After enduring drought and dust storms, hot weather, damaging frost in the mid summer, followed by infestations of locusts, prarie farmers are now being hit with crop rot and mildew as rains have finally come, in the middle of the normally dry harvest season. In some areas swaths have been lying on the ground, soaking wet since the last weeks of August, and crops are losing quality because of the on going dampness. The final word is not yet in on this years crop, since the harvest is still not complete, but it currently seems that yields will be almost one half of normal, and of what eventually remains, it is still to be seen what the quality and grade will be. Currently one of the topics for discussion in the farm news are tactics farmers can use to stave off mould and crop rot and mildew while waiting for dryer conditions which will allow harvesting. (Currently more rain is in the forecast.)

Meanwhile in recent weeks crop insurance programs were indicating that they will need bailouts from the government due to the high number of claims which threaten to bankrupt the system. In Saskatchewan the government is facing declining revenues, and has even raised the price of a package of cigarettes to ten dollars (much of it consisting of taxes). While the tobacco measures are promoted as a health measure, a few years back when the government raised the price much less (to around seven dollars) there was such a large increase in smuggling that the measure was actually producing negative results in terms of revenue and was rolled back. That the government could so quickly forget the previous experience, and then go so far as to jack the price up to ten dollars, is an indication of just how hard up for money they really are. Earlier in the year they tried more than doubling certain maximum fees charged for care of the elderly (from a top limit of about 1500.00 to close to 3500.00) but a wave of protest caused the measure to be dropped only a few weeks after it was introduced. Things are better in the oil producing regions, where the governments have already spent around a third of a billion dollars on the farm problem, but it does leave one wondering where Saskatchewan crop insurance is going to get the money to pay what are going to be a lot of farmers with little in the way of income this year.

It was also recently announced that this year the Canadian Wheat Board will pulling out of world grain markets altogether. According to reports the announcement 'sent shockwaves throughout world grain markets.' Canada has always been a big player in world wheat markets, and has had a reputation for supplying high quality grains that often fetch a premium price. Wheat futures began to rise immediately after the announcement. (Wheat boards are a kind of collective selling organization for farmers, established earlier in the last century when socialist governments came to power during and after the great depression. Selling collectively, while it did mean that everyone got the same price, at least meant that farmers were not forced to take individually whatever they were being offered, and were also more able to negotiate rates with the railraods that were more reasonable.) Regional wheat boards (also referred to as pools) are also cutting back, with the Saskatchewan pool laying off 200 people and planning to knock down some older elevators to save money. At the same time, the Americans, who seem to hate the 'socialism' involved in the Wheat pool idea, are on the attack against the pools and the Canadian wheat board.According to the story on the CBC site, American farmers are looking for protectionist legislation on the grounds that the pools are selling wheat for to low a price. This battle with wheat boards and collective selling has been going on for many years, and this year is just the latest round in the battle.

Grain prices and grain futures have been going up, but livestock prices have been heading in the opposite direction, as the drought has caused a large sell off in the herds which has increased supply and depressed prices. The American government is currently buying tens of millions of pounds of pork for school lunch programs in an attempt to reduce the glut of pork products on the market that are impacting the bottom line of pork producers. Feed is also expensive, and not just in the drought areas, and so this year cattle producers are supposedly 'ammoniating straw' (apparently a way to make it edible, much like hay) . There is also talking of 'ammoniating' chaff to increase the nutrition content. Salt content in dug outs and sloughs used to water livestock has also become a concern because of the drought, and in a large part of the prairies dugouts are between one quarter and one half full, with certain areas completely dry.

The situation cannot be much better in the states, where the drought has expanded in size since earlier this spring, and now covers 48 per cent of the continental United States. Some rains have come to the eastern part of the country, which has been suffering from severe drought, but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to impact the accumulated deficit, and also whether such rains are as untimely there as they have been on the Canadian praries. According to reports, drought related stress has caused many plants to bloom out of season, and when this happens there is reduced blooming, and reducing fruiting in the following year, which means that this years fall blooming could turn into next years reduced yeild of fruits and other flowering plants (assuming here that the drought does not persist and continue its spread as it has this year).

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