After a season of intense rainfall and extensive overland flooding, Manitoba farmers are harvesting what they can from this year’s crop.
Kevin Yuill farms about 3,000 acres in the area north of Portage la Prairie and thinks he lost about 500 acres due to excessive moisture this year.
“Agriculture - it’s a big numbers game now, so on our own, we spent about a million dollars setting our crop up, so if you lose a crop it hurts,” said Yuill.
He completely lost a 170 acre corn field - a crop that was already a metre high when the water came.
“What happens when we lose a bunch of acres like this? We quit spending,” said Yuill. “Because the fact is, you know that it’s going to hurt. So, guess what? The business that normally would have got some of those dollars, it’s not there for them so they’ve got to pull their belt in a little bit too.”
According to Keystone Agriculture Producers, 985,000 acres went unseeded in Manitoba due to excessive moisture in the spring and an additional million acres of crops were wiped out by heavy rains and overland flooding.
The industry estimates the total economic impact to farmers at $1 billion.
Agriculture producers would like to apply for aid from the provincial and federal governments through a program called AgriRecovery.
“At this time, there is no AgriRecovery program,” reads a statement from the province. “While the province has not ruled out the possibility of an AgriRecovery program, we cannot act alone, and will await the outcome of ongoing assessment and discussion with the federal government.”
But speaking Monday in Saskatoon, federal Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said it is up to an affected province to get the ball rolling.
"We'll take a look at it if the province of record pulls the trigger on AgriRecovery, sends in the assessments to be done. We'll do the counterpart at the federal level,” said Ritz.
Yuill hopes the two levels of government can sort something out soon saying many producers in his area will be hurting this year if they don’t.
Source - http://winnipeg.ctvnews.ca/
