The inspiration to look at solar came from farmers, said Trevor Helwig, the district’s technical services manager.

“Solar arrays were being implemented successfully by irrigators at the farm level before we proceeded, including a few of our board members,” said Helwig.

But the scale was considerably different.

The St. Mary River Irrigation District services about 400,000 acres of irrigated land through about 2,000 kilometres of canals and pipelines between Medicine Hat and Lethbridge. It has three large pump stations and although the amount varies annually, they use a lot of power — 2.2 million kWh to 4.97 million kWh yearly from 2017 to 2019.

The bill is equally big — $379,000 to $787,000 a year — while the district’s electric bill for all the buildings and other infrastructure is much less at $125,000 annually.

But the district now has a goal to achieve net zero on electrical use. Net zero means the district will generate the same amount of electricity it uses on a yearly basis by feeding surplus power into the electrical grid, and drawing from the grid when its power needs are greater than what the solar panels generate.

A question that often comes up is, ‘Why try to offset electricity when users must still pay transmission and delivery fees?’ Over the past decade, the rate per kWh has gone down, but transmission and delivery fees have more than doubled.

“Rate 26 is your electricity rate for irrigation,” Helwig told attendees at the Alberta Irrigation District Association conference this winter. “It ties transmission and distribution to your usage. If you can get your usage down by using solar, you’re reducing that portion of your bill on that (transmission and delivery) side as well.”

This special rate consideration, combined with the high electricity demands, make solar a boon for irrigation.

But officials at St. Mary River Irrigation District made sure there was a strong business case for solar energy and that its water users would not incur any additional costs due to the installation of solar arrays. They worked with Enmax and modelled various scenarios based on the past eight years of electricity use and prices. They determined that it was viable, and that a 15-year lease through Enmax was the best option for covering the capital costs. (The district also received a provincial grant, from Energy Efficiency Alberta, covering 35 per cent of the capital costs.)

Solar arrays will be operational at two pump stations in 2020.

Bow Island 12 pump station serves a 4,000-acre system south of Bow Island. The station provides 80 psi at the pivot points for the water users on that system so they don’t require pumps at their pivot points. The 40 Mile pump station moves water from a storage reservoir to the district’s main canal.

The Bow Island 12 site has a 700KW solar array located along the district’s main canal.

“We used trackers at this location to reduce the amount of area that was required,” said Helwig.

Trackers increase the efficiency of the system by changing the axis of the solar array according to the position of the sun. The panels also have a wind speed detector so they self-level to reduce the potential for damage during times of high winds.

The 40 Mile pump station has a 1.74MW fixed axis solar array, which is also situated on district land.

Both systems are classed as micro-generators.

“A large micro-generator means greater than 150KW but less than 5MW,” said Helwig. “If you’re greater than 150KW you’re paid the hourly pool price. If you’re less than 150KW you have the choice of being paid out the commercial rate or the hourly pool price.”

The pool price is a variable rate determined hourly by supply and demand, and generally sits around the range of $40 to $50 per MWh. (Based on its business case modelling, district officials estimated the break-even was, on average, about $45/MWh.)

Once the 15-year lease is up, the cost savings will go to the bottom line as long as the arrays are working well and not costing a lot in maintenance or repairs.

“The concerns we have are related to long-term costs,” said Helwig. “Will there be damage from wind and hail et cetera? But we have insurance to cover that, and we’ve got a really good warranty from the supplier and the installer. We’re good for 25 years long-term warranty from supplier and 15-year workmanship warranty with Enmax.”

The arrays come with a guarantee of 80 per cent output in 25 years’ time.

“We acknowledge that there will be a loss of about 0.8 per cent production every year,” Helwig said. “Twenty-five years from now we expect to see 80 per cent output from what we will see in year one. We expect the panels to last over 30 years, but we understand that there will be that loss in output over time.”

The district also installed solar panels on its office and shops in the past year.

“Most years the financial benefits of having the solar panels in place exceeds or will at least match what we’re paying for electricity as if the panels weren’t there,” said Helwig. “So we feel that’s a good investment. We’re happy that we’re able to install them and lease them over the 15 years without having to have any upfront costs to the water users.”

The post Inspired by farmers, irrigation district aims for ‘net zero’ appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

The Irrigation District Water Quality website is the creation of the Alberta Irrigation Districts Association, whose members have been participating in a project on water quality since 2006.

“The research objective at that time was basically to assess the quality of source water used for irrigation from food production perspective,” said Margo Redelback, executive director of the association (which recently changed its name from Alberta Irrigation Projects Association).

This allowed them to assess any changes in water quality as it travels through irrigation infrastructure in the various irrigation districts. They were also able to examine if there were differences in water quality between different types of systems, such as open canals versus pipeline systems.

The information was valuable, and the data collection continued with outside funding through to 2015. A year later, the irrigation districts began fully funding the program themselves through the association.

The information was provided to irrigation districts and others who requested it, but it wasn’t readily available to everyone. The data allows the districts to be proactive in addressing potential concerns.

