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In the 40 years Leonard Boychuk has been farming his family land near Brosseau, he has never had to leave so many crops in the field.

Of his 1,000 acres of canola, oats and barley, more than half still sits there, the land simply too soggy to harvest.

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Rain descended on he and his wife Claudia’s farm in September. It turned into dumps of snow over the winter, which continued through early spring.

Like many of their neighbours, the Boychuk’s crops are a writeoff, but they’ve been unable to secure their full insurance payout from Alberta’s Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC).

“We’re fortunate because we’ve got cattle to sustain us, but a lot of the larger farms, that’s it — they’re done. They’re not seeding,” Claudia says.

The Boychuks got about a quarter of their loss from insurance, but obtaining the rest has them in a classic Catch-22.

Unless an AFSC inspector comes by, crops can only be written off after they’ve been harvested and rejected from two grain elevators. Problem is, the fields are too wet to harvest and there are only 120 inspectors in the entire province.