The Saskatchewan Agriculture dashboard provides an excellent source of crop yields by year. Wheat goes right back to 1938, but canola was unheard of at that time. In this piece we will show you canola yields arranged by soil climatic zones (SCZ).

We prepared the map shown below in 1991, as a first step in improving nitrogen fertilizer recommendations. The N-water interaction was well known by that time.

The Soil Climatic Zone integrates precipitation and temperature into one index. The index was actually calculated in the first Saskatchewan Oil Survey – Report No. 12. It was noted that Melfort precipitation was not that much different than at Swift Current but the soils (Thick Black) and crop yields were much greater at Melfort.

On the reverse side of this map, all the data and procedures were recorded. There were about 200 weather stations at that time. The current federal climate stations in the ag area of Saskatchewan now number about 30.

What follows are the graphs showing canola yields from about 1965 to 2023.

Dry Brown SCZ

Brown SCZ

Here, in the RMs of Fox Valley and Kindersley, the recent drought years dropped yields like a stone.

Dark Brown SCZ

Moist Dark Brown SCZ

In both of these graphs the 2001 and 2021 droughts are obvious.

Black SCZ

The Rosthern RM includes some sandy and saline soils.

Moist Black SCZ

This is canola growing country! The 2016 rain gave big yields but the 2021 drought brought yields back a lot.

Grey SCZ

The Grey SCZ is wet, but Grey soils suffer from nutrient deficiencies that require fertilizer to keep yields up.

There is a tendency for yields to increase a lot at about the turn of the century. That could be “nurture”-related — varieties, et cetera — but I expect it is likely “nature”-related to the big 2010 and 2016 rains.

So there you have it: some canola yields to compare over 50-plus years.

The post Where the canola was: a history of Saskatchewan yields by soil climatic zone appeared first on Grainews.

It came to pass much as predicted — but what made it happen was work in farm workshops, mostly in Saskatchewan where the need for zero till was the greatest. Openers were needed that would get seed and fertilizer into the soil with almost no soil disturbance.

One of the early ones out of the gate was Jim Halford at Indian Head. My late brother-in-law David Wilson helped with welding, et cetera. Even before air seeders they were modifying ordinary hoe drills with openers that were ridged and would seed straight into established grass. David showed me that system when we were there for a family visit.

By and by, Jim Halford’s Conserva Pak zero-till air seeder sported seed and fertilizer openers that would do the job with minimum soil disturbance. The Conserva Pak even found its way to Australia.

Members of the Beaujot family, from Langbank, brought the Seed Hawk and Seedmaster to market. The Seed Hawk unit would lift up a section when a headland came along, and this avoided overlap. It was built with a light frame and would fold up nicely for road travel, although the light iron meant that a welder had to be handy as the years rolled on.

My renter at the Dundurn farm uses an original Seed Hawk and it does a great job. You can see a photo from the 2022 crop here. His most recent canola field had seed spaced as if it had been placed by hand with tweezers and produced a very uniform crop.

The Bourgault family at St. Brieux and the Morris family at Yorkton developed two other Saskatchewan zero-till seeder companies.

Over time, almost all of the Saskatchewan farm family zero-till seeder manufacturers have been bought out by big companies such as John Deere in the U.S. and Vaderstad in Europe.

Blow dirt in the air in May is now a piece of history. To see that, one needs to visit a city construction site with bare soil that can drift.

The Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association (SSCA) had a big role in spreading the word about zero till. In June each year it held field days at farms with various models of seeders making passes to demonstrate what they could do. There were often so many half-ton trucks at those field days that parking was an issue.

Why Saskatchewan?

Manitoba mostly has adequate rain and grows big crops with big straw left behind, requiring special vertical-tillage implements to deal with the straw without plugging. Corn is a special challenge.

Alberta irrigates much of its dry area, but does need special attention in some dry areas that are not irrigated. The majority of cropland needing zero till, though, is in Saskatchewan.

The post Zero till: how did it all happen? appeared first on Grainews.

Water is considered to be the universal solvent because it is capable of dissolving more substances than any other liquid. Therefore, one of the first things we might want to know about a given water sample is the total dissolved solids (TDS).

TDS can be determined by evaporating a sample to dryness at 105 C and weighing the residue — simple in concept, but time-consuming in practice, so not often used.

TDS can also be determined by measuring all the chemical elements in a sample and adding them up, but that is seldom done. If the chemical elements are previously determined, it is a simple matter to add them up. If just TDS is reported, with no explanation of how it was determined, it may not be reliable.