“It was a good opportunity for them to understand if there are any consistent water quality issues in their irrigation infrastructure,” said Redelback. “Based on that, they’re able to reach out to other stakeholders to develop potential projects that could address those water quality concerns to improve the water quality in those areas.”

Producers may find the tool useful when complying with sustainability initiatives coming into play in agriculture. CanadaGAP, a food safety program for companies that produce and process fruits and vegetables, is one example of such an initiative.

“It’s my understanding that a number of irrigation producers in our area regularly have to report to CanadaGAP, and water quality is one of those criteria,” Redelback said. “The data tool is online and accessible by those irrigators making it easy for them to look at where their operations are, grab that information from the specific site, and move forward in their reporting requirements.”

The website features a map showing irrigation district infrastructure and each of the sampling sites used for this project.

“If you click on any of those sites you get a picture of the site; a description of what the site is; which irrigation district it’s in; primary, secondary or return site; and whether or not that site is active,” said Redelback. “If you click on the get data button, it will allow you to download basically all of the information that’s been obtained for that site over the period of the time that it has been a sample site.”

Raw data both current and historical, from each site includes, for example, measurements of nutrients, chlorophyll A, pesticides, and E. coli.

In the water quality index tab, users can quickly view an overall rating from excellent to poor.

“Water quality index values are calculated using an Alberta Ministry of Environment program that compares site-specific water quality data to irrigation water quality guidelines,” said Redelback. “If you’re looking at the map, you can easily see that there’s a lot of blue, so that means that overall the water quality index is excellent.”

In areas where concerns show up, the website allows its users to quickly see what levels were off, and to see if it’s an ongoing problem or an isolated issue. Data is typically collected three to four times a year, usually at the end of each month from May through August.

“The important thing about water quality is it’s not a static thing,” said Redelback. “That’s where long-term data collection is so important when you’re considering water quality.”

The post Full disclosure: Years of water quality data now available appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

And they’re big — both in terms of reducing inputs and in boosting yields.

Last fall, economists Lorraine Nicol and Chris Nicol surveyed irrigators in the Taber Irrigation District and found 81 per cent of them have implemented some measure of precision agriculture. There is a high satisfaction rate with the technologies, and many who utilize them plan to adopt more in the future.

But the two academics also dug deeper into the results of adopting those technologies.

“We really wanted to examine the impact on the resources that they are using because irrigation water is critical,” said Lorraine Nicol. “Any efficiencies are important to their bottom line but also to the ecological health of water in the region.”

Irrigation water use in general has declined by 24 per cent on average because of the implementation of precision agriculture. The study also showed a 14 to 24 per cent reduction in fertilizer, herbicide, and pesticide use.

“It all means a very good outcome from an ecological point of view,” said Nicol.

Although a federal study looked at precision ag use in Western Canada, the University of Lethbridge study is the first to focus on strictly irrigators. Producers were asked to complete a questionnaire focusing on 20 precision ag technologies in three broad categories:

• Basic technologies included auto steer technology, yield mapping, soil moisture monitoring, weather monitoring, variable-rate fertilizer and irrigation application, GPS soil sampling, and developing management zones.
• Soil mapping techniques included terrain mapping/analysis, spatial variability of available water-holding capacity, electric conductivity mapping, satellite imagery, unmanned aerial vehicle mapping, and establishing field boundaries/low spots/unfarmable land.
• Data management included studying/analyzing yield data, using hydrological modelling and forecasting to predict soil moisture status, developing dynamic water management zones, using precision agriculture data management software or services, using precision agriculture technology for records and analysis, and using precision agriculture for on-farm research.

Along with the water reduction and use of inputs, adopting precision ag practices also boosted yields and quality of crops, said Nicol.

“The survey showed under precision agriculture, crop yields have increased an average 20 per cent and yearly crop quality has increased by an average of 16 per cent,” she said.

The study not only looked at the level of adoption of these technologies and the results they produced, but also the motivation behind adopting these practices.

“Sure, there’s an economic bottom line, and they (irrigators) particularly are looking at reducing energy costs, reducing labour, and reducing machine time,” she said. “But we also found almost half of the respondents look at the environmental impact of what they are doing.”

So why aren’t 100 per cent taking this win-win-win approach to farming?

“The ones who haven’t adopted any precision agriculture have a small farm size, less than 2,000 acres,” said Nicol. “Their motivation not to (adopt) was the farm size and related to that was the cost of the technology.”

But this might change over time.

“I do say in my paper that the cost of technologies does tend to come down over time and farm size does tend to increase over time, so maybe those non-adopters will adopt in the future,” she said.

Nicol plans to repeat the study in two additional irrigation districts in Alberta. She also sees the value in repeating the survey in the Taber Irrigation District in the future to see if adoption continues to increase and what the effects are.

The advances in recent years have been enormous, said Nicol, adding the approach used when she did her first irrigation studies more than a decade ago now seem to be from another era.

