Rain further delays lagging Sask. harvest progress: APAS

Harvest in Saskatchewan is off to a slow start that has been worsened by the significant rainfall seen in many areas of the province over the long weekend.

Joining The Evan Bray Show on Wednesday, Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan president, Bill Prybylski, said the rain meant he wouldn’t be harvesting for the next few days.

Prybylski also spoke about rising costs and which producers are being most impacted by Canada-U.S. trade relationships and tariffs.

Listen to the full interview, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: How much rain? You’re in the east part of the province. How much rain did you you end up getting?

BILL PRYBYLSKI: Varied quite a bit, anywhere from just over an inch to around three inches.

Yesterday, we were asking people to take pictures of and show us their rain gauges. My gosh, we were seeing five, six, in one case eight inches in one part of the province. This is rain like we haven’t seen at this time of the year, certainly, for decades.

PRYBYLSKI: Yeah, absolutely. Could not have come at a worse time for for most producers suffering from some early season rains. Put producers behind in in their harvesting efforts, and now this is just a further further setback for producers.

What are you hearing, Bill, in talking with people. I know you’re connected around the province. Like, is this a delay of harvest, or were there areas where we saw some serious damage from the rain? I know there was hail, I heard, in the Kipling area over the weekend, but rain damage, as well, to the crops?

PRYBYLSKI: Yeah, there definitely will be. One positive note, I suppose is, that as as the rain came here this past weekend and accumulated in some of the lower areas, while some of those lower areas didn’t have any crop because they were already flooded out earlier in June. So, maybe not as much crop damage as could have been if we’d had 100 per cent coverage on the crop to begin with. But certainly, there’s going to be some lodging, some hail damage. There was some wind damage, and certainly, there’ll be some downgrading. There’ll be possibility of sprouting. I think some of the samples of the crop that we took off last week were already showing some signs of sprouting, so there will be some quality issues, and I think right now producers are concerned about getting the equipment stuck in the field once we do get back out there.

Is it better to have your crop swathed when the rain comes, or still standing?

PRYBYLSKI: It kind of depends. For the most part, obviously, standing crop will will weather the the heavy rains better, unless it gets lodged. If we get the heavy rain with strong winds and it knocks the crop over, then it makes it that much more difficult to to pick it up when we do get out there. So, really depends on the crop at the stage that it’s at, and how much rain and wind damage that are coming with those storms.

I know there were AgriStability changes that were recently announced, and a lot of that had to do with claims that were going in early in the year because of the flooding. What is the impact there?

PRYBYLSKI: The changes that were made to the AgriStability program are welcomed by producers, particularly the late enrollment. If a producer hasn’t been in the program, but seeing the amount of crop damage that they’ve sustained because of the flooding earlier in the year, or now, the rains that are going to cause some issues, producers have the option to still enroll in the program, having a chance to look at their individual situations. It might be a good time to have a look at that and see if it makes sense for them. Some other changes, too, the advancing of 75 per cent of expected payouts will help get cash into producers’ hands now when they need it to pay their bills, as opposed to sometime in the future.

We’re hearing reports with El Niño that we could see a warmer-than-normal fall. In fact, it could give us a few months. Is that like, we’re not hitting the panic button yet, it’s still early September. Would you say?

PRYBYLSKI: Absolutely. I don’t think anybody’s panicking. Certainly, a lot of concern out there, and a bit of stress, obviously, as to when are we going to get this crop off. But yeah, we’ve certainly been here before. This isn’t really anything new. It’s just, we’ve had some pretty good years over the last two years, and have had some nice falls to get the harvest done in a timely matter. It looks like this year is going to be a challenge, but certainly nothing that we haven’t seen before.

Tariffs and the trade war back and forth with the United States, of course, is a big topic of conversation. How has that permeated agriculture? In what ways have you seen it? Has it hit the equipment sector, for example, manufacturing? Can you give us a sense of that?

PRYBYLSKI: I think the biggest problem, right now, is all the uncertainty around the tariffs and what, exactly, is going to be affected by tariffs? We’ve seen the list and I think the biggest concern for producers would be the parts for harvesting equipment. If if we’re going to see a 15 per cent increase to the cost of parts because of the tariffs, on top of an already crazy-high cost for those parts to keep our equipment running, that’s going to be very problematic for a lot of producers. Especially going into harvest, it’s going to be late. It’s going to be, likely, harder on equipment. Guys will be pushing a little harder than maybe they would normally, and that usually tends to lead to more breakdowns. It’s just going to mean more costs and we have no way of recovering those costs. We just are forced to accept them and carry on. It could have a significant financial impact on producers.

When you look at grain producers versus cattle producers or or livestock, do you see a difference? Are the the tariffs impacting one sector of of the ag industry differently than others?

PRYBYLSKI: No, I don’t believe so. I think producers of all commodities right now are looking at equipment costs increasing. Whether you’re growing grain or livestock, you need to fix your equipment to keep it running. So certainly, timing-wise, grain producers are probably faced with more potential increases over the next month or so during harvest. But overall, there doesn’t seem to be any targeted sector, one over the other. I think all producers are concerned.

This is a busy time for farmers. What is the focus, the priority, for you and the APAS team over the next couple of months?

PRYBYLSKI: For our members, the focus is harvest. Get the harvest done safely, quickly, and get the crop into the bin in as good a shape as possible. Obviously, concerns about costs –  from where I sit, I can hear my grain dryer running. The cost of propane, right now, is reasonable, but will there be increases? Which usually happens.

Cost of diesel is high.

PRYBYLSKI: Absolutely. We’ve got a diesel generator running round the clock to keep that grain dryer running. All these costs are adding up to quite a significant cost of production that just hurts our bottom line. And again, as producers, we are price takers. We have no way of recovering those extra costs.