Hogendoorn Dairy has been irrigating crops since 2012. With drier weather conditions on average and a soil profile that features lots of sand, Kees Hogendoorn Jr. says it can be challenging to produce feed on the farm for the 430 milking cow operation based at Baden, Ontario. For 2025, Hogendoorn has added a 360 Rain... Read More
Category: Irrigation
Drought conditions in the last couple of years have led to St. Mary River Irrigation District (SMRID) south of Lethbridge signing new water sharing memorandums of understanding amongst users in four sub-basins of southern Alberta. Without a significant change in reservoir levels, the water allocation for the 2024 year stands at eight inches of water... Read More
Canada has a global reputation of having abundant, clean water, and water is essential for life and for food security. A new report from the Canadian Agriculture Policy Institute (CAPI) takes a look at Canada's water resource and whether or not it's being managed to the full benefit of Canadians. Tyler McCann, managing director of... Read More
There are so many things that can't be controlled on the farm, including when Mother Nature decides to provide some moisture. Irrigation provides more control over the moisture situation — however, the water is not limitless. Maximizing the water allowance not only makes growers happy, because it allows them to become more profitable, but it... Read More
For the past two years, there have been issues with the delivery of water early in the growing season across the Lethbridge Northern Irrigation District (LNID). In 2022, there were different reasons for the inability to access water early on, but this year, water challenges were linked to breakages and leaks in the canals. As... Read More
Update: As of May 5, 2023, there is still no definite timeline on the status of the repairs required for the Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation main canal leaks. In the interim, the board has approved for irrigation to flow from the Keho Reservoir, one inch of water for each irrigation acre, "on the basis that... Read More
In 2018, Zach Fleishman interviewed 200 irrigation farmers trying to figure out their pain points when it comes to center pivot tires. At the time, the number one issue farmers wanted to eliminate was the pivot track rutting in their fields. The second issue was dealing with flat tires. Flash forward to 2023 and Fleishman... Read More
Cattle coming north, a tax credit for processing development, and trucking e-logs are all top of mind for Alberta's Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation, Nate Horner. Speaking at this week's Alberta Beef Industry Conference, Horner says the announced Agri-Processing Investment Tax Credit won't be in place until the current government passes its budget, but the... Read More
Bacterial leaf streak is not a particularly new disease to Canada but there are ongoing projects to increase identification and prevention of the disease. Dr. Constanza Fleitas, with the cereal and flax pathology group at the University of Saskatchewan, says that bacterial leaf streak is a growing issue in the U.S., and there are increasing... Read More
For anyone that has tackled variable rate irrigation (VRI) before, they know there can be a lot of challenges. There's a lot of decision making — we need to know what's happening, and what's going to happen. Lewis Baarda, research program manager at Farming Smarter, based at Lethbridge, Alta., says this is why the non-for-profit... Read More