“We were talking about touch and feel methods of farmers just going out and digging in the soil and feeling the soil and testing for moisture,” she said. “Those methods are very antiquated compared to now. It gives you a sense of how far we’ve come and how those technologies have really taken off.”

The post Precision agriculture means less is more for irrigators appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

But some are also looking to the past and measuring the impact that forest fires have on the quantity and quality of run-off — two factors that could have major implications for Alberta’s irrigation districts.

“If you’ve got climate change broadening out the fire season and maybe melting your snowpacks a little earlier to begin with, and on top of it you’ve got a fire-affected landscape where it melts even sooner, you could have effects that are just exacerbated by one another,” said Chris Williams, a research hydrologist and PhD student with the Southern Rockies Watershed Project with the University of Alberta.

“It’s easy to see that the effects could make it as far as the irrigation providers, but the scales are large, so there’s a lot of variability there.”

Williams has been involved with a long-term study of the effects of the Lost Creek Fire in the Crowsnest Pass area in 2003.

“Every year since 2005, around the time of peak snow water equivalent, we’ve gone out and we’ve measured snow courses,” said Williams. “We set up five snow courses in a reference stand — a subalpine forest that was still healthy and then we set up five in a burned area. The big roll-up number from those 10 years of work is 78 per cent more snow water equivalent in the burn stand than in the reference stand.”

More water may sound like a good thing, but when that water runs off — and in what volume — are key factors, and the research is not reassuring on that score.

Snow water equivalent is the amount of water you’d be left with if you melted all the snow. The 78 per cent increase equates to 152 millimetres of more snow water equivalent in the burn compared to the healthy forest. (Each snow course is a 100-metre-long transect in the forest where depth measurements and snow core samples are taken.)

The main reason for the difference, is that a subalpine canopy (mostly fir and spruce with some lodgepole pine) is dense and a lot of snow lands on branches. Much of the intercepted snow is sublimated (that is, goes from snow to water vapour without melting) and so never makes it to the ground.

On the other hand, once fire destroys that subalpine canopy, a lot more snow comes to rest on the forest floor.

Then comes spring

Not surprisingly, snow melts faster when there aren’t any trees to shade it. As well, dark ash and char mixed in with the snow accelerates the melt even more, said Williams. In the April to October ice-free months from 2005 to 2014, researchers measured the average run-offs of three burned and two unburned watersheds in the Crowsnest Pass. The preliminary results show a clear difference.

“Fifty per cent of the water yield in the burned streams was arriving at our gauging stations by about June 10,” said Williams. “In the reference watersheds only about 20 per cent of the run-off was arriving by that date.

“So in the reference watersheds, it was taking an extra nine to 10 days to basically have an equivalent amount of water yield pass our gauging stations.”

Researchers have also taken thousands of water samples since 2004. A study encompassing 2004 to 2007 showed significant increases in sediment in burned catchments than in reference catchments.

“Total suspended sediment concentration and yields were eight times greater in the burn catchments than in the reference catchments,” said Williams.

These levels change throughout the year, with less sediment in the winter when flows are low, and more in spring or during storm floods. During a storm, sediment loads from the burned areas were up to 100 times larger.

This effect persists for a long time after a forest fire.

“We never really saw a lot of recovery,” said Williams. “We were still getting quite high sediment loads even after a decade of research there in the burned streams.”

What lies ahead

“Most of the literature is showing fairly steady increases in fires since the 1980s in terms of area burned and also the severity — the intensity of the wildfires,” said Williams.

In 2017, British Columbia set a new record for the total area burned by fire — breaking one that dated back to the 1950s. That record lasted just a year as a new one was set in 2018.

“If you put the two years together, more area was burned in B.C. in 2017 and 2018 than there was over the last 30 years combined,” said Williams. “It seems to be a problem that’s certainly not getting better.”

In 2017, the Kenow Wildfire burned more than 38,000 hec­tares, half of them in Waterton Lakes National Park. In that case, lakes and reservoirs buffered the St. Mary River Irrigation District from the effects of fire, said manager Terrence Lazarus. But it was a reminder that more wildfires are one of the challenges resulting from climate change, he added.

“The bigger picture for us is how to manage these changes because coupled with that is changes in the climate and changes in the seeding patterns and changes in when the crop grows in the ground, that sort of thing,” said Lazarus. “I think it just talks to adaptability. We’ve always had to be adaptable.”

The difference will be the scale and speed of change, he added.

“The fire’s one symptom of the disease,” said Lazarus. “Once you add it up, the adaptability piece is going to be huge as the basin characteristics change. I believe it’s all part of the same story about our changing climate. We are seeing the symptoms of that particular disease.

“Alberta’s always been unpredictable, but those unpredictable parameters are definitely widening.”

The post More wildfires and changes in run-off a challenge for irrigation district appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

Now, a new report says there are ways to both prevent a similar disaster and also help mitigate the impact of drought.

The Bow River Working Group — composed of officials from the province, Calgary, and rural municipalities as well as reps from irrigation districts, First Nations communities, TransAlta, and others — has recently submitted a report to the province on infrastructure options.

