Mother Nature shone on Chatham-Kent this year, making for an excellent growing season, according to the head of the Kent Federation of Agriculture (KFA).
Jim Brackett, president of the KFA said yields are solid this year, despite long periods of dry conditions and a significant September rain event.
“Most of Kent County, except for pockets here and there, have extremely good crops. So far, the yields on soybeans have been really good,” he said. “I hear around Wheatley area, they’ve got better looking numbers than they’ve had in a long time.”
Brackett admitted the dry spells were concerning, but some timely rains kept the growth coming.
Not every part of the province was so fortunate.
“If you get into Central Ontario, around Waterloo, it gets pretty dramatic as far as the drought goes,” Brackett said. “It will be a mixed bag in terms of who did well and who didn’t across Ontario this year.”
Strong yields locally are not isolated to soybeans. Brackett said corn looks good as well. Tomatoes experienced some mixed results.
“The early crop had got into more dry weather than later-planted ones,” Brackett said. “If you get too dry, there’s a disease called blossom end rot. But overall, I think the tomato crop is doing quite well.”
Blossom end rot, which can impact tomatoes, peppers and other fruiting plants, shows up as a brown leathery patch on the blossom end of the fruit. Too much or too little rain can lead to the rot.
Coffee shop chatter may trump up yield predictions, but Brackett said the truth comes out “when the combine goes through.”
Specialty crops such as carrots, brussels sprouts and sugar beets should see consistently decent yields this year as well, he added.
“If you have decent soy and corn yields coming in, it’s a pretty good indication. All those specialty crops will be reflective on the season you had,” Brackett said. “I don’t think we’re going to have any disasters in Kent County.”
Tariffs from the U.S. on Canadian goods are having minimal impact on local farmers in general, he said.
Brackett said at the moment, the U.S. tariffs aren’t in place on Canadian crops. They were imposed, briefly, on meat, however.
One specialized sector will feel a not-so-tariff-ic pinch, however: canola. With canola products still facing high tariffs from China, export of that oilseed could be challenging.
China put those tariffs in place in response to the placement of tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports by Canada.
China is a major importer of canola seed, oil and meal, but slapped the tariffs on in the spring, and doubled down by adding anti-dumping tariffs in August.
The tariffs will sting farmers in Western Canada, where most of the Canadian canola is grown, Brackett said.
“We have very little canola (in Chatham-Kent). You see the fields as they are very visible in Chatham-Kent,” he said of the yellow flowers that draw the eye.
Bracket said he feels for the canola farmers.
“The tariffs the Chinese have put on canola are going to make a lot of people reconsider what to grow in the future,” he said. “If I was farming a lot of canola, I would think hard about what I would be planting in the spring. I’d be afraid to grow it right now.”
One strange area where tariffs are impacting local farmers is in the transaction of used farm equipment.
“What I hear is that the used equipment can be more a problem than new,” Brackett said. “They’re trying to calculate in the U.S. how much steel (on the equipment) was produced in Canada.”
As if farmers don’t have enough to worry about.
One thing drivers need to be aware of is farm equipment on local roadways. It is particularly busy during harvest season. Brackett said the dry conditions aren’t helping matters.
“One of the problems going on right now is we had a little relief with recent rain, but not only are some of the roads very dusty that didn’t get dust control, the sides of highways are too,” he said. “The (farm) machines are so wide, you have to go onto the shoulders, and the dust coming off the shoulder of a paved roadway has caused a couple of accidents recently.”