What chemical elements are dissolved?

Major positively-charged elements are Ca++, Mg++ and Na+, with K+ as an also-ran. Hard water is caused by Ca++ and Mg++, while soft water is dominated by Na+.

Water hardness is expressed as CaCO3 equivalent in parts per million (p.p.m.) and can be easily measured in the field with a Hach testing kit. In our days on the road staying in motels, we could get some idea of water hardness by the way the soap acted in the shower!

• Negatively-charged elements are Cl- and SO4 – -, with NO3- as an also-ran. Most of our waters are SO4 dominated.

Electrical conductivity

Electrical conductivity (EC) is a simple measurement that can be easily made in the field. The units are microSiemens per centimetre (uS/cm), corrected to a standard temperature of 25 C.

For sulphate-dominated waters, with TDS from 1,000 to 20,000 p.p.m., a useful first approximation is that EC in uS/cm is about equal to TDS in p.p.m.

The level of water hardness in water wells is determined by the geology of that well. If completed in glacial deposits, the water will be hard. Unless completed in sand, most Saskatchewan farm wells have hard water. If completed in pre-glacial (that is, bedrock) deposits, the water will be soft. Most Alberta farm wells are completed in pre-glacial deposits, so the water is soft.

A final note

In this neck of the woods, if we know the EC and hardness of a water sample, we know a lot about that water and what it can be used for.

Many water well drillers have EC and hardness equipment with the drill rig and can measure a water sample as soon as a well is developed and pumping.

The post Water chemistry: a Coles Notes version appeared first on Grainews.

The link between nitrate-contaminated farmyard wells and blue-baby was first reported by pediatrician Dr. Hunter Comly in 1945 in Iowa. His report documented a newborn baby who made three trips to the hospital showing the symptoms associated with the disease. Well water from the baby’s home farm was tested and nitrate was found to be the culprit.

This brought on a number of studies in northern U.S. and the Prairies of Canada. In 1949, a large survey of more than 2,000 farm wells in Saskatchewan reported 18 per cent of those wells to be nitrate-contaminated.

The limit for well water nitrate in this part of the world is 10 p.p.m. of nitrate-N, or 45 p.p.m. of nitrate. The Brits used 20 p.p.m. of nitrate-N for water utilities for years with no ill effects. They went back to the 10-p.p.m. of nitrate-N limit mostly because of political pressure from Europe.

All of that before significant use of N fertilizer

In today’s world, the first suspected culprit for nitrate contaminated wells is nitrogen fertilizers. To be sure, if we pork on way too much N in a wet area and especially on sandy soils, nitrate could be the culprit. That mostly means irrigated land and crops that require a large dose of N to yield well.

Here’s a publication that documents the situation in Western Canada as of that time: Fertilizers and Groundwater Nitrate, by J.L. Henry and W.A. Meneley, June 1993. It can be accessed on Saskatchewan’s Water Security Agency website at this link.

That report produced a map of risk categories for nitrate contamination of aquifers. High-risk areas included the Assiniboine Delta aquifer in Manitoba, the sandy irrigation area near Outlook, Sask., and small areas near Vernon, Oliver and the lower Fraser Valley of B.C.

Other sources for groundwater nitrate

There are many sources of nitrate that could end up in the groundwater and then farm wells.

Intensive livestock operations (ILOs) require special care to avoid problems. When ILOs were popping up in the 1980s, I suggested to Saskatchewan provincial authorities that they do a farm water well survey before an ILO was constructed, but no one listened.

In the 1990s when the then-Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was starting to build large hog barns, I suggested they do water well surveys early in the planning stage and they agreed. The first barn was in northwestern Saskatchewan and the local farmer steering committee was gung-ho to go ahead. They got samples from dozens of farms, so there was a bit of a lab bill — but nitrate-contaminated wells were found. Mom-and-Pop small farms often had the well too near the barnyard, but in one case there was a contaminated well in a farmyard with no history of animals.

WATCH: Is your livestock water supply up to the test?

The pre-build survey made sense to the project proponents. If a nitrate-contaminated well is found five years after a barn was built, guess who is going to take the blame?

One of the first research projects I completed was looking at nitrate deep in the soil; “deep” then was 20 feet, with the equipment we had. We sampled at the then-Saskatoon Tree Nursery farm, at a site between tree stands that had been continuously summerfallowed for 10 years. We found 501 pounds per acre of nitrate-N to a depth of 16 feet. The largest concentration was at nine to 11 feet — just right for a shallow-dug or bored well.