“The appropriate studies need to be done so they can determine what can be implemented for infrastructure,” said Richard Phillips, general manager of the Bow River Irrigation District. “If something isn’t done, sooner or later Calgary will be hit by a Bow River flood that will be an absolute disaster there.”

The Elbow River was the primary cause of flooding in Calgary in 2013 and there’s already a plan to deal with that waterway — the Springbank Off-Stream Reservoir, which will be able to temporarily store 70 million cubic metres of surge run-off.

But the Bow River and its upper tributaries are also a major flood threat. The working group used computer modelling and other information to examine three possible options to protect Calgary: expand the Ghost Reservoir (located in the foothills west of the city); build a new dam just upstream from that reservoir near Morley; or build a new dam between the reservoir and Calgary at Glenbow Provincial Park.

From an irrigation perspective, the Glenbow option is the least beneficial, said Phillips.

“(The reservoir) would be so small as to offer no benefit whatsoever to the irrigation districts,” he said. “An expansion of Ghost could be more beneficial for overall water management, and the Morley reservoir could be very beneficial because that can operate both as a meaningful water management reservoir as well as providing significant flood protection.”

Drought protection

The old saying, ‘it never rains but it pours,’ applies to this sort of project — but the former is more frequent than the latter.

“Droughts happen much more frequently than floods,” said Phillips. “Both 2015 and 2017 were dry years and we did OK with them, but we sure drew hard on the river both those years.”

One solution recommended for drought mitigation is off-stream reservoirs. Two options are the Delacour Reservoir in the Western Irrigation District, and Deadhorse Coulee Reservoir in the Bow River Irrigation District. Preliminary engineering on these projects looks promising and it’s important to recognize that what benefits one irrigation district benefits all, said Phillips.

“Any time any one of us has better storage, it can help everybody because if you’ve got water in storage you don’t need to be pulling it out of the river as much,” he said. “So there’s more in the river for others.”

The group also determined that a dam at Eyremore could flood back to the Bassano Dam and provide a backup for release into the lower Bow River if the river levels are very low. That would give the Eastern Irrigation District valuable water security while providing excellent flood protection for Medicine Hat, the working group concluded.

“This is a project that was first looked at back in the ’60s by what was then known as Calgary Power, for a new hydro dam,” said Phillips. “(Eyremore) is in a sparsely populated area and there’s a good site to build a dam there.

“The modelling showed excellent results. It would also provide benefit to the Oldman basin because right now when things are tight, the only provincial storage they can really draw on is the Oldman reservoir.”

Balancing the system

Many of the projects suggested by the working group address more than one area of water management.

The Carseland Bow River headworks system offers relatively straightforward solutions to balancing the system. If the province and Bow River Irrigation District fill reservoirs at McGregor, Travers, and Little Bow earlier when flows are higher (or even hold more water over the winter some years), it would provide water security for irrigators and the Siksika Nation irrigation project.

Other potential solutions for balancing the system include increasing the size of the Glenmore Reservoir (for Calgary’s use, not for irrigation); using the Kananaskis reservoirs for drought mitigation (currently being done on a trial basis); and increasing the ability to draw the Ghost Reservoir down rapidly.

The working group also recommended continuing the practice of keeping water levels lower at the Ghost Reservoir until late June in case there’s a large rainfall and quick snowmelt (which caused the 2013 flood).

“The options for balancing the system are obviously good pro­jects,” said Phillips. “They’re easily implemented at a very reasonable cost and in some cases at no cost.”

The group’s report has been submitted, and now it’s in the hands of officials at Alberta Environment and Parks. Improving water management will benefit water users, communities along the river, and the river itself, said Phillips.

The post Flood protection offers win-win for irrigators appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“We have to be careful (with field studies) because you might harm somebody’s crop or interfere with whatever the farmer had planned,” said Willemijn Appels, a hydrologist and soil physicist.

“You can’t push systems and the crops growing based off those systems quite to the extreme that you might need to really understand what’s going on in the soil.”

Two years ago, the Dutch scientist became the inaugural Mueller Applied Research Chair in Irrigation Science at Lethbridge College and has since been investigating how differing subsurface drip irrigation setups and management techniques affect the movement of water in different soil types. The college recently completed a new trades facility that includes a large space for collaborative applied research between scientists and community partners (in this case, drip irrigation supplier Southern Irrigation). This provides a controlled environment for testing equipment and not only runs test plots year round, but pushes crops to extremes.

Producers in southern Alberta experienced a real-life version of that last summer during a prolonged spell of hot, dry weather. One of them was Ken Coles, general manager of Farming Smarter, a farmer-run research organization.

Coles has irrigated 110 acres with subsurface drip for the past two years and installed an additional system on 20 acres last year. He’s been happy with the efficiency of the system, but last year’s drought created some challenges.

“It got so dry we didn’t really get the water to distribute both horizontally and vertically to the degree I hoped,” Coles said.

