EDMONTON - A couple of months ago, Jim Brown's fields were too wet to seed.
Today, the central Alberta farmer looks out over wheat and canola that's already dry as straw and getting hammered more by the heat every day.
"In the 50 or 60 years we've farmed, I've never seen a July like this,'' he said Monday.
A lot of farmers across the Prairies are saying the same thing as they scratch their ball caps and try to figure out how a crop year that began so well got so burned out.
"At the start of the year, we were looking at yields being fairly robust,'' said Bruce Burnett of the Canadian Wheat Board. "Now, I think our yields are going to be below average.''
What happened was that Mother Nature turned up the thermostat and turned off the faucet.
In April and May, areas around Edmonton and Calgary received 60 per cent more precipitation than normal. Saskatchewan was normal to above normal, and Manitoba was about 10 per cent higher.
Temperatures averaged a degree or so cooler than average.
"It's a world of difference in July,'' said David Phillips, Environment Canada climatologist.
Edmonton has been 2.7 degrees warmer than usual, with half the normal amount of rainfall. Calgary is on pace to tie its hottest July ever -- a record set in 1936 -- with only 25 millimetres of rain instead of the expected 68.
Predictions suggest Regina will finish July with 15 days over the 30 C mark. Saskatoon, too, has been 2.7 degrees hotter and less than half as damp.
The pattern is similar, although less pronounced, in Manitoba.
The effect on crops has been predictable.
"It's going downhill quite quickly,'' said Doon Pauly of Alberta Agriculture. "It's widespread.''
Pauly recalled driving by some fields last Thursday that looked green and healthy. By the end of the weekend, he said, they had begun to develop the white, stunted look of crops that have simply dried up.
Some farmers have already begun harvesting wheat too far gone for food. It will be used as animal fodder.
"We're in real need for water and we're going to have fairly light crops,'' said Pauly.
In Saskatchewan, fewer than 40 per cent of farmers say soil moisture is adequate.
"Crop reporters had expected better yields earlier in the season, but the recent heat and lack of precipitation have impacted expectations,'' said Terry Bedard of Saskatchewan Agriculture.
Now they're hoping for something "close to'' the 10-year average.
Only Manitoba, where crops were planted earlier and rains lasted longer, still hopes to bring off an average-sized harvest.
But even there, the hot, dry July is having an effect, said Manitoba Agriculture spokesman Rob Park.
"It's certainly going to have some impact on our yield and probably quality,'' he said. "Time's starting to run out.''
The Canadian Wheat Board's official harvest estimate comes out Thursday. But Burnett's already predicting the yield will decline at least five per cent -- a decline that gets steeper the further south you go.
North of the Trans-Canada Highway, the dropoff could be as low as one per cent. But south of the highway, it will be more like 20 per cent, Burnett said.
Back in Erskine, Alta., where Brown farms, he can predict the yield by looking at a single stalk of his canola.
"Every stalk has dropped more (seed) pods than it's got left on it,'' he said. "The yield's more than cut in half.''
Brown explains the early rain left moisture deep in the soil, but the heat is drying the plant out before it can grow roots that far down to suck the water up.
Still, farmers try to be optimistic and Brown's no exception. A little bit of rain now would fill out the seed pods and wheat kernels that have managed to sprout and make them worth harvesting. That's the peg Brown is hanging his hat on.
"If we could strike even half an inch, that would fill out what we got.''