The bottom line

As spring approaches, farm families are establishing the land they will be farming in 2024. If a young farm family with a baby is moving into an old established farmyard with an existing well, do be sure to get that well tested before using the water. Provincial public health labs are the best places to do such testing, because they are in a position to interpret data and give suitable recommendations.

If this short piece prevents tragedy for even one family it will be a great stroke of pride for knowledge.

The post Nitrate down the well appeared first on Grainews.

Weather and climate

What we call “weather” refers to day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, year to year data. Most ‘global warmers’ produce graphs that start about 1950 and proceed to the current date, and call the difference “climate change.” The problem is, they are talking about weather, not climate.

Climate is the 30-year average of the annual data. In what I show you here, I’ll be dealing with 30-year moving averages to illustrate how the climate is changing. Figure 1 shows the weather, in the form of mean annual temperatures, for Swift Current. About all this tells you is that 1950 and 1951 were long-underwear winters for sure.

A summary of previous Swift Current climate data

Since about 1975, the mean annual temperature on a climate (30-year moving average) basis has risen about 1 C. Closer inspection of monthly data show the mean annual temperature is driven by January, February and March, where the increase has been 5-6 C. September has warmed about 1 C since 2000, but July is actually cooler.

Now, we do not grow too many crops in January, February or March, so what is the big deal? The longer frost-free period is due entirely to September, so we have not lost a crop to fall frost in a while.

The final conclusion has been that global warming is not a big deal in our neck of the woods. We have assembled data for three stations in Alberta, six in Saskatchewan and two in Manitoba and all lead to the same conclusion.

Updating to 2023

For the update, we will show a few graphs that emphasize the changes of the past five years. For January (not shown), the sharp rise in temperature levelled off about the turn of the century, but it did not start to go down.

February, March and April temperatures — as shown here in Figures 2, 3 and 4 respectively — have declined about 1 C since about 2005. That means the sharp recent warming period for January, February and March has ended and we are now in a cooling period. Keep your long underwear handy for the next several winters.

I still think we have much more to fear from cold than hot in our neck of the woods.

Data and observations shown here are based on actual, factual long-term weather records, over periods long enough to deal with climate — again, the 30-year average — as well as weather, in the form of annual data. It is not based on complicated mathematical models that few can understand. Those same models choose to ignore the main greenhouse gas, water vapour — that is, clouds.

So, there you have it: the facts as I have assembled them. Please do draw your own conclusions based on the data and observations.

The post A climate update for our neck of the woods appeared first on Grainews.

Boyd Anderson was a well known rancher from the hills near Fir Mountain, Sask., which is about 170 km southwest of Moose Jaw and just north of the Montana border. In addition to his Grainews columns he wrote books, including Grass Roots, which tells his life story. The “Dirty ’30s” were an especially bad time in the ranching country of what’s now the RM of Waverley No. 44. Farming was tough, as was cattle ranching, so his dad started a sheep herd. Sheep could make it through the winter by scratching through the snow to find the Russian thistle underneath.

At the ripe old age of 14, Boyd spent from November 1934 to late February 1935 herding sheep several miles from home. He stayed in an abandoned two-room farmhouse with a kitchen range for heat and cooking, but with leaky windows that let in snow. There was a well for water but when it froze up he had to melt snow on the kitchen stove. He had a radio with earphones but used it sparingly to save the battery. He only got home on Christmas and Valentine’s Day. He grew up fast that winter.

I think every Grade 8 class in Saskatchewan schools should have Boyd Anderson’s book Grass Roots as required reading. The ‘helicopter’ parenting of today robs the child of the chance to “grow up”. I’ve recently learned that in Saskatchewan our schools are not allowed to fail any student in any grade so they advance through the grades regardless of performance. What is that teaching the kids, and what will happen when they strike out in the real world?

Farming in the RM of Waverley No. 44

While ranching was a challenge in the hills north of the Montana border, farming was even more difficult.

From 1938 to 2022, 30 bushels per acre of wheat was the best she wrote in that southern RM. Boyd Anderson reported that 1937 was a complete disaster. They planted some oats twice but nothing came up; it was the first year he could remember that they never hooked horses to some harvesting machinery.

