Flooding and wet weather is wreaking havoc on farmers’ fields this summer.
Fields remain water logged as Wellington County has experienced rain almost every other day in July.
Wellington Federation of Agriculture president Janet Harrop said farmers are feeling frustrated and defeated.
“You’re watching your crops, which is your revenue, rotting in the field and you have no control over it at all,” she said.
Harrop said while this area has relatively well-drained soil, the amount of precipitation received has been extreme.
“This is a pretty unusual year,” she said.
“You always had to work with mother nature, when you’re working with crops … we don’t farm now to the normals, we farm to the extremes, because we seem to get extreme wet and extreme dry and we don’t have a lot of normal anymore.”
A weather monitoring station in Mount Forest recorded 245.1 millimetres of rain in June (88.5mm average) and 141.7mm of rain so far in July (65mm average) according to federal climate data.
Most of June’s rain fell in a two-day period on June 22 and 23, which led to historic flooding in Minto and Mapleton. Both townships declared a state of emergency as basements of homes and businesses filled with water. Fields of newly planted crops were also affected as they turned to miniature lakes.
While the flooding was quick to recede, the rain has been relentless during the growing season so far.
Even after the floods, many of the crops that have “come back” from flooding have been stunted.
“The roots are kind of wet and it will turn the crop a kind of yellowy colour and then it’s slow to kind of come back and then it’s kind of stunted,” Harrop explained.
“If it can dry its roots out and start to grow again, it will grow, corn in particular is amazing at catching up. But there have been some areas that have been so wet that you see corner parts of the field, there’s nothing there, it’s just drowned out,” she said.
Harrop said one of the crops most affected is hay.
“I think a lot of people are trying to figure out what they’re going to feed their animals this winter, because of yield loss,” she said, adding prices will increase due to the shortage.
“With all this rain, the hay initially was quite late, and then I know very, very few people in the region that have been able to bring in dry hay.”
Harrop said this is having an impact on farmers’ mental health.
“Just envision, you hear the weather forecast, you hear you’re going to have four or five days of dry weather, you cut your hay down and then it starts to rain and you’re seeing it laying out in the field,” she said.
“The ongoing, everyday stress of looking at that and spinning your wheels and not accomplishing anything in a day is huge.”
Farmers are feeling “very frustrated, defeated, very frustrated because the crop’s there but they can’t harvest it,” she said.
According to the July 18 Agroclimate Impact Report compiled by the federal government, crop development remains a week behind the five-year average.
The weather has been “slowing crop development and further stressing crops in fields with poor drainage,” stated the report.
“Field access has been challenging due to excess moisture. There have been some reports of crop damage from thunderstorms, isolated hail and strong winds. In Ontario and southern Quebec, precipitation has been above the 90th percentile throughout the growing season.”
Harrop said the Ontario Federation of Agriculture has been advocating for disaster relief funding from the government.
