Canada is known to be among the largest agricultural exporter and producers globally. A recent statistics shows that the production of field crops, particularly wheat in the year 2013 has increased at its highest record as compared to 2012. The wheat production was reported with an increase of 38.0% i.e., 37.5 million tons by in the year 2013, in comparison to 2012. Prairies showed record production of Wheat of 11.3 million tons, whereas Saskatchewan and Manitoba showed production increase of +43.8% and +31.5% in 2013 respectively in comparison to 2012 (Statistics Canada ).
The farmers who produce wheat face numerous challenges such as poor yield or low price of wheat that led to little or no income. This challenge is subjected to different underlying issues such as weather conditions and late seeding, etc. In some Canadian regions, the weather conditions are more severe where it becomes very difficult to grow wheat (Shilliday 98). This is because the bad weather condition creates delay in the preparation of field, nutrient disturbances and severe erosion which lead to poor production of wheat that result in low or no income to the farmers. In addition the high cost of production i.e., high feed prices and high fertilizer prices add to the problem especially in the case if the farmers are unable to produce high yields and have no control on market (Southwest Farm Press). Besides this, another problem that is faced by the farmers is storage, transportation and marketing issues (Agrimoney).
Most of the challenges that are faced by the farmers is same as to those I had I had watched in the documentary that was shown in the class. For instance, the farmers face challenges like bad weather conditions, lowering the prices of their products when the price to produce them is rising, unable to control wheat market prices, fewer subsidies (Russell 102). All these issues give rise to other several problems that decrease the farmer’s interest to produce wheat.
Some of the challenges that are discussed above are subjected to major wheat growing geographic areas. For instance Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario are the major wheat growing areas in Canada but the farmers face numerous challenges where mainly bad weather conditions is the primary reason. In some regions, droughts damage large acres of land. Moreover, soil erosion and winter damage are also one of the major problems in Saskatchewan that affects productivity of wheat (Zaidi 171). The western Canadian region mainly Manitoba’s wheat production is mainly affected by the sawflies such as wheat stem saw fly, European Corn Borer, Hessian Fly, Frit Fly and Wheat Stem Maggot are the most destructive insect of stem-feeding that severely damage the crops. All these issues create difficulty for farmers to produce wheat, and in some cases if farmers manage to produce wheat, it is not of superior quality that results in low income for the farmers. If these problems persist, then the future farmers will not be able to work on agriculture as their occupation. Moreover, there will no future of agriculture; the farmers will switch to other jobs instead of working on their own agriculture or they would sell their farms. These will severely impact the Canadian economy because more wheat will be imported that could be of high price.
In order to overcome the damages caused to wheat production, the farmers and the Government of Canada both are required to work together for the positive outlook of wheat production (Pomfret 148). Although it is impossible to manage weather conditions, but proper planning and research on the weather forecast could help to overcome those challenges. Moreover, the control over the reason of breakout of pests should be controlled such as soil and climatic conditions which will also reduce the damages caused by the pests. The farmers must also adapt to different agronomic practices which include tillage, crop rotation, resistant cultivars and seeding dates, etc to reduce wheat production damages (Riendeau 281). In addition, the government of Canada must cooperate and provide greater subsidies to wheat farmers to use quality fertilizers and pesticides which will contribute to the reduction of production damages and improvement in wheat production thereby improving the earnings of farmers.
Thus, it is suggested that use of proper farming methods will enable farmers to get back their control over the market prices of wheat. Moreover, through suggested practices the farmers would be able to retain their wheat production with minimal damages except that is caused due to a sudden change in weather conditions.
Works Cited
Agrimoney. Canada wheat output to fall as rail setbacks bite, 2014. Web 8 March 2014
Pomfret, Richard. The economic development of Canada. Routledge, 2013. Print
Riendeau, Roger. A brief history of Canada. Infobase Publishing, 2007. Print
Russell, Peter. How agriculture made Canada: farming in the nineteenth century. McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP, 2012. Print
Shilliday, Jim. Canada's wheat king: the life and times of seager wheeler. University of Regina Press, 2007. Print
Southwest Farm Press. Wheat growers have faced problems, 2009. Web 8 March 2014
Statistics Canada. Production of principal field crops: november 2013, 2013. Web 8 March2014
Zaidi, Almas et.al. Microbial strategies for crop improvement. Springer, 2009. Print
