OUTLOOK, Sask. – Two irrigation agrologists from the United States were on the prowl for new ideas at the recent irrigated grain and silage corn tour at the Irrigation Diversification Centre in Outlook.
Chet Hill, an extension specialist from the Williston Research Extension Centre in North Dakota, and Jed Waddell, a soil scientist from the Northern Plains Ag Research Lab in Sidney, Montana, showed up to see how the Outlook research centre conducts its trials.
“This is the next closest irrigation centre to ours, which is in the Williston area,” Hill said.
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“We just started our irrigation research and demonstration farm this past year (2004), with four 40-acre linears.”
Hill said his area has had flood irrigation since the 1920s and while sugar beets have been the main high-value crop for the past 90 years, acreage has dropped 50 percent over the past 15 years.
“With our farm programs, sugar beets is not one of our highest value crops anymore so we’re looking at some different crop diversity,” he said.
“We have about 200,000 acres in the Man-Dak region that is currently irrigated. We have the potential to go another 250,000 acres in our region.”
He said water rights from the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers will make future expansion possible, with the majority expected to go into sprinklers.
“We have about 10 to 15 pivots per year that go up in our region: a combination of converting flood to sprinkler or a new development.”
He made the trip to Outlook to check other potential crops and review the centre’s techniques.
Waddell said Anheuser Busch Agriculture Resources Inc. just moved to Sidney so malting barley will definitely be one focus of his research.
“If you can get a contract with them and your barley makes malt, you can sell your barley for $3.25 US per bushel. It’s a good price and some of my plots yielded about 120 bu.”
