Proper agricultural drainage can be an important tool for farmers, says Etienne Soulodre, senior agrologist at Saskatchewan’s Water Security Agency.
Programs are available to help individuals and groups of landowners undertake responsible projects, he said.
The province announced new regulations last fall to curb unapproved drainage.
“The privilege to drain will depend on showing that it can be done responsibly,” Soulodre told farmers at a drainage conference late last year.
He acknowledged that there are good reasons for some farmers to drain land.
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One model used grain prices and the weather during a 30-year period to calculate the benefits of draining sloughs.
“The economic benefit to a grain farmer in this study … it was worth net $75 an acre for every acre of drained slough,” Soulodre said.
“Those results don’t include the cost of retaining the slough from a nuisance factor from overlap or the fact that you increase the value of your land when you drain. There is a very strong economic signal for grain farmers to drain.”
However, the same study found that cattle producers would lose $47 per acre.
Farmers will make individual decisions on whether to drain.
Avoiding drainage is one strategy, and one of the best ways to do that is to seed grass and keep wetlands, Soulodre said. Many programs are available for this type of work.
A project near Lang, Sask., re-stored 120 sloughs in the fall of 2009. Measurements from grazing cages in 2013 showed that 4,000 pounds per acre of dry matter were available for cattle.
“Restoring a wetland doesn’t mean there’s three feet of water and cattails,” he said. “It can be shallow.”
Minimization through the use of best management practices is another strategy.
Bonnie Mandziak, agri-environmental group plan adviser for the Lower Qu’Appelle Watershed Stewards and Calling Lakes Farm Stewardship Group, said three best management practices identified in Growing Forward 2’s farm stewardship program focus directly on water management.
Natural waterway erosion control is eligible for 75 percent of costs up to a $30,000 maximum.
“The intention is to protect riparian ecosystems by reducing soil erosion and improving water quality,” Mandziak said.
This includes re-vegetation or control structures. Funding ap-proval is required before the work begins, and eligible costs include engineering, consulting, earthwork and re-vegetation of the waterway.
The water flow and erosion control best management practice is designed to improve private drainage works by installing control structures to better manage flow and improve storage.
These are works that were built before April 2013 and are licensed through WSA. The funding available is 50 percent of costs to a $20,000 maximum.
The multi-producer erosion control best management practice involves a group of 10 or more farmers applying for funding to manage erosion within a natural waterway.
Mandziak said this is typically a project for a conservation and development authority or a watershed association and takes years to complete.
Funding is available in two phases. Engineering and design is funded at 75 percent of eligible costs to a maximum $150,000, and construction is funded at 50 percent to a program cap of $500,000.
The third strategy involves compensating for a problem by creating a benefit elsewhere. For example, if a wetland must be destroyed to build a road, then another is created somewhere else.
At the farm level, this could mean a grain farmer drains a slough into a dugout used by a cattle producer.
“Think about all these steps,” Soulodre said. “It can be done responsibly. We need to get that message out.”
