Murray Mandryk: Irrigation project long overdue

BY MURRAY MANDRYK

Saskatchewan’s dry land farmers have proven many people wrong.

The first was John Palliser, who made an 1857 to 1859 expedition through here to help the British secure the territory from the Americans.

The report on his expedition concluded what is now Western Canada should be divide in three regions: a northern “cold zone” inhospitable to any agriculture; a middle zone of parkland area suitable for farming, and; a southern zone we have come to know as “Palliser’s Triangle“.

Palliser’s Triangle that now accounts for a good portion of Southern Saskatchewan farmland was described as “more or less arid” desert and unsuitable for crops but with a “dry climate, sandy soil, and extensive grass cover,” that may be suitable for livestock.

According to Palliser’s more than 160 years ago, only the eastern and northern fringe of the grain belt in Saskatchewan was really fit for farming.

As it turns out, when Palliser travelled through here this area was experiencing one of its dry cycles worse than normal. In the next 70 years, we’d see massive farm settlers, flowing into this after Canada was created in 1967 and after Saskatchewan joined confederation in 1905.

But the dry cycle would return to Saskatchewan and many farmers would fall victim to the Dirty Thirties Dustbowl in the 1930s - partly be- cause of poor soil conservation techniques.

Yet our farmers have proved to be resilient - especially in the past 50 years in which they’ve developed strategies like direct seeding to avoid cultivation and keeping the stumble high rather than burning to converse moisture.

They have similarly adapted to our short grow seasons and comparatively little rain through hardy crop development suitable for the area.

They have found the right blend of fertilizers and chemicals to enhance growth and even built their own seeding and application equipment to best suit their purposes.

Farms themselves - at great expense to the communities that once surrounded them - have become bigger and more economically efficient.

The success of Saskatchewan dry land farmers has made them world leaders in the export of cereal grains, oil seeds and pulse crop, but there is reason to fear we have taken this kind of farming as far as we can.

Dry cycles and even flooding because of violent weather can be expected to accompany a changing climate.
So we have to ask our- selves: What’s the next logical step?

Well, no one can say for sure, but wide-scale irrigation, efficiently managing scarce water resources is important.
This takes us to recent announcement that the Saskatchewan Party government plans to spend $4 billion during the next 10 years for a 500,000-acre irrigation project for the Regina- Moose Jaw area.

The project pumping Lake Diefenbaker will begin this year with $22.5 million for preliminary engineering work, testing soils and some construction.

In the making for half a century since the original canal work was stopped in 1972, many are welcoming the project as long overdue.

There are reasons to be suspicious of why the government is restarting this project now. One should always be a bit sceptical when large sums of tax dollars start flowing before an election.
But with climate change threats bearing down on us, it can be argued now is also the log- ical time to look at alternatives.

We need to keep in perspective that this is 500,000 acres (again, at a massive $4 billion cost) out of about 33 million seeded acres each year.

We also need to acknowledge a whole host of issues - concerns about adding saline water to the soil, the impact on other provinces, First Nation involvement and the effect on SaskPower’s hydroelectricity produced at the Gardiner Dam.

There are a lot of good reasons why this project has been delayed for the past five decades.

But there are also a lot reasons why it should go ahead.