SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. – It’s not just farmers who benefit from irrigation.
Residents of nearby communities can also gain from tourism opportunities, drought protection and a secure town water supply, which can help attract new businesses and keep existing ones.
The Saskatchewan Irrigation Projects Association, which released a two-volume report on the potential of irrigation expansion in the province earlier this month, is hoping to take that message to a wider audience next year.
During the group’s annual meeting, outgoing president Roger Pederson said SIPA applied for funding from the Agriculture Council of Saskatchewan to create a public awareness campaign.
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“We want to keep the study findings before everyone in Saskatchewan,” he said.
“It’s (irrigation) not a benefit just for farmers but benefits everyone in the province.”
Irrigation development stalled in recent decades around Lake Diefenbaker, with 100,000 acres developed of a potential 500,000-plus acres that could be irrigated.
Delegate Howard Martens, reeve of the Rural Municipality of Exelsior, said SIPA needs to publicize the benefits of irrigation in tourism, municipal water supplies and value-added products.
“We didn’t market it to the urban person, we need to do that,” he said of early irrigation development.
Martens suggested taking the message to the South Saskatchewan River watershed group, now examining water use and hoping to explore best management practices for rural residential development near the South Saskatchewan River.
“It’s an opportunity for SIPA to bring the influence of irrigation,” said Martens, an irrigation producer who farms east of Swift Current. “If you don’t go to the table, your point of view is not addressed.”
Bob Bjornerud, Saskatchewan’s minister of agriculture, said irrigation development lessens risks of drought, increases employment opportunities and creates long-term sustainable growth.
“There are so many possibilities when we expand irrigation,” he said, calling irrigation an optimistic story in agriculture.
While offering his support for plans to bring more land under irrigation, Bjornerud did not offer a funding amount.
“We are going to come to the plate and assist you in your industry,” he said.
“We have been neglecting this area for too long.”
Bjornerud said he has discussed irrigation with the federal minister of agriculture, noting how it supports a livestock industry that’s an important part of the western economy.
“It’s as important to us as the auto industry in Ontario,” he said.
Lionel LaBelle of the Saskatchewan Trade and Export Partnership called the province an island in global markets, not yet touched by the recession settling in elsewhere. Its Achilles heel, he said, is its land-locked location and getting goods to market. Other challenges include promoting what’s available and finding labourers, he said.
“We can’t be timid in how we view marketing. We have what the world wants.”
In a question and answer session, Bjornerud suggested short-line railroads as one way of shipping goods and value added products from the irrigated areas.
“It takes a load off our highways and puts it back on the railroad where it should have stayed in the first place,” he said.