During the Second World War, Boyd joined up to serve our country. He had to parachute from a floundering plane and was captured, ending up as a prisoner of war and spending some time in a POW camp — an inhumane experience, but he survived to come back to the Fir Mountain ranch and live a long and productive life.

Boyd was very involved in community and farm and ranch groups. He was councillor and reeve of the RM of Waverley for many years. His son is now reeve of that RM, so the tradition carries on. Boyd received many awards over the years, including induction to the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1987.

It was my thrill to meet Boyd on two occasions. One was very briefly at Willbar Farms near Dundurn, where Boyd pulled in with his big Cadillac. There was a bus tour on that occasion and I was recruited to give soils/agronomy commentary on the tour.

The second was a more leisurely visit at his home in the town of Glentworth, not far from Fir Mountain. I very much enjoyed the stories he had to tell and learned a bit about how he overcame many adversities to make a large prosperous ranch.

The post Boyd Anderson’s life was a history of Prairie farming appeared first on Grainews.

But why should the peat sloughs be there? It was not that wet. At Pine Cove Resort there are many private wells documented on the Water Security Agency website. A quick check soon produced a flowing well with a head one foot above ground. Several other wells had water levels very near the ground surface. They were all completed in shallow (50-100 feet) intertill sand aquifers.

The problem was solved: the high head from the shallow intertill aquifers maintained a shallow water table, which facilitated the growth of the peat.

The big peat story: the Saskatchewan River delta

My first job after graduation was to help with the soil (peat) survey of the huge Saskatchewan River Delta, south of Cumberland House, Sask. in the province’s northeast, about 80 km west of The Pas, Man. (as the crow flies). The only access was by helicopter. We used peat augers to get foot samples down to the mineral soil. There was as much as 12 feet of peat at some spots. In places, it was so wet we had to work from the pontoons of the helicopter. When they turned off the whirling blades, mosquitoes came at us in clouds. Great sport for a young fella just starting out!

All samples were analyzed in a lab and a detailed map of that area was produced. The report included the results of the many soil analyses. That delta is maintained in part by artesian discharge from deep aquifers and soil salinity is present in many places.

Any reader wishing to learn more can check out this link to find the report and map.

After we completed the sampling by helicopter, it was my conclusion that it would make better moose pasture than farmland. That was the conclusion provided in the report as well, so as far as I know, and it stays undisturbed to this day. There is some peat harvesting, but the area is small and not significant to the overall delta.

Let me close by alerting readers to a coming update column on the topic of “global warming in our neck of the woods.” I now have Swift Current’s complete monthly temperature and precipitation data all the way back to 1886, so I will update graphs made five years ago. The new graphs show some interesting trends.

Farming peat land

Where depth of peat is shallow, it is possible to develop it for crop-growing enterprises — but what you see here in the photos is not the way to start out. Much valuable organic matter is lost when peat is burned.

Peat soils are a major storage compartment for carbon on a worldwide basis and Canada has a significant area of peat. In Ireland, peat has been cut out in chunks and used as a heating fuel. Thanks to concerns about the release of that stored carbon into the atmosphere, that is under dispute at this time.

The post For peat’s sake: a picture story appeared first on Grainews.

But multiple years with little rain have resulted in many poor crops. The bottom line has taken a beating and something needs to change. In Saskatchewan, crop insurance has been a game changer, but that only lasts so long.

In this piece I will show you some data that may shed some light on the situation. I do not pretend to be able to predict what rain we will get. Anyone who thinks they can is living in dreamland.

Observation well records and what they can tell us

Saskatchewan’s Water Security Agency maintains a network of observation wells throughout the province and all the data is easily accessible on its website.

That network was established in the 1960s by Bill Meneley when he was with the Saskatchewan Research Council. The documentation is complete with an e-log, well completion record and explanation of the geology and nature of the wells. Readers with Henry’s Handbook can check out more details about the famous Bill Meneley.

Observation wells completed in unconfined surficial aquifers produce hydrographs that echo the rainfall events over the long term.

Figure 1 shows Saskatoon precipitation since 1900. The record-high year was 2010 and it has dropped sharply since then, with the past 11 years far below the long-time average.

The University of Saskatchewan’s Goodale Farm is just a few miles southeast of Saskatoon. The hydrograph of the observation well, in Figure 2, shows a net cumulative drought from 1974 to 2004, a sharp rise with the big 2005 snow and large 2010 rainfall and a decline by 2023 to the level of the 1980s.

