Growing season in 2019 ‘could have been worse’ says weather and markets analyst

Saskatchewan producers had a tough 2019 due to unfavorable conditions, but one market analyst says it could have been worse.

Speaking at the Farm Forum Event Thursday at Saskatoon’s TCU Place, Director of Markets and Weather at MarketsFarm Bruce Burnett said a warm September saved many producer’s seasons.

“Our crops were significantly behind normal,” Burnett said. “What happened in September was we did have temperatures that were about two degrees above normal for most of the month.”

Burnett said the “killing frost” didn’t make it to the province until the end of September.

“If we had a frost in a more normal time frame, like in the middle of September, the conditions, the quality of the crop, as well as the quantity of the crop we harvested would have actually been a lot worse.”

Burnett said in a historical context, the original prairie pioneers were said to be threshing their fields in January. He said moving into the future though, there is uncertainty.

“From a climate perspective, we tend to move into these periods of time where we’re fairly wet, and then suddenly through random chance we move into drier, and normal periods.”

In 2020, Burnett predicted that there would be different plans made by Saskatchewan producers for what to put in the ground.

He said there could be planting delays in the spring, but that would also change the way producers look at what crops they’ll decide to grow.

Variability in the weather is consistent in Saskatchewan, and Burnett did want to remind producers that we do “live in the middle of a continent.”

He used an example from his own upbringing on a farm near the Manitoba border.

“When I was growing up on a farm on the eastern prairies, I remember some frosts in the first and second weeks in August… It was such a calamity at the time, and we haven’t seen that in many areas certainly, in the last few years,” he said.

Burnett did have one piece of advice for producers across the province for 2020 and beyond.

“Patience and adaptability are probably the hallmark of our farm community, and that’s what it takes this year, and the coming years, to farm successfully,” he said.