Spring seeding is underway around Medicine Hat (Photo Courtesy Ross Lavigne)

By Brendan Miller

Local farmer facing challenging growing season

May 4, 2023 | 6:25 PM

REDCLIFF, AB – Producers around Medicine Hat are running weeks behind their normal seeding schedules and are working overtime to try to catch up.

Pair that with the recent warm spell and dry conditions and local producer Vern Pancoast is concerned about this year’s yield.

He’s been working the land around Medicine Hat for more than 40 years, growing a variety of crops including spring wheat, triticale, winter wheat and canola.

Pancoast says he’s been working between 14 and 16 hours a day to catch up with seeding, something he’d normally have finished by the start of May.

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“We started two to three weeks later and then all of sudden when you do that Mother Nature changes and it’s hot. It’s hot too fast and dries the soil out when you’re still trying to get your initial seeding done,” explains Pancoast.

As a dryland producer, Pancoast relies on rainfall rather than an irrigation system to water his crops.

“Anytime you have heat and you have wind here is dehydrating the soil and if the plants have emerged it’s dehydrating them too so I don’t like wind and I don’t like extreme heat,” says Pancoast.

The combination of heat and wind has dried out much of the subsoil in parts of southeastern Alberta, including Pancoast’s field just outside Redcliff.

Normally the land has around two feet of moist subsoil by this time of the year. But this season the subsoil has about half that amount.

“We don’t have a lot of subsoil moisture to start with here, rainfall is our limiting factor so we are going to need lots of rainfall this summer to have an average to better than average crop,” mentions Pancoast.

And although rainfall will help Pancoast’s yield, it won’t help with the rising input costs producers like him are struggling with.

“Whether it’s seed treatments or fertilizer or seed itself. When you purchase new seed it’s all higher input costs, chemicals are high. When you have somebody come out and work on your equipment they’re not afraid to send you enormous bills, they know we need them and that’s what it’s going to take to get them here,” says Pancoast.

Equipment is also scarce, Pancoast says manufacturers simply are not keeping up with the current demand.

“Equipment is very hard to come by, you need to put an order in at least a minimum two years in advance to get what you’re wanting and you may not get it then.”

All these factors are concerning for Pancoast, but the seasoned producer says he’s seen worse.

Weather experts are calling for a hot summer with above-average rainfall for the region, the latter, Pancoast says will help produce an average to above-average sized yield this season.