• Read more: Solar-powered irrigation proving its worth for Alberta operation

He speculates that even a tiny bit of rain might have made a difference to how the system performed. There was no rain through most of the growing season, and so the top of the soil crusted. That may have limited water movement in the soil.

“A little bit of rain that would soften the top up and probably would have given the water a chance to move up,” Coles said. “And a little more time back under zero till (would have helped) because we did have to till it after we installed it. I do think that it’s going to be one of those things that needs to be in combination with zero till.”

Lethbridge College researchers built three raised beds — six metres long, three metres wide, and 90 centimetres deep. Each has a different soil type (donated by area producers): sand, clay, and loam. The large beds allow the drip lines to be installed at distances found in the field, with multiple configurations in each bed. Each has four individually controlled drip systems that can be run independently of each other. They are set at two different depths and with two different emitter spacings along the lines.

“We’re experimenting with time and frequency of applications, and the effects of that on the shape of the wetted area around the emitters,” said Appels. “The main goal is to get water to go up and sideways and not down too much.”

The test plots are planted with alfalfa because it has deep roots and uses a lot of water.

“The main problem with these types of experiments is not so much getting the water in, but getting it out when you want to do a second experiment.”

A large collection of sensors installed throughout the beds enable the researchers to track water movement in close detail, including how quickly it moves in all directions within the soil.

“Normally, you can’t really see what is happening but now that we’ve heavily instrumented these beds, you can pretty much have a peek underground,” said Appels.

There are also weather stations (despite it being an indoor facility) that monitor air movement from things such as ventilation systems, as this can create differences in evaporation and transpiration.

Currently, one of the main attractions of subsurface drip is the ability to irrigate irregularly shaped fields. It can also reduce disease and weed germination (because neither foliage or the surface of the soil gets wet) while offering both water and energy savings.

But Appels and her fellow researchers hope to give farmers one more reason to consider subsurface drip. While they’re currently just looking at water movement, they hope to move on to fertigation.

“One of the big promises of subsurface drip irrigation systems is that you can not only apply water directly where the roots are, but also the nutrients,” she said. “If you can put nutrients such that they’re more accessible to the crop, then you might push yields, or at least very much improve the nutrients use efficiency.”

Applying nutrients directly to the roots can result in yield increases.

“Just the watering itself might be just increasing water use efficiency — but yield increase, that would make a larger public interested in doing this,” said Appels.

Coles has used his system for fertigation and had some banding in his fields because the water didn’t distribute evenly. He’s looking forward to the results of this research project.

“First you have to distribute the water well, then you can distribute the fertility well,” he said.

The researchers also want to ensure their work benefits producers in southern Alberta.

“We hope to do some outreach to people who have already implemented the systems so they see the effects of implementing various management decisions,” said Appels.

The post Bringing crops indoors generating research insights appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

So the brothers approached Enmax and a Lethbridge solar installation company called Solar Optix to look at their electrical bills. The numbers seemed to pan out, and it looked like the system would pay for itself in about 15 years, so they took the leap.

Solar isn’t new, but this application of it is in Alberta.

“It’s never a bad thing to be right at the start of things,” said Cory Nelson of Merlinds Farms near Grassy Lake. “My dad was always that way. He liked to try new things. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t, but it’s fun to try new things.

“In Alberta, Enmax said we were the first ones for a large-scale system.”

The Nelsons installed a 91.8-kilowatt array (estimated to produce 125.7 megawatt hours or enough to run a pivot irrigating four quarter sections of land), and a 44.6-kW array (producing approximately 60.66 MWh, or enough to irrigate two quarter sections of land).

The system is a net-zero setup. This means that the overall energy production and overall energy usage should come out to zero over the span of a year. While energy production is high in the irrigation season, so is usage, and the Nelsons need to draw on energy from the grid during that time. But in the winter, when usage is zero, there is still energy production, so it balances out over time.

When setting up the system, Solar Optix looked at the last couple of years of electrical usage to estimate a net-zero target, although in reality it could be more or less in any given year, depending on factors such as snowfall or differing irrigation seasons.

“We have some years that are drier, some that are wetter — so it varies,” said Erika Grintals, the company’s owner and solar sales manager. “That’s important for farmers to understand. If they want to do a net-zero array, you need to look at more than one year of consumption.

“We try to be conservative (with estimates of how much energy the system will produce to ensure that the customer is going to be happy with the result.”

The Nelsons didn’t reveal what their system cost, but said the estimated payback is 15 years. The Solar Energy Society of Alberta says the cost for a ground-mounted array runs about $3.50 per installed watt.

Merlinds Farms also accessed a grant through a program that is no longer in place, but a revamped On-Farm Solar Photovoltaics program offered by Growing Forward 2 actually offers higher grants that cover up to 35 per cent of the cost. (It requires systems be tied to the grid; approved under Alberta’s Micro-Generation Legislation; positioned to optimize sunshine; have manufacturer warranties; and be installed on a site ID that has a Distribution Rate Class of Farm, Irrigation, Grain Drying or equivalent. Producers must also obtain approval before the system is ordered, purchased, or installed. For more info, go to www.growingforward.alberta.ca and search for ‘On-Farm Solar Photovoltaics.’)

