Q&A: How record-breaking rainfall has affected farmers

Record-setting rainfall this week created extra work for many farmers who were left with flooded fields across southwestern Ontario.

Heavy rainfall on Monday broke local weather records set more than a century ago. Tuesday's 44.7 millimetres of rainbarely surpassed a 43 mmrecord set in 1988, according to Environment Canada.

CBC London Morning host Andrew Brown met with Carl Merrick, who is a farmer andvice chair of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers Association. They chatted about how the rain affected farmers ata sweet corn crop near Strathroy.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Brown: So Carl, what are we looking at here?

Carl Merrick: We're looking at a field of recently planted sweet corn with someponds or lakes in it that usually we don't see on a field like this. At the very least, there's a huge puddle in the middle of this field.

AB: How long has it been here?

CM: The puddles are coming and going in the same spot, so we keep getting rain that keeps filling them up once they go away. This one's been here a few days now, but it's kind of the same puddle that's been here off and on all spring.

AB: Have you ever seen this before?

CM: Not to this extent.

AB: When I drove in here to meet you I saw water all over all kinds of different fields, there was quite a bit of it. How widespread would you say this isaround here?

CM: I would say, to some degree, a lot of Middlesex,Lampton, Elgin counties, anddown into Chatham-Kent, as far as I know.There's a lot of water laying in a lot of farms. Talking with neighbours and growers,there are farms that didn't get planted this year and that would be, for some of these guys, the first time in their farming career they haven't planted some of these farms.

AB: What does that tell you?

CM: We have had a lot of rain.

AB: So this field that we're standing next to now, sweet corn, it has been planted, but what does that big puddle or pond in the middle mean? How is it affecting things?

CM: If I look at all of our different crops, in any different farm, depending on the drainage and its ability to get the water away, some of them would be laying areas that you might be missing 10 per cent of the acres in that field where the actual crop itself couldn't get out of the ground or was drowned out or stayed underwater too long, there would be no yield in those spots. And then the rest of the farm even, you know, where it's not laying water, you know, it's stressful conditions to have this ground saturated like that for such a long period of time and multiple times throughout the growing season.

LISTEN |The impact of heavy rainfall on southwestern Ontario farms:

London Morning8:17The impact of heavy rainfall on southwestern Ontario farms

With record rainfall in recent weeks, some farmers are dealing with flooded fields. London Morning host Andrew Brown met with Carl Merrick, the vice chair of the Ontario Processing Vegetable Growers Association, at a sweet corn crop to learn more about flooded farmland.

AB: So then like bigger picture than how would you say all of this rain and these puddles and ponds are affecting farming out here?

CM: It's definitely put a lot of stress on guys. Sometimes we're doing the work two or three times. We've had a lot of replants and then at the end of the day it still ends up underwater. So it's just been kind of relentless. Certainly, farming is one of those things where one of the biggest factors is the weather and you have no control over it. So you have to do your best to absorb that blow from the weather and just move forward. But it is tough on guys' mental health, I would say.

AB: So if the fields are full of water in the middle of July, how much time do you have to get things planted and growing properly?

CM: Some of these crops that we're looking at here, with the sweet corn field, are some of the processing vegetable crops that can go fairly late because they're shorter growing. But when it comes to the major crops, the corn, the soybeans, you're past that window, so once those spots are drowned out, that's done for the year.

AB: You mentioned the mental health aspect of this as well. What are your friends and colleagues around here telling you?

CM: I think people are mainly tired. In agriculture, you work with people, but a lot of times you're working on your own as well. So we kind of do our best. In agriculture, we're talking about making sure your neighbours are alright, talk to your neighbours. If you know anyone in agriculture, ask them how they're hanging in there because it's just been a tough year.

AB: How are you hanging in there?

CM: I'm good, I'm tired.

AB: Is there anything that can be done when water builds up on a field like this beyond a sunny day?

CM: There's certainly people who work on field drainage. There's natural drainage and then there's also drainage that gets put into some of these farms where you hope to get water moving a little bit faster into some of the ditches. So that's tile drain. Obviously, that costs money to do, but when you see this go down, people kind of go, 'Hey, maybe I should work on if I can tile that farm or get some more drainage there.'

AB: What's your hope for the rest of the season?

CM: I hope, as an optimist, that we can recover some of maybe the lost yield now and get some good weather at the end and, hopefully, we end up close to averages. But I think that's likely a fairly optimistic approach because there's some pretty serious damage done everywhere in a lot of fields.