devastated.”

Neubauer Farms, which grows cereals, oilseeds and pulses throughout Cypress County.

She says the irrigation crops are doing a lot better but even those crops are suffering because of the extreme heat and the difficulty replenishing the evaporation loss that occurs. She expects their irrigated crops will also have less yield.

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The grassland for the ranching section of the operation has basically “burned right up,” she said, decreasing the nutrient quality and the volume of production.

According to Environment Canada, last month the city received just over 20 millimetres of precipitation. In the past two years, Medicine Hat has received close to 50 millimetres of precipitation in June, and Neubauer says even that was below average.

Provincial Agriculture Minister Devin Dreeshen said in a statement Thursday that discussions are underway about the details of an AgriRecovery program. Meanwhile, groups like the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association are pushing for relief for the industry and some municipalities have declared states of agricultural disaster.

Cypress County’s agricultural services board is recommending its council declare a Local State of Agricultural Disaster at its meeting on Tuesday.

Neubauer says the county acknowledging the extreme conditions is a first step to possible financial relief from higher levels of government. But any assistance will take time to reach farmers and ranchers.

“In agriculture, the way it works is in the spring all of our inputs the costs of seed, fertilizer, fuel, all those inputs are already expenses they’re in the ground and we rely on production then to cover those costs,” Neubauer explains. “So for producers, they’re in a situation where there may not be, there will not be crops to cover those expenses so that’s when we need to look toward programs like an ag recovery program disaster relief and assistance.”

She said governments need to act quickly with the situation growing worse by the minute.

“It’s widespread, there’s a lot of people that are in a financial situation that’s going to make it difficult if not impossible to recover from without some intervention or some level of government support,” Neubauer said. “In agriculture we don’t farm for support programs, we farm to feed people.”

The situation is not unique to her family’s farm.

Garry Lentz has farmed east of Dunmore for most of his life.

He says this is one of the driest times in the past 15 years, and the clock is ticking on saving his crops.

It’s extremely dry, most of my crops are still at the point where if we would get a good rainfall within the next few days it would still help tremendously. As time goes on that window closes and the crops just do not fill,” he said, adding any fire would only make the situation worse and everyone needs to be vigilant about anything that could spark a fire.