Worry-free power bills

Solar for irrigation is a big investment, but it’s one with a long lifespan.

“The useful life is — just as a guess — about 35 to 40 years,” said Cory Nelson.

One of the advantages to pairing solar with irrigation is that the biggest electrical draw happens at the same time as the biggest electrical production. This means the benefit to the producer is greater because transmission fees will be lower.

“Right now the payback on irrigation pivots versus any type of other service is the best there is. They’re getting the best payback for their buck,” Grintals said.

Once the loans are paid and the system has covered its cost in energy savings, the only power costs for these pivots will be transmission and delivery charges.

“Once we’ve locked this in, this will produce all the power we need for quite awhile — certainly the rest of my farming career,” Nelson said. “Twenty years from now, if it costs me $40,000 for pumping and I get a (credit) for $40,000, then it comes to zero. It doesn’t matter if the price for power goes to $60,000, or drops to $10,000, it’s still going to be zero.”

Merlinds Farms is just wrapping up its first irrigation season with the solar-powered pivots, and it’s looking good so far.

“On a really good day in July it will produce close to 70 per cent of the power required during that heat of the day,” Nelson said.

The brothers are also looking at upgrading their systems in other ways to improve energy efficiency, such as using a variable frequency drive pump and lowering the pressure a little bit more.

“We do have drop tubes and low pressure, but we could even drop it down just a little bit more — maybe another five to 10 pounds,” he said. “That way if it’s just a little bit more efficient, then I’ll actually be producing maybe just a little more than what I’m using.”

It’s rewarding seeing the meter slow down, or even go backwards.

“It’s a two-way meter so it goes backwards when I’m not running and starts spinning when I am running,” Nelson said. “It’s kind of interesting to see on your bill — you see a negative number. That’s nice when the power company owes you money for a little while.”

The brothers have their eye on putting more irrigation pivots on solar power.

“We even talked to Enmax and said that in the off-season in November, once we’ve had a whole year to look at it, there’s a couple of other systems that we think would be a real nice fit,” Nelson said. “We gave them some preliminary numbers to look at and told them to get back to us but not until we’ve (gone) through the whole season.”

The post Solar-powered irrigation proving its worth for Alberta operation appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

And recent changes are making hemp even more attractive in Alberta, including a new hemp-processing facility slated for Nisku and a long-hoped-for easing of regulations by Health Canada.

“Up until last year, all hemp was carried to Manitoba where the major processors are,” said Jan Slaski, who wears many hats as senior researcher and team lead for crop development and management at InnoTech Alberta, a Crown economic development agency.

“I’m pretty much positive 2017 will be a record-breaking year as far as (hemp) production is concerned.”

That optimism stems largely from the decision of Hempco Food and Fiber Inc. to build a new 56,000-square-foot grain- and fibre-processing facility at Nisku. The company is publicly traded, but the majority of shares are still owned by founders Charles and Angela Holmes. Hempco has been processing hemp seeds since 2008 and has a line of hemp-based foods, snacks and oil sold under the brand name PlanetHemp.

The company, which has oil presses in Saskatchewan along with hulling and milling facilities in Manitoba, is preparing for long-term growth with its Nisku facility, said CEO Charles Holmes.

It has contracted more than 10,000 acres this year, he said.

“That produces for us about 1,000 pounds per acre,” said Holmes. “So if you say 10,000 acres, that’s about 10 million pounds of product.”

But that is just this year’s goal.

“The facility we have has the capacity to do six times that,” he said. “That’s what our goal is over the next two to three years. We are building a facility that will be able to process any expansions in the industry, quick or slow, in the next two to five years.”

Less paperwork

After years of lobbying by the Hemp Canada Trade Alliance, Health Canada is relaxing regulations that have required growers to jump through hoops aimed at ensuring no one uses hemp production as a cover to grow marijuana, its soon-to-be decriminalized cousin.

In November, Health Canada made two significant changes. First, although seed growers will still have to test for THC levels (the psychoactive chemical in marijuana), commercial growers won’t have to for most hemp varieties. This not only saves costs, but also removes the risk of having to delay seeding while waiting for approval.

“Producers don’t have to wait until late June to put seeds in the ground if they want to plant in May,” said Slaski, who is also a director with the Hemp Canada Trade Alliance.

That can be key as agronomic studies by Farming Smarter found hemp can perform very differently, depending on seeding dates. The studies, all done on irrigated land, found there’s a sweet spot for seeding: Seed too early and you get tall plants (and lots of stalks and other residue to deal with later). But wait too long, and yields are reduced.

“When folks are targeting grain, they’re also seeding their hemp quite late — end of May beginning of June,” said Ken Coles, general manager of Farming Smarter. “They’re doing that so the crop doesn’t grow as tall and it doesn’t really impact the grain yield as much.”

And growing hemp under irrigation offers a major boost.

