A black-and-white photo of a farmer in suspenders and hat operating a horse-drawn dump rake in a hay field used in the early 1900s to salvage short hay crops when farm water supply and rainfall were scarce. Photo: file.

When the taps run dry

A Calgary water outage sends Hart back to the 1960s drought that tested his family’s farm

Reading Time: 4 minutes A modern water outage sends a columnist back to the decade when wells ran dry and every stem of hay counted.

Richard Phillips answers a question about the process of potential data centres applying for water licences in Alberta, as part of a Q&A session at the Alberta Sugar Beet Growers AGM. Photo: Greg Price

Water, water everywhere … for farmers and data centres

Alberta irrigation expert breaks down water demand as province targets $100B in AI infrastructure

Reading Time: 4 minutes Alberta's push for AI data centres raises water questions, but irrigation district manager says northern rivers have plenty of capacity for ag and tech.


RJ Sigurdson, MLA for Highwood, is sworn in on June 9, 2023 as Alberta’s minister of agriculture and irrigation. (Government of Alberta video screengrab via YouTube)

Calgary-area MLA named Alberta’s new ag minister

RJ Sigurdson to handle ag file, Horner moves to finance

The Alberta government’s caucus lead on emergency medical services (EMS) reform has been promoted to handle the agriculture file in a post-election cabinet shuffle. RJ Sigurdson, MLA for the constituency of Highwood, just south of Calgary, was sworn in Friday by Lt.-Gov. Salma Lakhani as Alberta’s new minister of agriculture and irrigation, replacing Nate Horner. […] Read more

Crop quality has been a steep, fast downward plunge

Reading Time: 2 minutes The crop report from Alberta Agriculture in late July was — not surprisingly — dismal. But the speed of the deterioration of crop quality was nevertheless noteworthy. “Only 20 per cent of the annual crops (are) good or excellent,” it said in its end-of-July report. “This represents a 17-point drop in the last two weeks […] Read more


Well workshops with a local flavour

Reading Time: < 1 minute With the pandemic sidelining in-person meetings, Working Well workshops are being held online — but with a local element. The workshops provide information for rural property owners on how to manage and maintain their wells. This year, there will be seven online workshops hosted by municipalities during February and March. Each will have experts from […] Read more

Scott Meers.

Insect specialist Scott Meers retires

Reading Time: < 1 minute The man known as the ‘bug counter’ is stepping down. In an email he wrote to the Alberta Insect Pest Monitoring network newsletter, Scott Meers said that it has been an honour to work in this role, but it is time to move on. He also stated that he has made the decision independent of […] Read more


If your acres weren’t located in southern Alberta, you likely had a chance to make some harvest progress late last week.

Wet weather continues, stalling Alberta harvest further

Alberta Crop Report: Conditions as of October 15

Reading Time: 5 minutes Wet weather along with below normal temperatures have been the dominant pattern in Alberta over the past couple of weeks. During the long weekend, large areas in the North East and North West Regions received between 10 to 15 mm of precipitation in the form of either rain or rain and snow mix. For the […] Read more

Seeding in Alberta complete, forage growers struggle with dry weather

Alberta Crop Report: Conditions as of June 11

Reading Time: 3 minutes With the exception of a few feed crops, seeding is essentially finished in Alberta. Producers are actively spraying and scouting fields. Areas of concern vary from smoke and frost in the north to flea beetles and cutworms in other pockets of the province. In the week ending June 11 there were rainfall events providing 15 […] Read more