Harvest 2024 pretty good despite early drought concerns

Advance Photo by Trevor Busch

By Trevor Busch
Taber Times
editor@tabertimes.com

For a growing season many had already written off before it even started due to ongoing drought concerns, 2024 shaped up to be better than expectations for most area producers.

Timely and substantial precipitation in the region throughout the spring allayed early fears about parched prairies and failing crops. 

However, dry land areas were hampered by heat concerns.   

“We had that pretty hot weather, and took it from the dry land,” said Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter, who also serves as Parliamentary Secretary for Agrifood Development. “It took the dry land from probably a bumper crop to just a good crop in about five days of really hot weather. That’s not as good as we’d like, but I understand pretty good crops this year – obviously, good crops with the irrigated crops. So all in all, I think it’s been pretty good so far.”

Not unusual for southern Alberta, some areas suffered hail damage, but other regions used to far less precipitation saw dramatic increases.

“There’s some areas that got a little bit of hail,” said Hunter. “There’s other areas that, like I said, pretty dry, dry weather. But there were other areas that normally get like three inches of rain. They got 12 inches of rain. So for those guys, they actually really did quite well.”

Hunter expects winter storage to be down slightly in irrigation reservoirs, but still a significant change from early 2024 when prognosticators of agricultural doom were pointing to severely depleted reservoir storage.

“A little bit lower than normal, but I think with a couple of good dumps that we had, we’ve been able to get worked out pretty well in terms of the storage. So that’s actually looking pretty good. It’s concerning that one of the things that happened was they thought that El Nino was going to come in, in June, and it actually came in around May, which also had a whole lot to do with filling up those reservoirs.”

Although unable to say much about future agri-food development and investment along the Highway 3 corridor, Hunter asked local residents and irrigators to stay tuned.

“I know there’s lots of exciting things happening. We’ve got some things in the mix that we’ll have to see if they play out. But look, the reality is, because we’re expanding irrigation, as I said before people are looking to come and take advantage of that.”