HAVE YOUR SAY:
It’s been a tough crop year for many farmers. How has it been for you?
WOODSTOCK — Farmers Forum’s Nelson Zandbergen was at Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show last month and asked farmers how their crops were doing in a drought year. As you would expect, crops were awful, average or awesome, depending on who you talked to.
“It’s just terrible. Once we put the combines in the field, we’ll really find out. We’ve never had this kind of drought, no rain for eight weeks and heat.”
Ed Sokay
Cash crops, Durham Region, Ont.
“It’s sad. Our grain corn, we chopped it all for silage. We have nothing to combine. For the most part wheat was good, straw was good. Mixed grains, better than I thought, and I can’t believe how the underseeded hayseed survived. Hay yield was okay. Last time it was this dry on our farm was 41 years ago.”
John Molenaar
Dairy farmer, Sunderland, Ont.
“It’s been pretty good. We had a late start. We planted our corn a little bit later and the beans quickly followed, but we got the rain where we needed it in our area, and things are looking pretty good. But again, here comes that new tar spot (in corn) that nobody really knows about or talks about. And I heard the closer it is to the border of our southern neighbor, the more odds of it getting in the air and coming into certain areas — it’s very spotty, no pun intended.”
David Bray
Broiler producer and crop producer. Oxford County, Ont.
“The corn was probably 3 or 4 feet tall (at the end of August). A lot of people had a really hard time with soybeans, like my boss had a terrible soybean plant. The first-cut alfalfa was fantastic, the second cut was not as good as the first and the third cut was pretty atrocious: I cut 45 acres of alfalfa and got only 15 7-foot square bales.
“My boss tried to order 40 tonnes of grain corn and the guy on the phone was saying he wasn’t sure he could get it.”
Billy Baes
U of G student, worked on Hastings County dairy farm, Ont.
“It’s been a tough year. I live in the Barrie area. We’ve had a very dry summer. We did happen to catch some rains in early August that revived things to some extent. It’s just a matter of watching the harvest and seeing what’s there, right? We don’t have a clue on some of the crops.”
Walter Priest
Cash crop, Simcoe County, Ont.
“Couldn’t be better. It’s just a fluke of the rains.
“The wheat crop is as good as we’ve had. We have soybeans, and we’ll see how well they do, but I don’t think it’ll be a bumper crop. I think we had weather for a bumper crop. We’ll tell when the combine goes in. I’m glad I’m not making payments on anything.
Dale Marin,
Soybean seed grower, Dresden, Ont.
“Things look surprisingly good for the little bit of rain that we’ve had. But I know different parts of Ontario are suffering pretty good. Eastern Ontario is definitely part of that but there are some good spots, too, pretty variable right around the province.
“On our farm, we had a great wheat crop. The hay crop’s been pretty good, but corn and soybeans have been suffering with the little bit of rain that we’ve had through the flowering season.”
Drew Spoelstra,
Dairy and grain farmer, OFA president
Hamilton, Ont.
