Excessive moisture and heat hurting crops in Saskatchewan

Jul 11, 2024

Crops are reported to be in overall good condition in Saskatchewan, according to the latest report from the Ministry of Agriculture.

It was generally drier over the past week compared to previous weeks, despite the excess moisture causing crop yellowing in low-lying areas in some regions of the province and lack of moisture contributing to drier areas.

Moisture and warmer temperatures have sped up crop development, however canola and spring cereals are still the furthest behind the normal stages of development for this time of year.

Saskatchewan is in a heatwave, and while some farmers welcome the hot weather, others are concerned. Disease development has been spotted in various crops including pulses and cereals.

Todd Lewis farms near Gray, south of Regina. He finished spraying fungicide on his lentils, canary seed and durum wheat. He said his crops are coming along nicely.

“By the end of the week all our fields will be in the flowering stage. The crops are a little bit behind compared to other years, but at the same time there’s a heck of a growth there and this heat over the next seven to 10 days should really catch them up,” Lewis said.

Slightly drier conditions have helped haying operations, but a few areas are still delayed due to isolated rainfall events.

Nokomis area farmer Brett Halstead has been cutting hay. He said conditions are encouraging.

“Most of the grass is pretty good. We had some spring rains which is critical for grass production, so it’s probably as good a hay cut we’ve had in several years so we’re pretty happy with it,” he said. “Dry down is a little slow because of the humidity though.”

Kevin Hursh farms in the Cabri area in the southwest region and like Lewis and Halstead, his crops are doing fine but he is concerned about the heat.

“We don’t have a lot of reserves when other areas were getting an inch or two or three, we were getting three or four or five tenths, maybe an inch in some isolated areas,” Hursh said. “I do worry about an extended hot, dry period and what that might do to crops.”

Hursh said temperatures in the mid to high 20s and even 30 degrees is okay, but anything above 30 hurts the crops.

In areas that have received less moisture, crop stress is starting to occur. There was minor to moderate damage reported from isolated hail events over the past week.

Gophers and grasshoppers continue to cause damage with some areas reporting emerging grasshoppers that didn’t previously have pressure. Producers also note aphids and cabbage seedpod weevils are beginning to appear in some regions of the province.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”