Canadian Dairy Farmers Hit Hard by Devastating ‘Atmospheric River’ Floods

Canadian dairy farmers have recently been hit hard by two days of torrential rains spanning across the Pacific Northwest portion of the U.S. and into British Columbia. Some areas of the province received 8 inches of rain on Sunday, the amount that usually falls over the course of a month. The phenomenon is known as an ‘atmospheric river.’

Abbotsford, B.C., is one of the areas hit the hardest. Dairy farmers in the area were told to evacuate on Tuesday as floodwaters washed over one of British Columbia’s prime agriculture areas. According to The Canadian Press, the flooding situation has forced farmers to lean on each other to save their animals.

“When I see calves that are underwater that they rescued and threw in the boat to save them, on one hand it breaks my heart, but on the other hand, I’m just so impressed with our community, our farming community, and how they come together and help each other. And that’s what they’re doing,” Henry Braun, Mayor of Abbotsford, told CTV News.

According to CTV News, volunteers used boats and personal watercraft to rescue animals and haul them to transport vehicles.

“This is an example of an industry coming together when things really get ugly,” said Holger Schwichtenber, a Canadian dairy farmer and board member of the BC Dairy Association. “We’re doing the best that we can with the situation that we’ve been handed and it’s a tough one.”

Schwichtenber is expected to take 25 to 30 cows from farmer impacted by the flooding and transport them to his own farm in Agassiz.

“You've got trucks, you've got neighbors, you've got whoever's got a pickup truck or something to haul cattle in and you start moving them to higher ground or you've made arrangements to get them off-site,” Schwichtenber told The Canadian Press.

Mudslides in the area have destroyed roads and bridges, severing access to the country’s largest port in Vancouver. This is on top of an already disrupted supply chain. Dairy farmers in the flood-affected area are being asked to dump milk due to impossible transport, according to The Canadian Press. The B.C. Milk Marketing Board is advising its producers in the areas of Abbotsford, Chilliwack and the B.C. Interior to dispose of their milk by dumping it into manure piles.

The floods have temporarily shut down much of the movement of wheat and canola from Canada, one of the world’s biggest grain exporters, Reuters reports. The disruption could also hit exports of potash.