Summer forecasted to bring hot, dry weather across the prairies

Jul 07, 2023

Farmers who are looking for a cool, wet growing season will be disappointed by the latest seasonal forecast from Environment Canada.

That's predicting a hot, dry summer across the country, though the prairies may not feel the worst of it.

Meteorologist Terri Lang says that the forecast may last well up to harvest.

"July, August, and September across the prairies are looking to be above average with respect to temperature. With respect to precipitation, our ability to forecast the long-range precipitation patterns isn't all that great, but the current forecast is showing that it's sort of in the northern parts of the provinces, it's forecast to be drier than average. Across the southern part, it's not showing a trend at all."

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Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

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Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.