state of agricultural disaster <\/a>on July 17.<\/p>\nThe county said it\u2019s an attempt to raise awareness at the provincial level about challenges that the agricultural industry is facing.<\/p>\n
Thorhild County Reeve Trevor Dafoe said the combination of late melting snow pack with continuous rain and storms has been devastating. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe farmers aren’t able to get out into the fields \u2026 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,\u201d he said in an interview on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thorhild County\u2019s agricultural administration estimates the area could lose up to 50 per cent of crop yield this year, because of all the flooding, he said.<\/p>\n
Alberta\u2019s Agriculture and Irrigation Ministry has not yet responded to a request for comment from CBC News. <\/p>\n
How farmers are dealing with extreme weather<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe understand that we can’t keep moving forward farming like this. We don’t have proper drainage in our ditch systems in the county \u2026 that allow the water to move on the pathway that it’s naturally going to go. It gets backlogged and then overland floods.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said the county is no stranger to flood events \u2013 she points to the flooding in northern Alberta in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can’t just keep weathering the storm. We have to start dealing with this,\u201d Tomlinson said.<\/p>\n
She is hoping that more farmers in the area can join the network, so that they can eventually look for possible solutions.<\/p>\n
As for Toews, he said like many farmers, he\u2019s looking to diversify crops.<\/p>\n
He said some crops fare better in dryer conditions, and others do better when it\u2019s wet and humid.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarley doesn’t do as well with lots of rain, like wheat will. Peas don’t like the moisture either.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s drainage and it’s … what your soil is comprised of. There’s a lot of factors that go into it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-819387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\")
<\/p>\n![\"tractor](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1784753892_536_default.jpg\")
Warren Toews has seen overland flooding on parts of his farm, following extreme rainfall this summer. (Submitted by Pam Toews)<\/p>\n