Interlake, east a soggy 'disaster'

Enlarge Image

Farmer Del Barkman examines a waterlogged clump of earth in an Arborg-area field. The land is too wet to be seeded this year. (KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

Enlarge Image

‘It is not uncommon to see fields that aren’t even harvested from last year yet’ - farmer Del Barkman (KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

Enlarge Image

Arborg farmer Rick Johnston rushes to get seed in before Saturday’s deadline for crop insurance. (KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

ARBORG -- Excessive rainfall that began last summer and continued this year has left many Interlake and eastern Manitoba farmers unable to plant their fields this spring.

And time is running out. The seeding deadline for obtaining crop insurance is Saturday.

The Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp., which provides crop insurance, estimates that between 2,000 and 2,100 farmers will make claims this year for excessive moisture, meaning they were unable to plant some or all of their land because it was too wet.

"It's been terrible," said Stewart Floyd, an Arborg-area farmer who also operates a seed sales and processing business with his brother Ron.

When traditional seeding methods failed this spring -- the brothers could plant only 140 of their more than 2,000 acres using normal equipment -- the Floyds resorted to using an airplane to broadcast canola seed on 900 acres. It's germinating surprisingly well, but the fields are still too spongy and muddy for them to go on them to apply fertilizer, so crop prospects are only fair.

Their remaining land will go unseeded, partly because cereal grains are much too bulky to plant in this way. "We still have 1,000 acres left to do but we won't be doing it," Stewart Floyd said.

While most North Interlake farmers haven't gone to the same great lengths to plant a crop, they've been equally frustrated by what some are calling a "disastrous" spring.

Hardest hit appear to be the communities of Vidir, Arborg, Poplarfield, Riverton and Fisher Branch in the Interlake and Beausejour in the province's eastern cropping region. Perhaps surprisingly, provincial officials expect relatively few excess-moisture claims from farmers along the Red River, south of Winnipeg, in what was known a short time ago as the Red Sea.

A provincial crop report earlier this week estimated that seeding in several northern Interlake communities was 25 to 30 per cent complete, but area farmers say probably less than 20 per cent had been done as of yesterday.

A drive through the area reveals field after field seemingly abandoned since last fall. Many sport huge ruts from harvest time, when farmers used specially equipped combines (some with Caterpillar-style tracks) to combine their waterlogged fields.

Weeds have overtaken normally well-tended fields because farmers have been unable to get on them with tillage equipment.

Worst of all, some farmers who couldn't plant a crop this year also failed to harvest all of their land last fall.

"It is not uncommon to see fields that aren't even harvested from last year yet," said Del Barkman, an area farmer who also works for a local seed and crop inputs seller.

That means some farmers will be taking a financial hit for a second year in a row. Crop insurance, they say, only covers a small portion of their costs and leaves nothing for them to live on.

Barkman, who managed to harvest all his land last year but plant only half of it this spring, said the back-to-back setbacks will have "a huge effect" on some grain producers' financial viability.

"It will do farmers in unless the government is going to step up to the plate," he said Thursday as he showed a Free Press reporter and photographer around the area. "It is a disaster."

On Thursday, many fields appeared to be dry from the road, but a closer look revealed them to be waterlogged just a centimetre below a thin dry crust. Some had water visible on them just days before the current warm spell, local farmers say.

Despite the nearing planting deadline and the vast acreage left to be seeded, few farmers in the Arborg area could be spotted on fields yesterday. However, one of them, Rick Johnston, said he had managed to seed 70 per cent of his land.

Not far away, though, another farmer, Lorne Johnson, who farms 3,200 acres, had not been able to seed any land at all.

Some farmers in small isolated pockets within this hard-hit region have managed to avoid some of the heavier rains and so have been more successful in their spring seeding.

Meanwhile, drainage problems have also been a curse for many farmers, including Johnson. He blames all levels of government for failing to properly clean out ditches over the years, which has caused overland flooding in the area.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

It's not adding up well

JUNE 20

The last day Manitoba farmers can seed most major crops and still quality for crop insurance.

2,000 TO 2,100

The number of Manitoba farmers who are expected to file excess-moisture claims this year because they couldn't seed some or all of their land before the insurance deadline.

25 to 30

The percentage of grain land planted in such Interlake communities as Fisher Branch, Gimli and Arborg, as of early this week, according to the province. Farmers in some of these communities think that estimate is optimistic.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 19, 2009 A4