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Farmers sound climate change alarm amid unusually wet summer | CBC News Loaded
Ottawa
FARMERS SOUND CLIMATE CHANGE ALARM AMID UNUSUALLY WET SUMMER
Some eastern Ontario farmers say extreme weather events are causing them to lose
crops — and they worry it's only expected to get worse.
UNPREDICTABLE WEATHER CAUSING DAMAGE, LOSS OF CROPS, FARMERS SAY
Anchal Sharma · CBC News · Posted: Jul 28, 2024 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11
hours ago
Stuart Oke sells produce at the Westboro Farmers' Market in Ottawa on July 27,
2024. The Augusta, Ont., farmer says the summer's wet weather has hampered his
tomato and lettuce crops, and he's not the only one struggling. (Anchal
Sharma/CBC)
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The Westboro Farmers' Market was bustling on Saturday morning, the path running
down Byron Linear Park packed with shoppers.
A line formed at Stuart Oke's stall, where he proudly showcased a rainbow
assortment of vegetables — "the bounty of the season," as he put it.
But regulars might have noticed some veggies missing.
"We don't have any lettuce heads here today, and normally that's something that
we have pretty solidly through the whole year," said Oke, the co-owner of Rooted
Oak Farm in Augusta, Ont.
"They've just been rotting in the ground."
Oke is one of many farmers in eastern Ontario experiencing crop losses due to an
unusually wet summer season.
* Audio
Q&A: How record-breaking rainfall has affected farmers
* Dire climate report signals need for urgent action in Ottawa Valley
According to Environment Canada's historical weather data, about 300 millimetres
of rain have fallen on Ottawa since the start of June.
That makes it the wettest July in Ottawa since 2018 and the wettest June since
at least 2012 — the earliest year for which data is publicly available on the
agency's website.
The excess moisture has made it hard to grow leafy greens, Oke says, and his
tomato crops aren't as abundant as usual, either.
It's a change from earlier in the year, when a mild winter made for relatively
dry spring soil, according to Andrea McCoy-Naperstkow.
"Usually winters around this area, we get lots of snow. And that snow melts into
the ground. and it is a good start to getting the land ready,"
said McCoy-Naperstkow, the regional director of the Ontario Federation of
Agriculture.
But this year, since the moisture came from downpours, "you have lakes in your
fields [even with] tiled drainage," she said.
Maggie Winchester says heavy winds broke the stems on these beets at Parachute
Farm near Vankleek Hill, Ont. (Submitted by Maggie Winchester)
WEATHER INCREASINGLY UNPREDICTABLE
The changing conditions make it hard for farmers to predict what the season will
look like, said Max Hansgen, president of the National Farmers Union in Ontario.
"If your corn is at the top of the hill this year, you're probably going to get
the best yield you've had in several years because of all this rain," Hansgen
said.
"But you really can't plan for that because last year … it was quite dry, so
everything that was at the top of the hill did not do very well at all."
For Merydth Holte-McKenzie, who raises beef cattle and grows vegetables on her
family farm in Balderson, Ont., wind and drought have caused problems in recent
years.
"We get these microbursts where ... there's a small amount of rain and it'll
fall like two farms over, but it won't fall on our farm," she said.
This year, heavy rains washed out the vegetable seeds they planted and ruined
the grass where the cows graze.
* Constant rain too much of a good thing for Manitoulin Island farm
* Locally-grown sweet corn harvested early at some London-area farms
In Vankleek Hill, Ont., Maggie Winchester's crops were damaged by "golfball-size
hail" in a storm on Wednesday, a first for the farmer of 10 years.
She fears it's not just a one-off.
"The level of anxiety [is] around how extreme the events are and how
increasingly frequent they are," she said. "We've never farmed in a 'normal
climate.'"
Maggie Winchester and her husband Mattson Griffiths have been running Parachute
Farm in Vankleek Hill, Ont., for two years. They say many of their vegetables
were seriously damaged by a hailstorm last week. (Submitted by Maggie
Winchester)
CROP DEVELOPMENT COULD BE HINDERED
Ontario's Provincial Climate Change Impact Assessment confirms those fears.
The 2023 report anticipates extreme weather events will become more frequent,
and changing precipitation patterns will increasingly hinder crop development in
eastern regions of the province over the next few decades.
Hansgen says more government support is needed to ensure farmers can weather
what's to come — but until that happens, they're finding other ways to mitigate
risks.
One way is to diversify crops, something Oke already does — though he also says
different strategies and more investments are needed to make a real difference.
"It's really a life's work, to be honest with you, in order to put all those
things in place. But more and more it seems like that is a critical part of
getting farming right in a changing climate."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anchal Sharma
Anchal Sharma is a journalist at CBC Ottawa. Send her an email at
anchal.sharma@cbc.ca
CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|About CBC News
Corrections and clarifications|Submit a news tip|Report error
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* Dire climate report signals need for urgent action in Ottawa Valley
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