With crops like wheat, canola, barley, peas and others ready for harvest, an early snow has caused havoc across much of western Canadian farmland.
Farmers have been as busy as possible trying to get as much harvested as possible before frost and snow ruined crops and stalled the process.
An early crop killing frost and snowfall on the last day of summer, dumped anywhere rom 10 cm to one metre of snow across various regions of Alberta, basically halting harvesting. In the south, 60 per cent of the canola crop had been harvested, but province-wide less than 16 per cent had been combined. Province wide wheat harvesting was only 35 per cent complete.
Elsewhere across the prairies snow has either already threatened harvesting or is threatening in areas not yet hit.
While the snow wasn’t expected to last, it can flatten crops that stand up which makes them harder to harvest, and creates wet and muddy field conditions bogging equipment down. The damp grains lessen their value and cost more to dry.
Calgary was one of the areas hit by another major snowstorm yesterday which caused havoc with traffic. Snow moved across Saskatchewan and is expected in Manitoba tomorrow..
Additional information-sources
- Western Producer: Oct 6.19: Snow, cold grind Alberta harvest to virtual standstill
- CBC: A.Hunter: Sep 21/19: Stressful: snow threatens harvest northwest Saskatchewan
- Bloomberg: Sullivan/Robinson: Sep 30/19: A foot of snow-bury crops US-Canada
- RCI: L.Desjardins: Sep 30/19: unusual snow not expected to last
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