Farmers and ranchers in northwestern Saskatchewan received much-needed rain late last week and over the weekend.
Tom Brown raises cattle and is a crop reporter for Saskatchewan Agriculture and the reeve for the Rural Municipality of Mervin. His farm at Turtleford, about 80 km east of Lloydminster, received 11 mm of rain on Thursday night, an amount he said was pretty consistent throughout the RM.
After that first shower, the fire chief “felt we had enough green growth now that we could take the fire ban off. So that’s a plus,” he said Friday afternoon.
Read Also
Senft to step down as CEO of Seeds Canada
Barry Senft, the founding CEO of the five-year-old Seeds Canada organization is stepping down as of January 2026.
Thursday’s shower was the first of several over the weekend. A weather station in the RM reported 1.8 mm of rain between Saturday and Monday.
Crop district 9B, which includes Mervin, reported 20 per cent of cropland acres and 23 per cent of hayland and pasture was very short of topsoil moisture in Saskatchewan Agriculture’s most recent crop report.
“The cereal crops are actually in pretty good condition,” said Brown. “They’ve rooted deeply and there is moisture down there. It’s the oilseed crops, the native and seeded pasture, that I think that have probably suffered the most.”
Earlier this month, much of the canola was reseeded, said Brown; crops have been under drought and frost stress, some farmers have sprayed for flea beetles and much of the canola hadn’t germinated as of last week, he added.
While the rain is likely a relief for ranchers as well, Brown said it may have come too late for some of the pasture. Cold and dry weather has set back both hay and pasture in the area, he said.
Brown has been a crop reporter for about 18 years. He said the springs of 2002 to 2004 started out quite similar to this one, but the heavy frosts, some dipping below -5 C for over four hours, were unusual. “We had a number of them this time around and I don’t recall that (in past years).”
More crop reporters needed
At interview time, Brown was the only crop reporter in the RM. “It would be nice to have the reporters scattered out,” he said, adding he’d like to see one more reporter in the east, and one in the northern part of the RM. Some RMs have a few reporters, he said.
Brown knows many people who keep detailed records. “But I guess it’s another thing to do a detailed crop report and send it in every Tuesday morning because it is a volunteer position.”
Asked why he’s crop-reported for 18 year, Brown said he’s always had an interest in weather conditions and how they affect crops because of his involvement in farming, and tracks weather conditions anyway.
Because he’s rented out his grain land, he also checks with local agronomists about crop conditions before submitting his reports.
Mervin wasn’t initially included in the disaster zone after the 2002 drought, he said, because the municipality didn’t have an official Environment Canada recorder — but his weekly reports convinced the government to add the municipality to the drought zone.
That designation allowed livestock producers to access financial assistance to haul forage and to defer income from breeding animals sold that year.
Brown said he has no idea how many people benefitted that year. “I know in my own case it was significant because we had to haul feed from southern Saskatchewan and we did sell off some of our herd.”
To learn more about becoming a crop reporter, call Saskatchewan’s Agriculture Knowledge Centre at 1-866-457-2377.
— Lisa Guenther is a field editor for Grainews and Country Guide at Livelong, Sask., and is also a provincial crop reporter in northwestern Saskatchewan. Follow her at @LtoG on Twitter.
