The Current - Cattle Sold, Crops Failing: Inside Saskatchewan’s Drought Crisis

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Farmers' livelihoods are at stake in Saskatchewan in the middle of a historic drought. It’s been a while since Saskatchewan saw steady rainfall – and conditions are pushing some farmers to the edge. Ranchers are facing choices about whether to sell off cattle or take on more debt. We hear from two prairie farmers about the impact drought is having on their farms, and how they’re coping amidst climate extremes. We also speak to an expert on what it will take to make farming more resilient in the face of climate change.

1942, Europe. Soldiers find a boy surviving alone in the woods. They make him a member of Hitler's army. But what no one would know for decades, he was Jewish. Could a story so unbelievable be true? I'm Dan Goldberg. I'm from CBC's personally, Toy Soldier. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. Dozens of cattle are scattered across a wide open plain at Six Mile Ranch in southwestern Saskatchewan.

The skies are sprawling and it's mostly sunny. They haven't seen much rain lately. The earth is dry and there's not much left for the cattle to graze. A few hours northeast, drought conditions are even worse, pushing the municipality of Big Stick to declare a local state of emergency. Kareen Gibson is the owner and manager of Six Mile Ranch and Aubrey Reben is also a farmer. Joining us, good morning to you both. Morning. Good morning. Kareen, those are your cows that we heard off the top there. Tell us more about the drought conditions on

your farm. Yes. Well, we are facing our eighth year of drought here in southern Saskatchewan at the Six Mile Ranch. This year is possibly the worst year that we have

lived through, and my husband and I have been owning and operating this ranch for 33 years now. Boy, what's that meant for your operations then and for your cattle? Well it's it's it's meant a lot of hard times really. The cattle industry right now is seeing unprecedented high prices, which is helping, and we're very blessed for that. But we have had to downsize, obviously, and make a lot of changes in our management. How does the drought impact the cows in particular? Well, I mean, it's very hard on their condition. Luckily, we raise pretty

hardy cattle and we try to keep the most efficient ones. And that's one thing that we have seen, you know, over this eight-year span of drought is, man, have we ever selected for those easy, fleshing, hardy cattle? What are they eating? Well, I mean, there's still residual grass. This year, there's a lot of grass from last year. We pride ourselves on sustainability, and we try to keep a stand of grass every year. So the older grass does have some no-turance. There's a small amount of green grass,

but we are moving them constantly. And moving them off your farm as well, I understand. Yes, well in early May we realized we were going to have an issue. So we made plans and we have sent 200 heads so far to the Weyburn area, which is three hours away or about 300 kilometres away from us here on the ranch. Boy. So Aubrey, let me bring you into this conversation. How has the drought been impacting your farm?

What have you experienced? Yeah. I would say it's very similar. If you go back eight years, you can start to see a really big deficit in our rainfall. We're further north in the province. So I think we've been getting more moisture. If we go back to the north, we're getting more moisture. We're further north in the province, so I think we've been

getting more moisture. If we go back to 2021, that was kind of our epiphany year or a high year where we decided, you know what, we don't ever want to do this again. It was so bad that we couldn't find straw. There was no... You know, whatever was coming out the back of combines was just powder and dust. We couldn't actually even process or bale it or collect it in any fashion. And we don't usually feed straw. We usually feed higher quality forages like green feed or hay, but that wasn't an option. We'd already bailed every slough bottom in the RM

basically and there just wasn't enough there. So yeah. You took a pretty dramatic step then, didn't you Aubrey? Yeah, yeah. I mean we actually are situated right on the edge of the North Saskatchewan River here and we see all this water, this great resource flowing east and we said, hey, we've got to tap into this and we got to mitigate this chance of this happening ever again to us. So we said we're going to put in the irrigation system. And what did that mean financially? Oh, it's massive. It's a multi-generational expenditure.

You definitely don't pay that off in a couple of years. So it's something we decided was going to make us sustainable as, as, you know, at Reben Farms here for the next generation to come. Put me in the head of a farmer though, Aubrey. I mean, that's got to be scary to bring up, take on multigenerational debt. For sure, for sure. But you know what? As farmers, we are used to debt. That's how we operate.

