The good news for the province - if you want to call it that - is that we aren't quite as dependent on agriculture as we once were.
For most of the first three-quarters of the province's 105-year history farming pretty much dictated the rest of the Saskatchewan economy for that year.
And while the problem was usually drought like the massive one that gripped the province in the 1930s, excessive spring rains like this year's could be as troublesome. Crops would not get planted or would be late and vulnerable to fall frosts.
Well, the latter appears to be the reality for all too many Saskatchewan farmers this year - especially those on the east side of the province from the forest fringe to the U.S. border.
"I think we're finished," Kelvington-area former Ted Elmy told the Regina Leader-Post's Angela Hall last week. "By the time the end of this week is over with the rain, we'd need another at least a week of 25 degrees with wind before we could go out there again."
Elmy considered himself lucky that he got half of is 1,700 acres in - especially given that some northeast rural municipalities are considering declaring themselves agricultural disaster areas just to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem.
Saskatchewan hasn't seen a spring like this since at least 1999, but many argue that things are far worse than a decade ago. With only 59 per cent of the overall provincial crop in the ground - compared with average of 86 per cent for this time of year - neither agrologists nor long-time farmers can recall a year when so much of the seeding was so delay for so big an area of the province.
"It's wet. It's getting frustrating," said Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, president David Marit, who is struggling to finish his own seeding on his Fife Lake farm. "Right across the province, I've never seen a year where there's so much to go in the ground yet."
But as unfortunate as these individual farmers' stories are, it's also bad news for the rest of us - including Premier Brad Wall's Saskatchewan Party government. The costs to the AgriStability Fund and Saskatchewan Crop Insurance will take a toll on provincial budget expenditures.
Crop Insurance seeding deadlines have already been extended to June 20 in the Moose Jaw, Estevan and west-central areas to encourage late seeding, but Agriculture Minister Bob Bjornerud admits that might be a costly gamble for the government if fall frosts take their toll. Added to the unseeded acreage benefit claims will be frost damage claims.
But besides the added budget expenses, the wet spring will likely take a bit of a toll on the revenue side of the budget ledger. Less seeded acreage means less income for farmers, meaning less income tax revenue for the government. Provincial sales tax revenue will also be affected.
And even if the effects on the Saskatchewan economy aren't quite as severe as they might have been in the past, this potential downturn in the agriculture economy comes at a bad time.Saskatchewan looked like it was just coming out of the massive resource revenue decline of late 2008 and all of 2009. Potash appeared to be bouncing back (the government predicted a modest $221 million in revenue this year) and oil (it's currently at $72-a-barrel - close to the budget predicted average of $75-a-barrel for 2010) was holding steady.
Finally, a worse-than-expected crop year has another less tangible impact. Even if the actual Saskatchewan economy doesn't rise and fall on agriculture like it once did, this is still an agriculture province and farming still tends to set the mood of this place.
And this year's soggy spring will certainly dampened the province's mood.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 15 years.
