Prairie farmers already struggling with drought now dealing with damaging grasshoppers | 24CA News
Producers in some elements of southern Saskatchewan are already battling drought this summer season. Now grasshoppers can as soon as once more be added to the checklist of woes.
The scenario is so extreme south of Saskatoon that the RM of Dundurn has declared an agricultural catastrophe.
“On the livestock side, we’ve had to go through our pasture a lot faster than we normally would. And some stuff that we were trying to save, the grasshoppers moved in and cleaned it off before I could get any cattle onto it,” space rancher and deputy reeve Ben Wilson informed 24CA News’s The Afternoon Edition final week.
An AgriRecovery evaluation from the provincial and federal governments is now underway to see how they’ll financially assist producers affected by the harm brought on by drought and the next grasshopper infestations.
Dan Johnson, an environmental science professor on the University of Lethbridge who has lengthy studied grasshoppers, stated the nice and cozy and dry climate is the largest issue.
He stated it is too late within the season for moisture to eliminate them this 12 months.
“The tiny ones that hatch and are very small at the beginning can’t take it physically, so they don’t grow and can get attacked by disease. But once they get to the stage they’re at now — they have a waxy covering — they can hunker down into the grass and wait the rain out,” he stated on 24CA News’s Saskatoon Morning.
Johnson’s recommendation to producers is to keep watch over the place the bugs are laying eggs in August and September.
“Then they can know where to look in the spring for hatching. Information in the spring is really important, because if they have a long, long extended hatch, that can be a problem,” he stated.
This 12 months’s provincial grasshopper forecast confirmed numbers growing from final 12 months, with the lengthy, dry, heat late summer season and fall in lots of elements of the province offering good circumstances for egg laying.
Crops within the south-central, southwestern and southeastern areas have been among the many hardest hit. Only 10 of 1,134 websites throughout Saskatchewan reported no grasshoppers, the report reveals.
The newest crop report
Thursday’s crop report signifies probably the most harm this previous week is from the dry circumstances and grasshoppers.
However, the nice and cozy climate has helped fields in most elements of the province flourish.
The warmth allowed haying to progress rapidly, with solely 13 per cent of the primary reduce nonetheless standing and 71 per cent baled or silaged. The report stated the standard of the hay ranges from truthful to glorious, with the bulk rated as “good.”
Pockets of moisture helped enhance topsoil moisture ranges in lots of areas, however “the drought conditions in the southwest and west-central regions were not abated by the trace amounts of moisture or localized thundershowers,” the report stated.
The province reminds producers, particularly these coping with the dry circumstances, that the Farm Stress Line is out there to supply assist toll free at 1-800-667-4442.
