Manitoba farmers spend the first few weeks of spring desperately trying to get water off their fields and then spend the rest of the summer fearing drought.
Water and nutrient management experts made the observation during Keystone Agricultural Producers’ annual meeting last week. They said managing water better could benefit farms and solve some of the phosphorus criticism the industry faces.
“We’re not realizing all the benefits of controlling that surface water, particularly when you consider that this is a prairie environment where there is net loss of water,” David Lobb, an agricultural water management specialist at the University of Manitoba, said during a panel discussion.
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“There is a benefit of actually holding some of that water back and managing a lot better.”
Drainage issues were raised at KAP’s annual meeting. A number of resolutions from delegates were about drainage, and some heated arguments were about flooding and drainage in the Red River Valley.
The topic has become dominant in Manitoba in recent years, pitting city against country.
Many have claimed that farmland is a primary cause of the phosphorus that is causing Lake Winnipeg to become increasingly algae-covered.
Lobb and University of Manitoba soil scientist Don Flaten promoted the idea of draining surface water to a pond or dugout and then using it later in the growing season for irrigation or livestock production.
Building an on-field storage system could cost $50,000 to $100,000 but would make waterlogged land more productive and allow for irrigated production of crops such as corn, which demand much water.
Economically, the system should be profitable.
The main environmental benefit is not just holding back nutrients such as phosphorus during the spring melt but recycling those nutrients with crops or livestock.
Eighty percent of runoff from farm fields occurs as the snow melts, and that’s the worst time of the year for nutrients to be flowing into streams, rivers and Lake Winnipeg.
Studies have shown that conservation tillage increases phosphorus runoff, and vegetated buffer strips do little in the spring to use up nutrients because plants are dormant.
Flaten said farmers are already doing almost everything they can to correctly apply nutrients. They band phosphorus and inject manure, which leaves few gains to be made from improving nutrient application.
However, huge gains could be made from on-farm water retention and use.
Lobb, who is from Ontario, said he has been surprised at the poor drainage of Manitoba fields. He thinks wet areas of fields could be drained better and faster but still keep the water nearby for later in the season, when conditions become dry.
Connecting drainage routes to a pond or large dugout clears spring moisture and uses little land. Lobb said the increased productivity of better-drained land makes up for the loss of a small amount of land for a dugout.
“People get concerned about the loss of land by storing water on the farm, but if you look at the land area that’s already currently under-producing because of excess water on the fields, it’s not anything larger than the amount of land area you’re talking about consuming for the purposes of holding water in a pond,” said Lobb.
On-farm water storage and later on-farm water use combines both the flood control and drought-proofing issues so is generally beneficial.
“That has a huge impact on the flood control for downstream benefit, but it also has the potential to provide significant water for use on the farm,” said Lobb.
