More than a dozen agricultural disasters now declared as Alberta's south stays dry for months
CBC
Recent precipitation may have made a big difference to a number of struggling farms across the province, but in certain areas of Alberta any relief might come too late.
According to the province's most recent moisture situation report, released Aug. 9, a series of widespread and reoccurring thunderstorms brought rain to dry areas of the province, including areas of the Peace Region and dry lands through parts of the northeast.
In sharp contrast, the report reads, most of the southern half of the southern region and many parts of the Special Areas are in desperate need of rain.
"For these areas conditions have been dry for several months now, and most significantly, through the two most important months of the year, June and July," the report reads.
This year, multiple municipalities in Alberta have declared agricultural disasters, including:
The Special Areas Board, which covers more than two million hectares in east-central Alberta, also declared an agricultural disaster, for Special Area No. 2, 3, and 4 on July 12.
Agricultural disasters are declared by municipalities as a way to signal to provincial and federal governments that the conditions farmers are seeing in their respective regions have grown dire. They don't have any actual impact in being declared aside from serving as a sort of signal flare that additional support is needed.
This year's declarations followed what was a more promising farm year in 2022. The year prior, however, multiple provincial municipalities declared agricultural disasters amid devastating drought conditions.
Vulcan County is one of the municipalities that declared an agricultural disaster this year. There are a few pockets throughout the area where crops aren't looking that bad, but overall the harvest is looking "dismal," according to Kelly Malmberg, the county's director of agriculture.
"There's some real issues here [with] respect to consecutive years of drought … it's starting to mentally wear on people, and financially wear on them," Malmberg said.
Those declarations have registered on the radars of provincial and federal governments.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith suggested that the province's crop insurance program would have sufficient funding to cover existing claims.
"We've had a lot of close calls over the course of the last couple of months. But we've also had some billion-dollar rains, which is [how they've been] described to me, because it's really just saved a lot of those operations at the last minute," Smith said.
For farmers especially in the southern region of the province, additional rainfall at this stage will have come too late, according to Danny LeRoy, an associate professor in economics at the University of Lethbridge who coordinates the university's agriculture studies program.