Harvest season shaping up well for Taber-Warner: MLA Hunter

Posted on September 11, 2025 by admin

By Trevor Busch
Westwind Weekly News
editor@tabertimes.com

With a somewhat unusual year in terms of mid-summer precipitation and cooler temperatures than average at different points in the growing season, crops were looking good with the harvest season now fully underway in southern Alberta.

“Actually everybody seems to be quite happy,” said Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter. “The east of my riding, the rain hasn’t been as good as what they had hoped. But the rest of my riding, they’re actually quite excited about this year, so hopefully nobody gets hailed out and it looks like they’re going to have some really good crops.”

Hunter, who also serves as Associate Minister of Water, reports things on the irrigation side were shaping up nicely.

“With irrigated crops – there’s a lot of great irrigated crops that are grown here in southern Alberta. And this year, it’s going to be – this could be good. I know it was a little cooler this year, obviously, and lots of those specialty crops like the hot, hot days. I know that some producers were concerned maybe a bit about that, but it looks like they’re doing pretty well, regardless of the cooler days.”

Southern Alberta’s more usual weather patterns often see hot and dry conditions prevail throughout the summer months, but 2025 saw higher precipitation.

“What I understand is that’s certainly (helped) fill up the dugouts and the waterways we have, which is obviously really, really important, and setting us up for future years,” said Hunter. “And I think that a lot of this has to do with the seasonality of La Nina and El Nino years. I know that when I was reading one report, it said that El Nino will be a cooler, wetter season, and certainly we’ve seen that. And so I don’t know when that finishes up and we go into La Nina, which is again drier and hotter.”