Wet spring fuels costly disease battle for Canadian grain and pulse farmers

Canadian farmers growing durum, spring wheat, canola and pulse crops have spent the growing season battling an unusually aggressive wave of crop diseases triggered by the wettest year the country has seen this decade.

Jake Leguee, who farms roughly 19,000 acres, or about 7,689 hectares, of durum, wheat, lentils, flax and spring wheat in southeastern Saskatchewan, said he sprayed his entire operation with fungicide this year to keep disease pressure under control. He said the costs associated with that level of treatment add up quickly.

The sudden surge in crop disease during early summer poses a serious threat to both the quantity and quality of Canada’s harvest this year. Canada ranks as the world’s top exporter of canola, durum wheat, dry peas and oats, and stands among the leading global suppliers of high protein spring wheat, making the outcome of this year’s harvest significant well beyond its own borders.

The disease outbreak traces back to an extremely wet spring and early summer that left soils saturated with moisture, creating ideal conditions for fungal disease once temperatures turned hot and humid. That combination has forced many farmers into a difficult decision this season, choosing between spending additional money on crops that may not turn a profit given elevated fertilizer and input costs, or investing further to protect whatever yield remains in the field.

For farmers like Sabourin, the level of moisture and frequency of rain throughout the season left little room for debate about whether to apply fungicide. Leguee said it will take several more weeks before he knows whether he applied the right fungicides in the right locations at the right time. He said his crops look healthy so far, with the exception of his lentils, though he cautioned that disease damage can sometimes hide inside kernels and pods that appear fine from the outside.

That uncertainty means the ultimate quantity and quality of Canada’s export crops remain unresolved just as full scale harvesting gets underway across the prairies. Leguee said farmers will not have a clear picture of how the season played out until combines actually move through the fields, adding that fungicide treatment does not always deliver the results growers hope for.