“Hemp can be grown on dryland and on irrigated land,” Slaski said. “You can get 30 to 40 per cent more grain yield on irrigated land.”

The other big Health Canada change gives producers field rotation flexibility — producers now only need to provide GPS co ordinates and legal land description of hemp fields after seeding rather than with the initial licence application.

Health Canada has also hired more people so it takes less time from application submission through to licensing.

Fibre potential

While grain is the big money-maker in hemp production right now, advocates of the crop have long touted the potential of fibre. Long fibre can be used for biocomposite materials and the core portion is used for biobuilding materials and animal bedding. Currently, InnoTech Alberta has the only decortication plant in North America, a pilot plant capable of processing one ton of straw per hour.

“A commercial facility would be seven to eight tons per hour input,” said Slaski.

Hempco’s Nisku facility will be approximately half fibre processing and half food processing.

There is some demand for InnoTech Alberta’s fibre in Alberta, although it’s limited. TTS – Sustainable Biocomposite Technologies processes ‘biofibres’ (such as wood, hemp, and straw) used to make mats, panels, and other products at its facility in Drayton Valley while Just Bio Fiber in Calgary is using biofibres for construction materials.

Some varieties are suitable for grain production while others produce both grain and fibre.

“Varieties like Finola that have very short stature and not a lot of biomass tend to be the preferred varieties (for grain) because (farmers) don’t have to deal with the huge amounts of biomass going through their combines,” Coles said. “X59 is a nice dual-purpose plant. It’s in between on biomass and still good on grain.”

The Canadian Hemp Trade Alliance is also working with Health Canada to access another part of the hemp plant as a revenue source.

“We’re talking about using flowers and leaves for extraction of bioactive compounds, specifically non-narcotic cannabinoids,” Slaski said. “The most popular non-narcotic cannabinoid is CBD. This is a great revenue stream because CBD sells for extremely high prices.”

Processed as an oil, CBD (short for cannabidiol) is touted to have health benefits, including as a treatment to control epileptic seizures.

Currently, CBD-rich chaff, leaves, and flower parts are left on the ground.

“However, we could have a chaff collector to collect this part of the plant and extract the non-narcotic cannabinoid for medical applications and pharmaceutical uses,” said Slaski.

Hempco is prepared for CBD processing.

“We’re leaving a small section there for doing CBD processing,” Holmes said. “As soon as the legislation changes, we can have that available to us.”

In the meantime, Hempco is installing fibre-processing machines and awaiting some rezoning to accommodate the food-processing portion.

“We will have 12 to 15 people there this summer,” said Holmes. “We’re moving our office out of Vancouver, shutting that down, and moving everything to Alberta. By the fall, we should be set up with at least 20 to 30 people working there.”

For this year, Hempco has filled all of its contracts of conventionally grown hemp, but is still looking for more organic acres.

“I can take almost all the organic acres that can be made out there,” Holmes said. “There’s lots of demand.”

The post Hemp’s prospects are on the upswing appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

For decades, Alberta has been protected by a buffer of mussel-free provinces and states — but that defensive line was breached in October when state officials found larval mussels, known as veligers, in the Tiber and Canyon Ferry reservoirs in Montana.

“Tiber Reservoir is considered positive for mussels because there were five different samples for mussels that came back positive and they came from all different areas of the reservoir,” said Kate Wilson, an aquatic invasive species specialist with Alberta Environment and Parks.

“In Canyon Ferry, they are considering it suspect because they received only two positives back, and there was a chance that they could be false positives.”

While both reservoirs are close, Tiber Reservoir is only 60 kilometres from the Alberta border. But irrigation officials say the risk was already significant.

“Though they are closer, that doesn’t mean that we are all that more at risk,” said Ron McMullin, executive director of Alberta Irrigation Projects Association. “We are still within a day’s drive of Lake Winnipeg or some of the reservoirs in Utah that have them. Whether it’s a two-hour drive or a 12-hour drive, it’s still within a day’s drive.”

The province’s response to the threat is focused on three main areas: Helping Montana keep the mussels out, increased inspection station presence, and increased monitoring.

Cindy Sawchuk, the provincial K9 Conservation Lead recently took her dog — which is trained to sniff boats for the presence of mussels — down to Montana to help do a shoreline survey. There have been no adult mussels found at either of the at-risk reservoirs, so using dogs to confirm water sample detection could be a very useful tool if a positive shows up in another jurisdiction.

“Right now, she’s in Lake Powell (a reservoir on the Colorado River) working on training the dogs to do exactly that,” Wilson said in an interview earlier this month. “That’s a new thing for the dogs to be looking along the lakeshore.”

There will be additional watercraft inspection stations this season, and they will operate with increased hours. Watercraft inspections are for all boats, motorized and not, and the station at Coutts (on Highway 4 at the Montana border) is operating 24 hours a day and seven days a week. Dunmore and Vermilion (on the Trans-Canada and Yellowhead highways respectively) will operate on extended hours as well. As well, two new stations have been proposed for the southern border.

There have also been measures to improve screening.

