Canada’s Record Rains Cut Wheat Acreage to Three-Year Low
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For the first time in 47 years of farming, Giles Norek got 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain within 48 hours on his Saskatchewan crops. Half of his 12,000 wheat acres were flooded by the late-June deluge, and the plants that weren’t killed are struggling to survive.
“All in all, it’s a pretty big disaster,” Norek, 63, said in a July 18 telephone interview from his farm in the rural municipality of Spy Hill. Even as the weather has been drier since, he’s not expecting damaged plants to recover. “Some of it isn’t going to make it. It isn’t going to become a good crop,” he said.