Drought Claims Starting To Trickle In

Manitoba Agricultural Services Corporation (MASC) is starting to see drought claims trickle in.

Chief Product Officer David Van Deynze was asked about claim numbers.

"It's much too soon for that," he commented. "Most of our claims come in the form of post-harvest claims and we ask our clients to report their harvested yields by November 30th at the latest, so we're starting to get some of those trickle in as producers are finishing up harvesting certain crops. They are certainly letting us know. We don't have a great prediction at this point in terms of the entire year. We certainly know it's going be significant and more significant than we've had for a number of years but a little bit too early for us to peg an actual number at it."

Van Deynze commented on the hardest hit regions.

"You get into that Interlake region, that's certainly I think the hardest hit and it's been in the media a lot. There's no doubt we're seeing the same thing on our end and there's some pockets south and west of Winnipeg as well that was harder hit too, so they're struggling there. From there, it's a lot smaller areas I would say. A little bit of hit and miss throughout the west as well but some areas in the west managed to get some timely rains, so aren't as bad. From a regional perspective, it's certainly the Interlake and that Starbuck country that seems to have taken on a pretty big hit from the drought this year."

He says crops were converted into livestock feed at a higher rate than has been seen in many years.

The forage claim deadline is September 30th. Annual crops have a deadline of November 30th.