Pretty Soon FTLComm - Tisdale August 7, 1999 This picture taken a few miles North of Tisdale this morning shows a crop that will be ready for swathing next week. But if you look back on the rather accelerated year of 1998 you will discover that harvest was getting underway

a year ago today. Most crops are filling well and the canola looks to be in exceptional shape but we are weeks away from the 1999 harvest. Yesterday they received up to an inch of rain in the Weekes area while we remained dry despite yesterday morning ominous clouds which had broken up considerably by about ten in the morning. Meanwhile the drought the has hit the Eastern seaboard of the United States has driven much of that area into water rationing and both the Chicago and Winnipeg markets were edging upward in all grains through this past week. The United States government has immediately realised the problem and declared the area a disaster pumping several billion dollars in to American agriculture.