It is dry in Alberta

**ianben** · May 14, 2001, 13:42

We had a dry week last week here in the UK but it is raining again now stopping everything.
Mud turned to concrete nearly overnight
I was busy spraying, winter canola in full flower, had some MBC for sclerotina,winter wheat, fungicide and shortener, spring wheat and barley, herbicide and manganese. Winter barley has awns visible, which is about 2 weeks late.
It is not a pretty sight, uneven patchy crops, yields must suffer. I would guess we will be at least 500tonnes down on last year when we harvested just over 1500 tons
Some of our neighbours are even worse and there is alot of land not sown.
Millers are already questioning whether our wheats will have the quality they require.
Prices are rising, feed wheat is £85 for Aug01 low of £57 Aug00.
Lets us try to keep the prices rising and hope we can make more money from poor crops.
I 'ave seen it before as I'm sure you have too. Bin busters are rarely bank fillers.
Lets make sure we get the best price for what we do harvest!!

Regards Ian

**cowman** · May 20, 2001, 06:43

It is awfully dry here in central Alberta! I sure am getting sick of feeding cows. A lot of grain was seeded early and is up and doing pretty well but we need some moisture pretty soon. We actually got about 1/2 inch of snow last night. It looks like a lot more wheat was planted in this area than is normally done, about the same amount of barley and a lot less canola. Most of the people growing canola are mainly doing it to clean up weed problems and not thinking too much about a big profit.

**TOM4CWB** · May 21, 2001, 10:52

For central Sask, over the weekend, did they get any significant precip?

I see that the southern wheat belt got rain, wheat markets are down big time!

Goes to show, what happens out here means nothing to the major world markets, especially when we have a secret non-transparent pricer who refuses publically to transmit our info to a world that is hungry to get it.

The CWB sure hurts us "designated area" grain farmers when shortages are looming.

But I guess the CWB is only here really to protect domestic supply, and grain trade deals that benefit the domestic industrial complex!

When Will The CWB Directors Finally Get It?

**chas** · May 21, 2001, 11:16

Tom4cwb; We finished seeding May 10, peas are up wheat coming up patchy canola laying in the dust. Rain has been back ordered at Camrose for several weeks and has still not arrived in any amount over a 1/10 th of an inch at a time. We are so dry that we have to order our postage stamps pre licked. If it don't rain we can lay everyone off at the CWB because there will be nothing to do this year. That way they can get use to not having a job next year when we get rid of them all together. I have never seen it this dry at Camrose for such a long lenght of time. Chas

**Vader** · May 23, 2001, 07:18

Is the market for hay picking up in Alberta? I have large round grass bales for sale. Also large round oat and barley straw.

**chas** · May 24, 2001, 15:57

Vader: I heard large Hay bales at Ponoka Alta. were bring $76 last week and Settler Alta was $60 for 1100 lb hay bales. Have not heard prices on straw bales. Cows with calves at foot were going for $1400 to $1880 at Clyde Alta on Tuesday, someone is still optimistic, theres no grass and some are running out of water also. We need rain yesterday. Chas

**charliep** · May 24, 2001, 16:25

Where are you located Vader? Lots of demand for hay here?

Chas. - Any sense of who the cow calf buyers are? I heard today that cow calf pair prices are coming down. I suspect that something is going to have to give in the south part of Alberta with lack of dugwater more of an issue than pasture - a good rain would help pasture but it won't give cows drinking water.

**sewen** · May 25, 2001, 08:29

Light showers this morning in northeast Alberta, but has only amounted to 1/10 of an inch. Has anyone else gotten more. Is there anywhere on the internet that you could find rainfall amounts for other parts of the prairies?

**bbrindle** · May 25, 2001, 08:43

We had a shower in Edmonton last night. I don't know how much but it seemed like the most we've had in quite awhile (which really doesn't say much!). There was still a bit of moisture by the curb this morning. I don't know where you can find recent precipitation levels. I'll try and look into that.

PFRA has a good "drought watch" site with maps, if you want to see up to May 23. Be sure to scroll down because there is more than one map on the page (the bottom one has accumulated precipitation).
http://www.agr.ca/pfra/drought.htm

If you want to see similar info for the US you can look at the US site. Try looking at the Palmer Drought Index. It's a map that is updated weekly with the last update May 19th.

It is dry in Alberta