Four months of hauling tonnes of rocks.
Pulling out the traditional sprinkler-based irrigation pivots.
Installing new water lines underground throughout the field.
It cost Robert Wolbert $3 million and months of hard work for a new irrigation system for his ranch, about 180 kilometres south of Calgary. But he says it’s worth it.
It’s a technology he believes will cut his water use in half. And despite the current drought, that leaves him bullish on Alberta agriculture.
“I really believe … someday in the future there won’t be any sprinkle irrigation because water is one of our most prized resources in southern Alberta,” said Wolbert, looking out over a field ready to be planted for the first time above new water lines.
“We went through a pretty dry period.… And is there a worse one coming? I don’t know. Probably,” he said.
“We’re gonna have to change some of the things we do. Subsurface irrigation is one of those changes. But, you know, we don’t give up. We keep changing. We keep trying and experimenting.”
Alberta’s traditional pivots irrigate by sprinkling water from above. Unfortunately, the water can easily evaporate or blow off in the wind.
Wolbert’s new subsurface drip irrigation will instead run pressurized water through flexible plastic tubes underground.
That puts water right where the plants need it, at the roots.
Parts of Alberta have been facing a severe drought for years. This year, the St. Mary River Irrigation District had to cut farmers’ water allocation in half, and despite welcome rain this month, farmers and ranchers are still watching the sky with a cautious eye.
The provincial government announced emergency plans and $19 million in funding to reduce water loss in the irrigation system — the pumps, reservoirs and canals that get the water to the farm gate.
It hasn’t talked as much about funding to reduce water use on the farms and ranches themselves. But that’s where some landowners are focused.
Wolbert’s ranch is north of Lundbreck along Highway 22, in the foothills of the Livingstone Mountain range. He owns a small lake that supplies the water to the filter house, which uses only solar power and gravity to pressurize the lines and supply water to small emitters in the field.
They’re integrated into the pipes every three feet (about a metre), and can supply both water and fertilizer to each zone of the field based on the specific crop needs.
He figures the investment will pay for itself over about 12 years because he was able to double the amount of land under irrigation to 500 acres (202 ha).
On a CBC News tour of his ranch, he sounds thrilled with the project, confident it will make his limited water supplies go much further.
So why haven’t more landowners adopted this technology?
Kees van Beek sells subsurface drip irrigation through Southern Irrigation LP, in Lethbridge.
He says the technology is popular around the world, including in California, Texas, Ukraine and Israel. Alberta farmers started installing it about 10 years ago, and he now knows of 20 landowners who have it on a combined total of over 4,400 acres (1,780 ha).
Internationally, specialists sell this technology by promising “30-30-30.” That’s 30 per cent less operating cost, 30 per cent less water and 30 per cent more yield. But it does cost more initially.
‘Keeping public buy-in’
At Lethbridge College, van Beek is working with senior research chair Willemijn Appels on an 18-acre research project to see what the numbers are like in an Alberta-specific context. She says this could be an important tool, especially as farms continue to use large amounts of water during a drought.
“If we’re serious as an agricultural sector about expanding while keeping public buy-in … people ask why is agriculture using so much water? Should they be using so much water? I think having access to this type of technology and knowing how you can work with it on a very large scale is helpful,” said Appels.
It’s good for the landowner, too.
“It also gets you a sense of resiliency, right?” she said. “If you can grow a crop comfortably on seven or eight inches of water, that’s much better than if you have to use 16 inches.”
“In southern Alberta, the sunshine, the wind, it just blasts water. Any free water above the ground gets blasted off quite quickly. So if you can insert water below that evaporation layer … that’s enormous.”
The challenges for this technology
But as Appels talked, her research crews were digging in the field looking for leaks. That’s one of the challenges of this technology. They had a mouse infestation, and had to pinpoint the leaks by pressurizing the system and using a drone to fly over to spot the wet patches.
When everything is buried, it’s harder for the farmer to see where the problems are.
You also can’t use buried lines for a root crop, such as potatoes. And there’s a steep learning curve to operate it, Appels says. For example, with traditional irrigation, a farmer will add just a little water at the beginning to germinate the seeds and then increase the flow as the plants grow.
With subsurface drip, more water is needed at the start so the moisture rises up to meet the seeds. Then the farmer can ease back, keeping the moisture below the surface. Throughout the season, they’ll need to monitor each part of the field closely to get the maximum benefit from the technology.
Van Beek says the other challenge is there’s a small window in the spring to install the subsurface drip, if a farmer doesn’t want to lose their growing season.
And finally, water policy in Alberta is also a factor in why farmers here have been slower to adopt this technology, he says. If someone is getting water through an irrigation district, it’s harder to reap the benefits of water savings.
A farmer can use fewer inches of water on one field, but that doesn’t automatically give them the right to shift that water to irrigate a new field.
“So they can’t really reap the benefits,” said van Beek. “Our biggest take-up is private water irrigators (who operate outside the irrigation district councils) and in Saskatchewan, too, because there they can irrigate more acres with the water they save.”
“My hope is that in Alberta, in time, that will change.”
The Government of Alberta has some programs to support this. Its research arm funded part of Appels’s work with a $100,000 grant, and individual farmers can apply for a grant of up to $35,000 per project.
As for how any water that’s saved is then used, Alberta Minister of Agriculture RJ Sigurdson says his government leaves that to the irrigation district boards to decide.
“They have an elected board and they make all of those decisions … democratically, but of course in partnership with the farmers and ranchers that are there within the irrigation district,” he said in an interview.
‘Takes away the stress’
Lawrence Vandervalk and his son, Darren, chose subsurface drip for the new irrigation on their farm and ranch near Nobleford, Alta.
It means peace of mind, says Lawrence. They can keep producing a good crop of mustard or cattle feed even in a very dry year.
In 2020, they bought water rights to irrigate 625 acres (252 ha). It cost $1.4 million, compared to the estimate of $1 million for a traditional pivot system.
In 2021, one of the driest years Lawrence had ever seen, they used 7.5 inches of water to grow a 100 bushel/acre crop of wheat (compared to a typical use of 11-12 inches).
He says they’ve had only eight leaks, despite a healthy gopher population. Plus he’s working with Appels and Lethbridge College on a research project to see if suspending negatively-charged nano-bubbles in the water will help draw down the salt and increase the quality of the soil.
Emotionally, any good irrigation system is about securing a future, says Darren, who is 35, married and has three kids growing up on the farm. He wants to eventually use the land for an intensive grazing operation.
The last couple years of drought have been tough for smaller-scale farmers, he says.
“But because of irrigation, being always likely to get a crop — it definitely takes away the stress. And it’s the sustainability of the whole farm. It’s definitely going to be able to keep us going for years to come. And being able to carry it on throughout the generations, it’s a huge positive.”