The Canadian Border Services Agency has agreed to have every boat that crosses the border fill out a form that obtains the same information collected at inspection stations.

“They send us the form and we’ll be able to follow up with anyone who has a high-risk boat or who for any reason we need to get in touch with,” Wilson said. “We’ll have all the info we need to do that.”

Additionally, there will be increased monitoring of the waterbodies in Alberta.

“We obviously need to do more monitoring, particularly in the south,” Wilson said. “Partly because of the proximity, but also because those irrigation reservoirs are very vulnerable.”

The provincial government monitors using two methods: A substrate check, using items such as a PVC pipe placed in the water and regularly checked for adult mussels, and water-quality monitoring that includes checking for veligers. A local lab processes water samples, which has greatly decreased the turnaround time from sample collection to results.

“We used to send to Ontario and now we do this right in Edmonton with a private lab,” Wilson said.

Private citizens can also contribute to mussel monitoring and data collection, through an online app called EDDMaps. If citizens spot any invasive species, they can report it through the website www.eddmaps.org/Alberta/ or mobile app. They can also report a negative. Some people will report when they pull their dock out of the water, others choose to hang a PVC pipe or brick off their dock and check more frequently. As often as they check, they can report their findings.

Alberta is also continuing its Clean, Drain, Dry promotions and enforcing the Pull the Plug law. Anyone who sees something suspicious in the water or on a boat is urged to call the hotline 1-855-336-BOAT (2628).

While the hope is to keep mussels out of the province’s waterways, contingency plans are being made.

“There is work going on so that someday if we get these things we’ll be able to cope with them better,” McMullin said. “Alberta Agriculture and Alberta Environment are working on getting potash registered to kill the mussels.”

It was an approach that was tried — unsuccessfully — in a Lake Winnipeg harbour in 2014. The method might work better in a pipeline system and the Eastern Irrigation District is working with Alberta Agriculture to figure out how to get the concentration of potash high enough to be lethal to mussels. But there are 4,000 kilometres of irrigation pipeline delivering water to farms, and an additional 4,000 kilometres of irrigation pipe on the farms themselves. These are ideal places for the mussels to attach and grow. Estimates put the cost of control, should mussels end up in Alberta, at $75 million per year.

McMullin is hoping that costly effort won’t ever be needed.

“We need to be cautious when moving any sporting equipment or fishing equipment or watercraft from lake to lake,” he said. “Everything needs to be cleaned and dry before it goes to another water body.”

The post The threat of invasive mussels draws ever closer to Alberta appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

In March, Willemijn Appels took up her new posting, which was created with a $3.1-million gift from the estate of Lloyd and Dorothy Mueller two years ago.

“My job over the last six months has been trying to find people who want to collaborate with the college in developing research questions that are relevant, new, and that will really benefit local producers,” said Appels.

Appels’ expertise is in water movement through the soil.

“It’s important that you know how long water stays in the soil. That will influence how long it is available to plants,” Appels said. “Crops can only take water from the upper 50 to 100 centimetres of the soil, so as soon as it’s out of that reach, it’s no longer of any use to them.”

Knowing how different soil properties affect water retention and flow can help understand how water needs to be applied.

She also focuses on how it reaches plants, and how it moves and transports solutes like nutrients, pesticides, and salts.

“If you know that soil properties are clayey or sandy, then what does it mean for how long we can hold on to water that we apply?”

This also applies to how fast nutrients such as fertilizer or manure are flushed out of reach of the plant root.

Over the summer, she set up one small field study, putting soil moisture sensors in three sites, and looked at the differences in water dynamics in the soil in the root zone under various irrigation techniques: A hand-moved system, a pivot, and a subsurface drip system.

Appels also has a strong interest in examining variable-rate irrigation. Applying different amounts of water to different areas of a field based on topography, soil variability, and other factors has been hailed in some quarters as a game-changing technology.

Appels agrees variable rate is promising, but said she feels there’s work to be done in quantifying the benefits and costs.

“The idea is great, but can we actually monitor the crops well enough to apply water in situ, even if we have the technology to do that?” she asked.

In addition to the field work, Appels is trained as a computer modeller. In the off season, she works at creating models that simulate how water moves in the fields. This aids in understanding the flow and water uptake, and models allow her to study events you wouldn’t want to subject a field to.

“If we want to examine what the effect would be of 100 millimetres of rain in two hours, it’s best done with modelling, rather than an actual field,” she said. “I’m trying to see what the effects of really wet events, really dry events, and irrigation management are on crops.”

But Appels also has a bigger target — helping the next generation of farmers achieve a higher level of agronomy to optimize production on irrigated land. And the key to that is making current and emerging technology more accessible to producers, she said.

“What farmers are doing now works — the sector as a whole is doing great,” she said. “But I think there are quite a lot of options there to take that a step further.”

Producers with ideas for research projects or who are willing to be collaborators in studies, can contact Appels at willemijn.appels@lethbridgecollege.ca.

The post Working with producers top priority for irrigation research chair appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.