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A northern Alberta county has declared a state of agricultural disaster due to flooding on farmland caused by extreme rainfall.
Warren Toews, who owns a hay farm in Thorhild County, is used to dealing with dry weather around this time of year – but not this year.
Toews said the onslaught of rain over the area this month alone is flooding parts of his farm.
“We had a late spring and then the rain started early and we’ve kind of been just saturated all along,” said Toews, who has owned Toews & Bale for almost 26 years.
“It’s kind of overwhelming, and for some people, it’s way more [rain] than they should have ever received.”
Warren Toews has seen overland flooding on parts of his farm, following extreme rainfall this summer. (Submitted by Pam Toews)
The county, located about 83 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, announced its state of agricultural disaster on July 17.
The county said it’s an attempt to raise awareness at the provincial level about challenges that the agricultural industry is facing.
Thorhild County Reeve Trevor Dafoe said the combination of late melting snow pack with continuous rain and storms has been devastating.
“The farmers aren’t able to get out into the fields … to plant the crops. And now we’re to the point where [farmers] are hoping to start cutting hay and there’s water [flooding] the field and even if they could get it cut, they probably wouldn’t dry,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.
Thorhild County’s agricultural administration estimates the area could lose up to 50 per cent of crop yield this year, because of all the flooding, he said.
Alberta’s Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry has not yet responded to a request for comment from CBC News.
How farmers are dealing with extreme weather
Some farmers in Thorhild County have since stepped in to help each other out. Chelsea Tomlinson owns True Seeds Ltd., and operates several acres of land in the county.
She’s joined a small network of farmers with the goal of educating and helping others, as the province continues to see more record-breaking weather patterns.
Tomlinson said Alberta farmers are typically more equipped to deal with droughts, but that there needs to be more infrastructure in place to deal with extremely wet seasons.
“We understand that we can’t keep moving forward farming like this. We don’t have proper drainage in our ditch systems in the county … that allow the water to move on the pathway that it’s naturally going to go. It gets backlogged and then overland floods.”
She said the county is no stranger to flood events – she points to the flooding in northern Alberta in 2020.
“We can’t just keep weathering the storm. We have to start dealing with this,” Tomlinson said.
She is hoping that more farmers in the area can join the network, so that they can eventually look for possible solutions.
As for Toews, he said like many farmers, he’s looking to diversify crops.
He said some crops fare better in dryer conditions, and others do better when it’s wet and humid.
“Barley doesn’t do as well with lots of rain, like wheat will. Peas don’t like the moisture either.”
“It’s drainage and it’s … what your soil is comprised of. There’s a lot of factors that go into it.”