Well, the Portage la Prairie region in Central Manitoba has been flooded, not soaked, flooded...again. Just came back from chasing hopefully the last major thunderstorm of the year. As much as I love storms, this wild weather has gone on way too long; Im sad to report that some farmers who have been lucky up to now may very well have just lost their luck. Gone...poof! This has been the greenest (or brownest in the context of unhealthy crop yields) and wettest year I can recall, but it should be drying out for harvest; it has been excessively wet every month since March. Now it is autumn and the ground is still saturated; on my drive back from the nucleus of this devastating storm (which produced intense lightning, strong winds, small hail, and nearly zero visibility, and momentarily turned roads to rivers (rare for September in the mid-latitudes)) located east of Southport, some fields surface areas were 25% water and some gardens surface areas were 90-100% water. These extreme weather events have been persistent all year, even across the Prairies, and now because of this, a good portion of Canadas food production for 2014 is unsalvageable - a huge loss to many, many people. And what is completely mind blowing is the fact that this great disaster gets hardly any media coverage whatsoever...the Canadian Prairies are Canadas breadbasket and primary fuel source and yet this region is much of the time disregarded by the media, especially when catastrophic weather events occur - its like we are stuck in our own little world. Farmers feed cities, people...open your eyes. The only thing we can do now is pray and hope for the best (warm and dry weather) during the tail-end of harvest, and that 2015 will be more generous to our farmers. The fact that this storm occured now is so unfortunate and sad, as many farmers are in the process of trying and trying to scrape up the last remnants of their poor yields, which took much hard work to grow in the first place. But what can we do? For much of this trauma, theres not much we can do. However, climate change is undoubtedly happening, and paying more attention to an atmospheric environment heavily laden with CO2 (producing more heat, moisture, and clouds) is a start, and working towards a more sustainable future is key to at least attempting to accomplish something. Developing strategies for agriculture that will allow land and crops to be more invincible towards extreme weather that is becoming more frequent is also something that I think needs to happen. In the meantime, keep Manitoban and Western Canadian farmers in your thoughts and prayers, and if you care to do so, share this post far and wide if you support farmers and recognize their dilemma this growing season. God bless the farmers!
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 23:04:00 +0000
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