Folks who read tree rings and tie the data back for centuries say we can expect 30-year droughts in the future. But what does that 30-year drought mean? The observation well data shows a net cumulative drought from 1975 to 2005, but we still grew some crops in that period.

Corman Park is the rural municipality that surrounds Saskatoon, and Figure 3 shows its wheat yields back to 1938. The big drought years like 1961, 1988, 2002 and 2021 show up clearly, but the overall yield trend is still upward.

Swift Current annual precipitation and crop yields

In case you think it is a “one-off,” I will show you precipitation (Figure 4) and crop yields (Figure 5) for Swift Current. There is no observation well near Swift Current.

At Swift Current the crop yields are trending upward, even with fluctuations in precipitation. The really dry years such as 1961, 1985, 1988 and 2021 show up in these graphs but overall yield trend is still up.

So, there you have it: some facts to suggest we will still be able to grow crops but, as most farmers know, every year is different. There is no way to predict what will happen in the 2024 growing season.

For 2024, the big thing is that you know your soil moisture situation before you commit the initial inputs such as fertilizer. Many have experts retained to install soil moisture measuring probes, but if those are not available, a soil probe will tell you the depth of moist soil and inches of available water. It is also very valuable to know where the water table is, but that requires a Dutch auger with 10 feet of extensions and a 10-foot PVC pipe.

Here’s to 10 inches of well timed rain from around May 15 to July 31, to make sure the trucker has a struggle to get Grainews read while you fill the combine hopper.

The post Precipitation cycles: When will the dry cycle end? appeared first on Grainews.

Thanks to SKSIS, produced by the University of Saskatchewan’s current dean of agriculture Angela Bedard-Haughn, it is also possible to cut out the soil map for that same RM and place it beside the wheat yield graphs to help sort out the “nature or nurture” part of the equation.

To date, I have assembled the data for 17 RMs. In this piece I will pick out a low yielder, a high yielder, and a middle ground. In future articles, scattered in time, I will add more examples. If any reader wants to access the complete data, this is the link. That will take you to a site that actually shows you an example graph, but it is not in detail. To get the graphs you see in this piece, you’ll need to use an Excel file to make one.

First things first: some notes about special years

The graphs are drawn with a ‘dot’ for each year and scaled, so it is easy to read the yield for any given RM for any year of interest. There are some special years of note I will now let you know about — many of which I lived, based on my advanced age.

1939 was before my time but I know that was a very good year over much of the province. Despite the Dirty ’30s seeing many years with poor yields, the 1939 crop was the beginning of the turnaround.

1942 was the mortgage lifter for many farms still struggling from the huge debts of the Dirty ’30s. My dad showed me the cheque that cleared the mortgage on Brunswick Farm at Milden — and, he added, “there will never be another mortgage on this farm.” I respected that decision but it was part of the reason I went off to U of S after two years on the farm.

1954 was the wheat rust year. It was widespread over the province and took down Thatcher wheat, which was susceptible to that year’s race of the disease. My dad was not up to date, so he had seeded the old Renown wheat, which was resistant, and we had a crop. I was 14 at the time — old enough to remember.

1961 was a widespread and devastating drought over much of the province. Most folks who are long enough in the tooth will remember 1961.

1966 and 1976 were both good years over much of Saskatchewan.

1985 was a very dry year south of Swift Current but much better in the rest of the province. We spent much of July at Ponteix and area, drilling for soil salinity. Wheat yields were only about five bushels per acre in that area that year. Stripper headers and the like were needed to gather in the poor crop.

1988 was the big drought, with crop failures over most of the province. As the young folk talk about our current drought cycle, I remind them “we have yet to have a repeat of 1988.”

That brings us to the modern era, with a drought at the turn of the century, especially in 2001 and 2002.

2010 provided 20 inches of rain (April to October) and 2010 to 2017 were irrigation years without the pivot in many areas. The past five years have left a lot of bin room on a lot of farms. The cycle will turn; we just do not know when. Perhaps 2024.

Examples of wheat yield by RM

Shown above are examples for three RMs. The ‘Y’ axis is up to 70 bu./ac. on most graphs, to allow comparison between RMs. There are a couple of RMs that needed 80 bu./ac. to capture the best years.

The RM of Reno, whose yields are shown in Figure 1, is in the extreme southwest corner of Saskatchewan. Much of it is in pastureland so this may not make for a really fair comparison, but such are the facts.