I mean, we run a grain farm and every year we bet the bank that we're, you know, we put everything we've got into the ground and then we sit back and we pray that it's going to rain so that we can recapture our inputs. So it's something that we're used to, but we certainly did do a lot of calculations and get a lot of advice. Yeah. Yeah. Corrine, what have you been hearing from farmers across your part of the province about how the drought's affecting them? And are there many that are

considering such a huge investment like Aubrey with the irrigation system? Well, we sure would like to have that opportunity. We don't have a large water source the way Aubrey does. So for many of us, that simply isn't an option. I know there are a few people who have tried some irrigation projects in the past with smaller water sources, such as springs or wells. But we just don't have that option here in southern Saskatchewan for the most part. But we have looked into it. And like Aubrey said, it's a multi-generational debt. And if the

opportunity came to some farmers around here, they certainly would. I think one of the scariest things right now is like I am hearing from neighbors and family in the areas that, you know, if things don't turn around soon, they don't know how much longer they can hang on. We're lucky here at Six Mile Ranch. I mean, we're able to hopefully, hopefully weather this storm, but it's desperate. What kind of toll does that take on you personally and on your family, Corrine? Well, it's been very challenging. I mean, I have three grandchildren. They're the fifth generation here at Six Mile, and the oldest is six, and they haven't even seen rain. So, if it rains here,

they're out there, they're like, they're out there just like, what is this, you know? So, so that's how hard it's been. You know, the mental toll on farmers and ranchers is challenging because we do everything we can. We're businessmen. I know people think maybe otherwise, but we are businessmen and women. So we do plan, we do everything we can

to safeguard our operation. But we do have that factor that is out of our control. And Aubrey, what about you? Again, when you talked about taking on that debt, I'm thinking about your grandchildren there. What kind of tools are taking on your family right now? You know, honestly, it's a lot easier now because we have some sustainability and we're guaranteed food for our animals. As long as the power is running and I can run pumps, I've always got feed now. And that's what we wanted, wanted to go through that drought situation again where we couldn't physically find feed anywhere

in the province. So it's been a lot easier for us. But I mean, yeah. Yeah, I was just going to tell Corrine that we reached out to Saskatchewan's agricultural minister. They weren't available this morning. But last week, the provincial and federal governments announced new support through the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation. How helpful will a program like that be for you?

Well, that's an interesting question. It certainly does help, and we do appreciate it. It will allow the local farmers to basically write off their crops sooner and make those crops available to us ranchers and cattlemen to use as feed. You know what, it still doesn't help us that much because we still as cattlemen, it helps the farmers. It really does, and we appreciate it. But then the farmers charge us to come in and take the feed off.

So we're still paying for feed that, honestly, we should be producing ourselves. So it does help, and we're appreciative, but it's just a drop in the bucket really of what we're looking at. We're looking at buying feed for, you know, all 650 head of our cows, plus their calves. And so you've reduced the number of your herd. Are you going to keep on reducing, Corrine? Well, we're kind of at the threshold where we feel, you know, we need to run this many cattle to service our dead and to, you know, keep our operation thriving and growing. But yes,

we are having planning meetings. In fact, we'll have another one this morning that perhaps we'll have to downsize more. In 2021, as Aubrey said, we had a, you know, that was a devastating year province-wide, and we did reduce 300 head. We had a large sale then That might be in our future this fall Aubrey I'm looking at the forecast here in your area and there's still a lot of sun Do you think I mean again, you've got the irrigation now but but do you think rain would make a difference to your neighbors and and and Can it help at this point? Oh, 100%. 100%. And don't get me wrong, like we don't have every acre irrigated. We still

have all our pastures which aren't irrigated and all our hay land as well. So yeah, we definitely love to see rain in the forecast. It's a huge benefit when a rain cloud comes over and drops an inch of rain. It doesn't change instantly. It takes a couple weeks for things to start to get kick-started again and get growing again. But no, our livelihood depends on rain no matter what. So any time it comes over, it just makes it a lot easier on, like you said, the mind and the body. Last question to you, Corrine. I just wonder, I mean, you mentioned fifth generation farming. What are you thinking about the future of your farm and the future of your kids farming? Well, I hope we've given them enough foundation here that, you know, we can weather the storm,

as per se, or weather the drought. But, I mean, I think the mental toll is challenging. You know, my son and my daughter and her husband are here, and they put in long, hard hours. And just when the cattle market turned, now we're faced with this drought. And it's quite devastating here, to tell the truth. So, I mean, we haven't received – we've received maybe an – a little over an inch of rain since April. So that is extremely challenging. But I am still hopeful for the future. You know, we sit down and we plan.

We make strategies. We'll take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way. And you know, we've even considered perhaps buying land in a different part of the province where they do receive more plentiful rain. I mean, that would be difficult, but I mean, we want to keep going for the next five generations. I'm glad to hear that hope in your voice. Farmers are, if nothing, resilient. Thank you both for joining us and I hope there's some clouds and rain in your future.

Thank you. Kareen Gibson is the owner and manager of Six Mile Ranch and Audrey Reben is the owner of Reben Farms. If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul and might even be good for your soul, check out As It Happens. I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Yilkka Oksal. Every day we reach people at the center of the most extraordinary stories, like the doctor who restored a patient's eyesight with a tooth.

