Driving on Mark Schram’s southwestern Manitoba cattle farm, you wouldn’t know that just a few weeks ago, he was preparing for another year of severe drought.
“We were at the point three weeks ago where we were wondering whether this was a year where we were going to have to sell cows,” Schram said while standing on his farm near Cartwright, about 95 kilometres southeast of Brandon.
“It had just gotten so bad.”
Persistent drought conditions have forced farmers to get creative in finding new ways to manage their farms and find water sources for livestock.
Last year, Schram said his farm got just 20 millimetres of rain in seven months.
“You can’t grow much on three-quarters of an inch of rain,” said Schram. “The August rains, the September rains, they just don’t grow like May, June rains do.”
This year wasn’t looking much better, Schram said, until his farm got more than 120 millimetres (nearly five inches) of rain in just two weeks — five times what he saw last year.
As the climate changes, Schram says he’s seen more of those extreme weather swings on his farm.
“I feel like we’ve seen more extremes in the last decade than we saw before,” he said. “I’ve definitely seen in the summers, as they get hotter, that the moisture we do get tends to disappear a little faster.
“Even if you get an average rainfall, it just disappears that much faster.”
Schram has been using solar- and wind-powered pumps to give his cattle a water source in the drier years. The local watershed district also built a new dam to help capture more water from a nearby creek, he said.
Moisture deficit persists
“There’s always a little bit of nervousness,” said Tyler Fulton, vice-president of the Canadian Cattle Association.
Fulton, who also operates a cattle farm near Birtle in western Manitoba, said drought conditions weren’t as severe in his region.
“There’s a big area, for example in south-central Manitoba, where they are quite short [of moisture],” he said. “Much of southern Manitoba was short of soil moisture last fall.”
According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s drought monitor, south-central Manitoba was still classified as being in a severe drought as of April 30. The rest of southern Manitoba was classified as being abnormally dry or in a moderate drought stage.
Fulton said the dry and mild winter in Manitoba did help farmers conserve feed.
“The last number of years has been quite challenging for, you know, up and down conditions, especially variable conditions,” said Carson Callum, president of Manitoba Beef Producers.
Some producers have excess feed from the winter months because it wasn’t as cold, he said.
“Feedstocks are in a better position than they would be, and that’s what really was a challenge for 2021,” said Callum.
“That was such a devastating drought, because there were multiple years of dry conditions that diminished feed supplies.”
Back on Schram’s farm, the recent rain is cause for renewed optimism.
“If the tap turned off now, we’d probably still have a better hay crop than we had last year,” he said. “I’m hoping this continues, but this is a really good start.”
WATCH | Amid drought and intense rain, Manitoba farmers prepare for weather extremes: