As unpredictable as the weather in Western Canada is, Mother Nature never ceases to amaze. This month was marked with some heavy storms, a few resulting in serious damage due to tornados. In early July, a tornado touched down near Raymore SK, creating a mess to a few farms.
Damage from a tornado near Raymore, SK, July 2010
Closer to home, an enormous funnel cloud recently covered the skies outside of Calgary, AB. The following picture was taken at the DynAgra Beiseker yard on July 25th.
Funnel Cloud in Beiseker, July 25th 2010
Tags: Beiseker, Calgary, Dynagra, Raymore, tornado, Weather
The top nine of ’09 has a nice ring, but the big agricultural events of the year actually fall into just five broad categories. In agriculture, weather is usually a big story and it certainly was in ’09. The Saskatchewan crop had more lives than an alley cat. Despite drought, delayed maturity, the threat of frost and an extremely late harvest, the crop was above average overall and absolutely stellar in some regions. The flip side of the equation and number two on the list is the big drop in grain prices, particularly on the cereals. After record high prices in ’08, many crops have dropped back to disappointing levels. There are still some profitable crops, particularly lentils and canola, but the year ahead is uncertain. Profitability will likely depend on growing the right crops and having an astute marketing plan. The number 3 story of the year is the crop export barriers that have emerged. Europe has restricted our flax and China has restricted our canola exports. Even a visit by our Prime Minister wasn’t enough to change Chinese policy. Which commodity will be the next to run into a trade barrier? I’ll talk about number 4 and number 5 on the list on tomorrow’s commentary. I’m Kevin Hursh.
Tags: agriculture, Canola, cereals, delayed maturity, drought, export barriers, flax, frost, grain prices, late harvest, lentils, marketing plan, trade barrier, Weather
The Canadian Wheat Board’s partnership with WeatherBug has evolved into a service that will be very useful to producers. This private weather network, linking on-farm monitoring stations was launched two years ago. I’ve checked it out on-line a couple of times and I was underwhelmed. Now, the CWB and WeatherBug have launched a website at www.weatherfarm.com and it does provide a unique service. The 700 field stations are linked via the Internet and you can get real time data from any of the weather stations. Most producers will be pretty close to at least one of the stations so the information will be pertinent. You can see the temperature, wind speed and wind direction at any given moment. You can also look back at the weather variables from previous hours, days or weeks. WeatherBug is now installing lightning detection sensors, which will detect cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning activity. This should allow for advanced detection and alerts of severe weather. With the network that’s been established, all sorts of additional features should be possible. To check it out, just log onto www.weatherfarm.com and fill out the little bit of registration information that’s required. I’m Kevin Hursh.
Tags: Canadian Wheat Board, Weather, Weatherbug
While the greenhouse gas / global warming theory remains the most widely held view in the scientific community, there’s a growing body of credible scientists on the other side of the debate. Some scientists claim the world has actually been cooling for the past number of year rather than warming. One theory for this is reduced sunspot activity. Last year was one of the lowest years for sunspots in decades. This year has been on track to be even lower. Less radiation from the sun means a cooling planet. Another theory which has received recent attention in some scientific publications claims that the earth has a regular wobble in its oscillation that changes our angle to the sun. It’s difficult to separate fact from fiction. We don’t seem to know if it’s getting warmer or cooler and even if there’s more than normal variability happening, the correlation with human activity and carbon dioxide levels is tenuous. Yet major policy decisions are being based on carbon emissions. World leaders will gather in Copenhagen in December to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol all over again. What the politicians decide will affect farmers through forced carbon reductions and carbon credit trading. Whether the political decisions will have any short or long-term impact on growing season weather is an open question. I’m Kevin Hursh.
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Kevin Hursh, PAg, CAC
Tags: global warming, Weather
It has been a whacky spring and summer for weather. While the western Prairies are suffering from drought, there continues to be too much rain in parts of Manitoba. On Sunday and Monday, areas east of Winnipeg received a huge amount of rain – as much as 5.5 inches near the community of St. Joseph. There’s standing water in the fields. Meanwhile, in parts of Alberta, there have been reports of frost in recent days. According to the Canola Watch report from the Canola Council of Canada, temperatures of minus one were reported near Beaverlodge, Leduc and Ryley on Sunday night and Monday morning. Grain traders follow weather and crop reports very closely during the growing season. The trade factors in information as it becomes available, but the way the growing season has been going, you have to wonder if there could be some major production surprises still to come. Has the true extent of the drought been factored into production estimates? Crops are late. What if there’s a widespread, earlier-than-normal killing frost? Producers are becoming reluctant to part with grain because production prospects seem very uncertain this year. I’m Kevin Hursh.
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Kevin Hursh, PAg, CAC
Tags: crops, rain, reports, Weather
How much would more accurate weather forecasts be worth to farmers? Environment Canada is now providing seven-day forecasts, but there’s only human input on the first day of the forecast and usually for only the first 12 hours. The rest of the forecast comes completely from computer models. Computer modeling has limitations. An experienced human can adjust the computer assumptions and come out with a much more realistic forecast. Bob Cormier of Saskatoon is one of the few people working for Environment Canada in the province. He notes forecasts are generated with the general public in mind rather than farmers. And he says there’s no plan in plan to increase the usefulness of the forecast for producers. For years, Environment Canada has operated with a skeleton staff. The initial indignation over staffing cuts many years ago failed to convince the federal government to revisit the decision. However, a relatively small extra investment could still provide a substantial improvement in the weather forecasts from Environment Canada. I’m Kevin Hursh.
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Kevin Hursh, PAg, CAC
Tags: Enviroment Canada, forecasting, lacks priority, Weather
Grain market analysts are watching weather conditions in a number of different regions of the world. Bruce Burnett, the director of weather and market analysis for the Canadian Wheat Board spoke on Wednesday in Kindersley. Burnett says winter wheat in the southern United States is being stressed by dry conditions. It’s been dry from Texas all the way to western Kansas and soil moisture levels are low. The winter wheat is actively growing and in Texas it’s at the jointing stage. Rain in the next week will be very important to maintaining yields. In the northern states, the problem has been too much moisture. Flooding is expected in the Red River Valley. Burnett says more moisture could cause a switch in seeded acres away from spring wheat and into soybeans. The durum price outlook is being affected by normal to above normal moisture conditions in North Africa. Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria have good durum crops coming, more than offsetting dry conditions in Turkey, Syria and Iran. On malting barley, Burnett says Australia is the country to watch. There is still a lot of time for it to turn around, but drought is persisting in southeast Australia and that is a major barley production area. The Canadian Wheat Board will release another Pool Return Outlook next week. I’m Kevin Hursh.
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Kevin Hursh, PAg, CAC
Tags: Canadian Wheat Board, grain, Weather
