As southern Ontario has experienced extended periods of hot and dry weather over the past couple of months, a lack of precipitation has been particularly detrimental to many farmers and agricultural producers.
One of the hardest-hit areas this summer has been Prince Edward County (PEC), the large island just south of Trenton and Belleville. The area is a thriving hub of agricultural activity, hosting dozens of wine and alcohol producers as well as many farms.
“Dry, dry, dry… it’s been challenging and hot too,” Tim Kuepfer, who owns Broken Stone Winery in PEC, told CityNews during a tour of his vineyard.
“I said to Michelin, I said, ‘This is going to be the crop of a lifetime. This is when vines sing to me.’ I didn’t know there was going to be a drought when I said that.”
At Broken Stone, he said there are approximately 12,000 grape-producing plants. Pinot noir is a specialty for the business. But with no on-site irrigation or municipal water access, Kuepfer said he’s had to scramble to save what he can.
The winemaker said he was forced to buy a large tank from one of his neighbours and a pump to truck water on-site.
He said in the absence of rain, he has to drive about 20 kilometres round trip to the shore of Lake Ontario in Wellington four times a day to get the water he needs. Filling a 1,000-litre tote at a time, Kuepfer and his workers hand-water each of the plants. It can take 10 days to cover the whole vineyard.
“This time of year we look forward to a little bit of a reprieve from vineyard work and we’re getting ready for harvest, so we really value some time to repair equipment, kind of get organized,” he said.
“It comes with the cost of a lot of my time, and then my workers same thing as well. They don’t come free, and they have to devote all their time to watering the vines.”
During the tour, he showed sections where there were large holes where vines didn’t grow or where dried-up vines broke apart. Kuepfer said he could lose a fifth of this year’s crop, and that will mean hundreds of fewer cases of wine after it’s ready in a couple of years.
“Generally, we’d like to see dry weather for grapes up to a certain extent. It makes the skin-to-juice ratio higher, so you get more concentration of flavours and better development of sugars in the grapes … but too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing,” he noted.
At Wilhome Farms outside nearby Bloomfield, seventh-generation cattle and cash-crop farmer Don Williams didn’t shy away from how this summer has impacted the region.
“I think it’s probably one of the most frustrating years and I’ve been at (it) full-time more than 40 years,” he told CityNews.
“What we have control of is almost nothing … we put hundreds of thousands of dollars into our fields, planting them, looking after them, but unless we get that almighty water, we can’t do it.”
Williams said it’s been particularly hard on the dairy cows, especially when it comes to hydration and trying to regulate temperatures.
“One milking cow alone will drink up to 40 gallons of water a day, so water is a huge part of it. We’re very blessed on this farm, but there’s an awful lot of people that don’t have water in their wells anymore, and they’re spending two, three hours extra a day picking up water,” he said.
“When it was so bad (two to three weeks ago), fans and keeping them dry and keeping lots of air moving. Like in the dairy barn itself, we’ve got probably eight, 10 fans that are blowing around.”
Mapping by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada paints a stark picture. Federal government officials said in Prince Edward County and certain other parts of Ontario, 64 to 72 days out of 90 days ending on Aug. 18 only saw less than 0.5 millimetres of precipitation.
CityNews wanted to see how farms in the Greater Toronto Area have fared. Zac Cohoon owns Twin Erin Farms in Port Perry, and during our visit, there was a trace amount of rain.
“We need three days to five days of nice, steady rain,” he said, noting what fell wouldn’t bring needed relief.
“In my opinion, we’ve lost 50 per cent of our yield in corn and soybeans with the drought we’re having now in this location.”
Cohoon said he has access to some water about “a thousand feet” away, but added irrigation “is not a solution for our problem.”
“We are at the will of the weather, and that is what we’re going to have to deal with,” he said, adding that several other factors also impact the bottom line.
“A geopolitical system, our neighbours, the trade wars, the tariffs, the carbon tax, all kinds of things that agriculture is the brunt of.
“Agriculture creates the wealth that this country lives on, it certainly does, and like all natural resources, we feel that we’re not really being treated fairly in the global marketplace.”
Investments in technology, infrastructure could help some Ontario farmers adapt going forward
At the heart of the Niagara region, there are hundreds of farmers and agricultural businesses. There’s a focus on higher-value stone fruits and grapes for wines.
Jack Romagnoli owns Romagnoli Farms in Lincoln and said his family has been farming in the area for a century. He said his family shifted to growing peaches and nectarines due to lower alcohol consumption.
While Romagnoli said the conditions have resulted in sweeter fruit, yields like the current one highlight how profits can be diminished.
“So in a normal year in Ontario, tender fruit, we have fruit that is almost twice the size,” Romagnoli explained during a tour of his property.
“Obviously, people prefer the larger fruit, but it’s an issue for us in volume; what fills baskets and what pays the bills, right?”
Romagnoli said he can do some irrigation thanks to a pond on the property, but reiterated what all the farmers interviewed said: It takes a lot of time, and it is costly to do.
However, some businesses in three different Niagara region communities will be getting a helping hand in the coming years. The Ontario government set aside $41 million for irrigation lines. St. Catharines officials said it will serve the city and the town of Lincoln below the escarpment. Niagara-on-the-Lake will see upgrades to the system of open channels and trenches.
“I’ve heard a few things. I’m going to say mostly positive, whether or not it’s gonna actually come to fruition … hopefully it’s all inclusive to all of us,” Romagnoli said.
It’s an example of an investment that Kuepfer said could benefit Prince Edward County as well
“It’s a bit of infrastructure that really helps because watering a vineyard requires a lot of water,” he said.
“Surprisingly, in the county being an island, there [are] not a lot of good wells, and there’s not a lot of inland water bodies, so access to water is really important for vineyards that are 10 or 15 kilometres inland.”
Kuepfer said a stronger local agricultural sector would bring spin-off benefits to the tourism industry, the food and beverage industry, as well as those who own rental accommodations.
The issues facing the Ontario agricultural sector are also capturing the attention of researchers, potentially bringing new tools to the marketplace.
Dr. Khalid Elgazzar, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University, and his team are working on getting drones to farms. They’re working on developing a commercially accessible method of using artificial intelligence and drone cameras to assess produce and crops, and for the drone to do targeted things like spraying to help with crop viability.
“The technology is advancing very fast,” he said.
“There’s a lot of potential for these types of AI models that work with visual cues to help the farmers, specifically interested in agriculture, to make better use of their time, their resources, and make an efficient way of handling their crops in a better way that we have never seen before,” he said.
One recent example saw a drone dispatched to an apple orchard where apples were counted and assessed using visual cues.
Elgazzar said work is underway to further develop the technology and to develop the business case for utilizing it.
Meanwhile, farmers need to make do with today’s limitations. Despite having programs like crop insurance to help participating farmers cover hard, out-of-pocket costs (but not the projected, associated revenues), these current times can spell hardship with dwindling or lost profits.
“This farm is everything. It’s not just our life, it’s our living, and it’s our breathing, and everything else,” Williams said.
“Everything we do touches everybody in this country every day, from the clothes you wear, the fuel you drive, to the lubricants, the food. It’s not just about your vegetables,” Cohoon added.
“Farmers are very resourceful. We’re like, less than 1% of the population, and when we feed 100 per cent of the population.”