Or a musician in an orchestra that plays instruments made out of vegetables. Take the scenic route through the day's news with As It Happens, and you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Blaine Jirdis has farmed in southeastern Saskatchewan for the last 50 years. His son has taken over their century old farm, and that gives Blaine time to work with other farmers through organizations such as

Farmers for Climate Solutions. He's helping them become more resilient to the changing climate. Blaine is in Red Verse, Saskatchewan near the Manitoba border. Good morning. Good morning, Duncan. What goes through your head, Blaine, when you listen to what farmers like Corrine and Aubrey are going through? My sympathy goes out. There is nothing more psychologically hard to deal with than a drought, because

you don't think it will ever end. It's just on every day, every day, the sun shines and the wind blows and it gets drier. You see the grass turning brown and it's very difficult to deal with. So my heart goes out to them. You're speaking from experience there, Blaine. You faced a drought 30 years ago, and that led to an epiphany for you. What happened then? speaking from experience there Blaine, you faced a drought 30 years ago and that led to an epiphany for you. What happened then? Well, what I started to learn was that the only way we can become truly resilient is to make our soil healthier. And so we have to be putting carbon back in, sequestering

more carbon. Traditionally, agriculture has lost carbon, the tillage and some of the other practices that we do have tended to remove a lot of tillage. Some of the grazing practices that have been done. I was very excited to hear Corrine saying she was moving cows because what we have to get back to is a system like the bison when they moved across the prairie. They weren't static, they continued to move across tightly in herds. And putting more manure into the land, correct? Absolutely. So they eat, consume the grass and deposit the manure right behind again. So it was plant-ready material. So when you started looking at the soil that your grandfather had passed on to you, what did you see 30 years ago?

Well, when my grandfather started 110 years ago, we had approximately 12% organic matter soil on our farm. After my grandfather, my father and myself, before I smartened up, in many places that was worked down to 2%. So we had lost 10% organic matter and I said this can't work so I said we have to start doing something different and so over the last 30 years now we've built some of that back up to 6 and 7 percent organic matter. The term for this I understand is regenerative farming so so how does that work on a big high-tech industrial farm in this day and age? Well, it becomes a little more difficult because the key word is change. So what we have to

do is basically there's five very simple principles, they're universal, how the practices happen on each farm or ranch. But we just basically have to capture more sunshine, keep the land covered with plant material, litter we call it. We have to have more diversity and we need to disturb the soil less, whether that's from overgrazing or tillage or whatever. And then ideally we would incorporate animals into the system. Explain that to me. You got to grow more green plants, is that right? Yes. So if you think about growing wheat or canola, we're only capturing sunshine for about 60, maybe 80 days of the year. We have the potential here to capture sunshine for 260 days. And really the purpose of capturing the sunshine is for the plants to photosynthesize.

They send root exudates down, the sugars go down into the roots and they actually leak out, it's called exudates, which feed the microbes. And it's the microbes that feed the plant, there's a complex system under there of signaling. These microbes then bring the food material back, the nutrients, the boron, the zinc, the copper, the nitrogen, all the things the plant needs. Then the process of doing that, they start to glue the soil particles together, which is called aggregation. That reduces the compaction in the soil which allows more water more air the soil to become more like a sponge So when it does rain the moisture will go in instead of running off and it will be held longer You're talking about going old school here, aren't you?

Well, not really. I think it's new school. I think our great-grandfathers understood this, but if you look at the history of agriculture, for 10,000 years we've destroyed land and moved on. And now we're to the point where there's nowhere to move to. So we need to really think about how we do agriculture and start to become regenerative. There's no place on earth, to my knowledge, that we haven't been able to fix by become regenerative. There's no place on earth to my knowledge that we haven't been able to fix by practicing regenerative agriculture. That's pretty cool. And so if you saw, you know, your soil on your farm kind of come back to life again when you started practicing this, you mentioned how hard it is to

get to make change happen. So should governments be supporting farmers and incentivizing farmers to change their ways? Well maybe, I don't know, I always get nervous when governments start to do things for us. But what are farmers saying when you make your pitch to them? Well, I probably work with a hundred different farmers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba primarily. Most of them, once they understand, they begin to make changes. I'll just share my farm as an example.

We have approximately 800 acres, or my son runs now, but we've increased production two and a half times over those 30 years. Really, our farm is a 2,000 acre farm. We're producing as much as the conventional farm on 2,000 acres would on 800 acres. Just wrapping up, Blaine, I just want, I mean, I wonder what's at stake for those of us who rely on you farmers to produce food? What are we looking at here? Well, I think if we don't become more resilient, we're going to be more prone to drought. We saw issues with COVID with the food distribution system. If we had a major, major drought across, it's a fairly major one right now, but there still is areas that are relatively wet and are

going to produce a lot of food this year. But I think it does have consequences for society. Okay. Blaine, thank you very much for sharing your expertise and your thoughts today. You're very welcome. Thank you. Blaine Juridis is a farmer in Saskatchewan. He works with Farmers for Climate Solutions. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.