In a good year, Allan Halwa’s wheat fields are resplendent: the golden stalks reach almost to his waist (he’s five feet 9 inches tall), they are usually thick, their heads are robust in the breeze. And when he walks through the fields, he can barely see any ground.

All that, in a good year.

This year, his crop is short and it is thin. Halwa, who grows wheat, barley, and canola seeds on his 720-hectare farm in Leduc, roughly 40 kilometres southwest of Edmonton, says the seeds didn’t multiply as they normally do and the short straw is an indication of a low-yielding crop.

“The yield will be 40 or even 50 per cent less than average,” he said. “This is a pretty bad drought.”

Large swaths of Alberta and Saskatchewan are experiencing their driest season in five decades. It is so dry that farmers, especially in Alberta, can’t grow enough crops to feed their cattle, with some selling their livestock because they cannot afford to buy feed.

At least half a dozen Alberta counties have declared states of “agricultural disasters” and grain prices are expected to climb. On Friday, Maple Creek, a rural municipality in southwestern Saskatchewan, became the first in that province to declare an agricultural emergency.

The region that is worst hit is the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan, stretching from Edmonton down through Calgary and then east to Saskatoon. More than 27,000 farms and six million cattle are impacted.

After weeks of hemming and hawing, Oneil Carlier, Alberta’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, finally said this week that there is a drought in parts of the province, one that is as bad, or worse, than those in 2002 and 2009.

The big question is: is this drought here to stay?

What is happening in Western Canada has very little in common with the drought in California, which is now into its fourth year, says Trevor Hadwen, a Regina-based agro-climate specialist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

But there is a possibility that this drought will deepen, he says.

“We are in an El Nino year . . . it changes everything,” he said. “The consequences (of the drought) could be widespread and longer-lasting.”

That, he says, is a big concern right now.

A bad combination

Defining a drought sounds easy but isn’t.

“There are many definitions that apply to different sectors,” said Hadwen. For the agriculture industry, it’s a drought when “there is an extended period without rain that affects vegetative production.”

This drought in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and even B.C. is the result of “a bad combination” of several natural events.

First, an abnormally warm winter meant less snowfall — in some places, snow packs measured about 30 per cent below normal. These extremely low snow packs then melted about four to six weeks earlier than usual, and the rivers peaked early as well. That left the area dependent on rainfall which has been exceptionally low since early April. Scorching temperatures — 30 degrees Celsius and above — have sucked the moisture from the soil, ruining any hope for a decent crop.

Hadwen, whose job is to monitor extreme weather, points out that 60 per cent of the Prairies has received “very low to record low rain since April 1.”

Areas that typically receive between about 200 and 225 millimetres of rain in this period have received less than half this year.

This is the driest winter and spring in Western Canada in almost 70 years of record-keeping, says David Phillips, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist. The region was already behind when this dry summer rolled in.

Saskatoon, for instance, received 18 millimetres of rain in July, he says; normally, it is 43 millimetres. “From April 1 to July 23, the city received 60 millimeters. The normal is 175 millimetres,” Phillips said.

“It’s almost as if nature forgot how to rain there.”

Add this year’s El Nino, or what some scientists are calling a super El Nino, and the situation gets grimmer. El Nino is the cyclical Pacific Ocean phenomenon that tends to disrupt global weather patterns. With this occurrence, the probability of having the dry season continue into next winter and spring is higher than normal.

It could means three consecutive seasons of warmer and drier conditions, he says.

But what is happening right now isn’t El Nino.

A ridge is blocking water-bearing clouds from moving into Western Canada. This ridge is forcing the jet stream south, so the southern parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan have received very little rain while Montana and North Dakota have been awash with it.

It isn’t clear why this ridge is stubbornly stationed here.

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But Phillips worries what the real El Nino will do.

“People say things can’t get any worse. I think they can, here.”

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Farmers have reconciled themselves to what this season is looking like: lower yields and a shortage of hay for their cattle. Their big worry is another short and warm winter.

“You see how we are already going into a deficit,” said Rod Shaigec, the mayor of Parkland County, some 90 kilometres southwest of Edmonton which declared a state of “agricultural disaster” last week. “It’s very scary for us here.”

Parkland declared a state of “agricultural disaster” last week.

While crop farmers will likely get less than half the normal yield, Shaigec is more concerned about the livestock farmers.

“Our hay, crops and pasture lands have been decimated,” he said. Local farmers have told him they will get between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of the hay yield — and that, too, is a maybe.

“If cattle are being sold for slaughter or being sold out of the country, there won’t be an inventory to acquire it next year. That’s going to be a problem.”

Kevin Shenfield, who owns 80 cows and runs a bustling dairy operation in Parkland County. He also grows wheat on about 120 hectares and hay on another 60 hectares. All of that is in a shambles right now: the wheat crop is short and withering; the pastures just grey and grim.

“If we didn’t carry over hay from last year, we would have been in trouble,” he said. Many of his neighbours are selling cattle, “which we would have had to do.”

The rain earlier this week was “a sad kind of rain, not the kind we usually get in the summer,” he said. “In any case, the quality and quantity of crop will not improve with rain now. It can only help for a better pasture.”

In Leduc County, a few kilometres over, agricultural services director Garett Broadbent says everyone is hoping this is not a long-term thing. “If we get a normal winter and spring, we would make it, you know.”

But he’s learned a lesson: “Long-term water management is very important. We know that the weather patterns are changing. We don’t know what the future will bring but we have to adapt and do things better.”

Phillips is loath to speculate whether this unseasonable dash of dry and warm weather is due to climate change. “I don’t know what to say . . . it’s almost like a new regime.” Climate change, he points out, doesn’t cause extreme weather “but can make it worse.

“Is that what is happening? It isn’t clear.”

Climate patterns are changing, says Hadwen. “We keep track of conditions and we have noticed some increase in more severe weather year to year.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meanwhile, released its latest monthly temperature report recently and it showed that the average global temperature in June reached 16.33 C, breaking the record set last year by and making the first six months of this year the hottest on record.

Halwa, who has been farming for more than 40 years, says there have been years like this one: 2002 was bad, he says. So was 2009.

“But they weren’t so frequent when I was younger. Now there is just more of this.”

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