A Saskatchewan farmer for 45 years addresses critics of agricultural drainage, pointing to the steps agricultural producers take.
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Letters have recently been submitted talking about agricultural water management (water quality and volume). I would like to clarify a few points.
As farmers, we depend on the health of the soil to help produce crops. The ice ages ensured that our soils were well mixed from top to bottom. That mix included digging deep into the Lake Agassiz potash deposits, which includes salts.
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These salts are inherently found in our soil and come to the surface (in solution form) when ground water levels are high. When the ground water evaporates, the soluble salts are left behind, creating an imbalance in the soil, which is not favourable for most plants.
One way to keep these salts from coming to the surface is to manage the water table.
The quality of drained water is much better than it would have been 30 years ago. Farmers have been early adopters of many farming technologies, such as direct seeding, GPS, auto steer, sectional control and winter grazing for livestock. This has kept our air clean.
When was the last time you have seen a dust storm in the spring or throughout the summer? This is because standing stubble keeps wind erosion of our soils to an absolute minimum. It also keeps water erosion of the soil to a minimum.
Nutrients like phosphorus are soil bound and do not move in water without the soil moving. Many of the nutrients that folks (like David Suzuki) blame algal blooms on agriculture for, are not coming off our fields.
When removing “excess water” from fields, many farmers are planning and working together to get the water to an adequate outlet (a creek or a river). The plan will often include a control structure, whether it be a dam with a smaller or gated culvert to control the water flow.
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This allows the adequate outlet’s peak flow to subside before the drainage water reaches downstream. In many cases these hold back or back flood areas within the fields have saved communities and other downstream infrastructure from flooding.
Some people are suggesting that we should not be able to drain some of these sloughs or push any trees to make our land more efficient when using GPS and auto-steer technology. Let’s reflect on the 300,000 or so acres covered by Saskatchewan’s villages, towns and cities.
Virtually every slough has been drained, filled in and replaced by a building, concrete sidewalk or paved street. Close to 100 per cent of any rain or snow melt within the boundaries of these communities runs off into their drainage ditches or storm sewer systems.
When the sewer systems get overtaxed by high volume, it is often redirected (as untreated sewage) into our creeks, rivers and lakes.
In the case of a field, the whole field is 100 per cent available for water infiltration. Standing stubble left after harvest has root canals and worm channels that allow water to infiltrate at a much faster rate than tilled soils.
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This stubble and crop residue left on the fields also captures snow, allowing even more water to infiltrate into the soil.
To address water quality from drained agriculture land, some of the well-managed drainage networks have been testing water quality for the past couple of decades and the results have met potable drinking water standards.
The lands being managed with drainage have both approved and unapproved drainage structures within them. The goal is to work towards all drainage works being approved.
We use responsible drainage to protect our soils, our crops, our businesses and our communities. Our urban cousins are doing the same thing when they landscape their yards to keep the rain and melt water from running to their houses and into their basements.
Norm Hall is the president of Grandy Co-operative Farms Ltd., which is based in Wynyard, and has been farming in the area for 45 years.
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