Soils in Reno are mostly solonetzic and Brown chernozemic soils, with limited rainfall and soil structure as yield-limiting conditions. The “nature” factors keep yields on the low side.

The RM of St. Peter (Figure 2), at Annaheim, northeast of Humboldt, has some of the best Black and Thick Black soils. Crop yields can be affected positively by water tables high enough for plant roots to reach. It was my pleasure to run a combine in that RM many years in the ’90s and early 2000s. Canola yields of 70 bu./ac. were a thrill and some areas with wheat near 100 were logged on the combine yield monitor.

It’s interesting to note the sharp rise in wheat yields at the turn of the century. Given recent advances in agronomy, that may be an indication of “nurture.” The sharp rise in yields since 2002 has been experienced at several sites I have graphed.

The yields in the RM of Bratt’s Lake (Figure 3) bounce around 30 bu./ac. and do not reach 50 in the highest yielding year. Most money on these soils is made by lentils; it is the perfect soil for lentils. Most of the farm net worth in that RM is likely due to lentils.

Figure 4 shows the soil map for Bratt’s Lake, which is just southwest of Regina; the red colour is for Regina heavy clay. This RM has the best of the best soils: flat land, no stones, high moisture-holding capacity. It is easy land to farm with no bush or other obstructions, so large fields accommodate the modern wide equipment. Fields a mile wide and two miles long (1,280 acres) are common. That makes for very efficient fieldwork.

But it is in the Dark Brown soil zone, where rainfall can often be limiting. If the soil is dry at seeding time and rain is limiting, the heavy clay is no better than sandy soil.

Future articles will provide data from more Saskatchewan RMs. So far, I have not been able to find wheat yields by RM for Manitoba or by county for Alberta. Perhaps a reader will enlighten me if that data exists.

The post Where the wheat was appeared first on Grainews.

Figure 1 is what 100 years of land prices look like for Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. All values have been converted to 2023 dollars using the Bank of Canada site. The results reflect the real values over time. That takes a lot of work: each year and province must be calculated separately, which means, give or take, 300 calculations.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Manitoba land was most expensive and Alberta the cheapest. That reflected the inherent higher grain yields in Manitoba and the fact that Alberta was mostly ranching at that time.

By the 1950s, Alberta had struck oil so it became a “have” province and could afford higher land prices.

The early 1970s were wet years with good yields, good prices and a sale for all crops the year they were grown. Alberta was dripping with oil money and had a large area of irrigated farmland so it took the lead. Manitoba and Saskatchewan land prices also rose sharply. “Onward and upward” was the battle cry. Land prices will continue to climb, it was said — when have land values ever gone down in price? (Of course, land prices did drop fast in the 1930s.)

Then the 1980s hit, with a vengeance. Drought was the order of the day and interest rates went through the roof: who remembers 15 to 20 per cent interest on farm loans? Many had to downsize or get out altogether. By the late ’80s, foreclosures were common. The back pages of the weekly Western Producer were filled with distress land. FCC and Royal Bank were the two big creditors that took a licking.

When I bought my land in the early ’90s, prices were so cheap, no loan was necessary. A “buy low, sell high” investment will make an easy buck.

Since the turn of the century, land prices have skyrocketed again, with Alberta taking the lead, followed by Manitoba and then Saskatchewan. Many think Saskatchewan farmland is the same as Alberta and Manitoba so should fetch the same price. Not true: Saskatchewan lays claim to the lion’s share of the dry, dry Palliser triangle.

So, what about interest rates?

Interest rates were dragging along near zero for so long, many expected them to last forever and have been paying big land prices on that basis. But of late, the Bank of Canada has slowly added to interest rates such that around seven per cent is prime, so many mortgages will be that or higher.

Figure 2 is what the Bank of Canada website shows for interest rates. It is hinting rates will decline in 2024. Do not bet sections 27 and 28 on that huge “maybe.”

There are some in the lending and real estate businesses who think annual increases in land prices will be around seven per cent for a long time. I beg to differ.

I may be wrong, but I would not be surprised if interest rates still have some considerable upside. Inflation has to be controlled, or the wheels fall off the wagon real fast.

So, there you have it: a couple of big graphs to study and some food for thought as you consider your future farmland ownership portfolio.

Good luck for 2024 — and let us hope it relearns how to rain in the Brown and Dark Brown soil zones.

The post A hundred years of Prairie farmland prices appeared first on Grainews.