Year in Review: Farmers endure ‘Harvest from Hell’
Posted Jan 2, 2020 4:04 pm.
STETTLER — For farmers across the prairies, the 2019 harvest will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
It has been dubbed the “Harvest from Hell” as rain and snow brought the harvest to a screeching halt in August just as it was getting going and gave producers only small windows over the next two months to get the crop off.
RELATED: Snow throws another wrench into already long, drawn-out harvest for farmers
Harry Brook, a crop specialist with Alberta Agriculture, says producers were praying for the “water-works” to be turned off for over two months.
“How about for a couple of weeks, just two weeks, warm, dry weather,” said Brook.
“We didn’t have that, we had a day or two of drying weather, and then it rained again, or we had high humidity, or there was no wind so that you wouldn’t get very good drying. It was just very frustrating and trying to get the crop off.”
READ MORE: Farmers struggling mentally during tough harvest urged to seek out help
Brook says, in some cases, farmers weren’t able to get the crop off the field.
“There’s a lot of acreage of the crop that is out there in the field primarily canola, but there is significant amounts of wheat and barley as well.”
The horrible weather forced the sugar beet growers in southern Alberta to abandon about 45 per cent of the crop in the ground.
