Heartbreak for farmers: Crops that looked good coming in at low yields

October 3, 2012, 6:36 am
Kara Kinna

It was supposed to be the year that made up for all the bad years.

Crops were looking good out in the field, and prices are strong.

But now that farmers are getting through harvest, yields of grains and oilseeds are nowhere near what many were expecting.

"It was shaping up to be just the perfect harvest," says Murray Bruce, summing up the thoughts of most farmers in the weeks before harvest began."I would have expected an above average crop. If it looks good you think it's going to be good. There were lots of plants with lots of foliage and big leaves. It looked fine, but until you put the combine in and actually combine it, that's what really tells the story. And once you get it to the terminal, that tells you what you've got in black and white."

Like many farmers in Southeast Saskatchewan, Bruce seeded two crops- wheat and canola-on his farm in the Moosomin area. He says both crops were looking good, but come harvest he was in for a surprise.

While the wheat is providing an average crop at about 40 bushels an acre, it's the canola that is the big disappointment. Bruce expected his wheat to yield about 50 bushels an acre, and the canola 40 bushels an acre. Instead he says his canola crop is giving him just over 20 bushels an acre.

"It's quite a bit below what we expected because the stand and the swath looked good," he says."We still had an awful lot of drowned out area from the wet weather in the spring, but the rest of the crop looked good all year."

So what happened?

Bruce says it was a combination of factors.

"The canola had two main problems-it had a disease called aster yellows. We've always had that in the canola, but it's never near the level it was this year and that took away from the yield, and we had quite a bit of sclerotinia fungus in the canola, worse than I've ever seen it-it's as bad as it's ever been. So it is a combination of the two-sclerotinia and aster yellows-along with the wet spring and drowned out areas."

Aster yellows are small leaf hoppers that come up from the U.S. by travelling on currents of air.
"We've always had it, but it's never been a yield factor before," says Bruce."They say because of a warm winter it came up to Canada a month earlier than normal, and apparently it gives the canola flower a virus. Usually 10 per cent of the leaf hoppers carry this virus, and it was up to 30 or 35 per cent this year."

Sclerotinia, on the other hand, thrived on the moist conditions created by heavy and constant rains in the spring.

"The high humidity nights-the fungal diseases love that high humidity," says Bruce,"and during the summer too there were very few morning when you would get up and the grass wasn't wet."
Bruce adds that a weekend of high winds in August also took its toll on the crops.

"That hard, 80 kilometre wind we had, that shelled and rolled a lot of the canola too, so that cost us some bushels. And also it did shell some of the wheat."

But it wasn't only disease and a windy weekend that hurt this year's canola crops. According to a number of farmers, lots of heat and very little rain in July didn't help either.

"Back in July I would have thought the canola would be a 40 bushel crop, but it's certainly not. We might average 30," says Bruce Dunsmore, who farms in the Rocanville area."If we make 30 we'll be satisfied now. But we lost 10 bushels an acre for sure. It was looking really good in July until it got dried out.

"First it was disease, and then in July we only got two tenths (of rain) once and three tenths once and that's all the rain we got in July.

"Before those aster yellows showed up and before the scler+otina showed up, and before it was dry, it was just a beautiful crop."

Dunsmore says the hot, dry weather caused small pods on the canola plants.

But he says he's not complaining, and he doesn't consider this year's harvest to be a writeoff for farmers, especially if they've planted wheat.

Aside from some of his crop drowning out in the spring, he says he's quite happy with his wheat, which is giving him an average to above average crop this year.

"We're not disappointed, it's still a pretty good crop," he says."I've have 57 crops-we have to take it as it comes. You take it in your stride, it's all you can do.

"That's very much the talk, that the wheat is good and the canola is poor, and you can't have everything good at once. Wheat is a pretty strong crop in heat. Wheat will withstand heat a lot better than canola.

"I think everyone will be generally satisfied, and it's been a beautiful harvest so far.
"We had a lot worse last year, and then two years before that we had excellent crops-you can't have butter on both sides of the bread."

Tim Lincoln, who farms in the Wawota area and owns Lincoln Farm Supply, says there is high disease pressure in all crops in the Wawota area, including wheat which has been hit with Fusarium.

While wheat is still the stronger crop, he adds that barley is also yielding poor results so far this harvest.

As for canola, it's the same story as everywhere else.

"Virtually the difference is whether people sprayed their canola crops," he says."And the average for most farms that didn't spray would be 20 to 24 bushes, and if you sprayed you're getting about seven bushel more."

Lincoln says the one offsetting factor this year is high commodity prices, but he says it all comes down to bushels in the bin in the end.

"That's what the whole talk of the industry was-everyone was talking about this $14 canola and $9 wheat. Well it doesn't matter what it's worth if you don't have it. It's like having a lottery ticket you don't buy-you always use the same number and on Tuesday night you don't have it when they call it.

"I would think the biggest thing is overall the farmers have to be happy with their results compared to 2011. Going forward in this area we are not fighting the moisture problems we were last fall. There are fields we are swathing through that were full (of water) in the spring."

Chris Thomas at the Parrish and Heimbecker grain terminal in Moosomin says this year's harvest has been more bitter than sweet for farmers.

"First of all the wheat has been a pleasant surprise-it's yielding better than expected, but Fusarium is downgrading 90 per cent of it to a two," he says.

"Barley is another huge disappointment-it doesn't like wet feet, and it has been a bit of a disaster too.

"Disappointed, I just don't know any other word to describe it, especially when you have the stand and the swath there that looks like it should be better than it is."

Thomas says the high commodity prices had a lot of farmers hoping for a fantastic year.
"That's the other thing that was so disappointing-they were looking for the potential for such high income if they hit even average yields on the canola, and with prices where they're at, there was a lot of optimism that was shattered."

He says he expects some farmers to apply for Crop Insurance.

"I think some will be applying for Crop Insurance. I think harvest will be prettymuch done in the next week or two and they will start assessing what they got and whether they should apply for Crop Insurance.

"Fortunately there was a lot of wheat that went in, and that is going to offset some of the other problems.

"They were reporting a bumper crop and that's not going to happen. Until the guys got the combines out and the grain in the bins, they thought it was going to happen too, because it was looking pretty good."