August’s rain won’t help farmers until next spring

By ANNA SMITH Local Journalism Initiative on September 13, 2025.

asmith@medicinehatnews.com

While the region did receive significant moisture, the August drought report says producers will not likely see the benefits until next spring.

The August drought report as released by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada noted that the southern prairies, including southern Alberta, has seen significant improvement over the post month.

“In Western Canada the southern Prairies received significant moisture, reducing the amount of drought and improving soil moisture, water supplies and growing conditions,” said Trevor Hadwen, agroclimate specialist with Agri-Food Canada.

Starting the year, the region saw extremely dry conditions in both southern Alberta and southern Saskatchewan, which led to some regions declaring agricultural disasters fairly early this season.

Those regions that are under agricultural disaster have improved significantly in southern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, improving two areas that are just at a moderate drought condition now, says Hadwen.

“Most of that region has seen tremendous amounts of rainfall throughout July and August and really improved the soil moisture. That’s not to say that agricultural crops have improved; the damage was done in June for most of those agricultural crops and certainly yields will still be very low throughout many of those regions,” said Hadwen.

Comparatively, conditions have deteriorated significantly in Eastern Canada, with Ontario and Quebec experiencing increasing drought conditions. The current area of greatest concern is in Eastern Canada, though they are hopeful that conditions will improve prior to harvest.

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