Irrigation

[bucket]

Anyone read the article in the western producer about the proposed water project out of Lake diefenbaker?

One billion dollar project. If the ag side allotment is 450 million, the 110,000 acres to be irrigated only costs taxpayers 4090 dollars per acre to deliver water to the quarter line.

Nice hey, it might benefit 200 producers.

I guess the rest of us are just chopped liver.

[bucket]

Also they are using the same logic as they did in the 1980s.

Processing plants? The packing plant is closed up in Moose Jaw.

Value added? Riverhust has no real value added industry and definitely no real well paying yearround jobs.

Greenhouses? If they were viable would be using waste heat at belle plaine to operate.

Feedlots? The pig barn 20 miles north of me has been closed up for quite a few years already and the cattle guys can't get their shit together to have a backgrounding lot. They would rather see Alberta get the feedlots and packing plants.

I know of guys that ended up with poorer canola crops on their irrigation land than on their dryland. And that is after dumping all the extra fertilizer and water to it.

Parsons might do great work but he gets paid to make the logic work for the government.

He doesn't mention the 10,000 acres around Riverhurst just got another 900 dollar an acre subsidy in the last year.

[sumdumguy]

Who is subsidizing irrigation?

[bucket]

Taxpayers of saskatchewan.

If you hook up to a natural gas service you pay fee every month plus the gas cost. Same with power and phone.

It called a return on investment and used to replace infrastructure over time.

Not the case with these large irrigation districts. Every time something goes wrong the government pays the bill.

[Burbert]

Only the gobermont wood invest in
irrigation, when land is already under
water from tooooooo much rain. The fng
Cracker (Ritz) is a genie in disguise.
Part of the Agriclusterfk comin down the
fed tube to land on all Comedian
framers whether they likes it eer not.
Great, great, fng idea. Heil Harper and
his not so friendly Indian
friends......... hope they wave and
eagle feather and middle finger his way
over and over agin!!!

[Horse]

I would like to know how much of the cost of irrigation is paid by the users not including the added cost of the land because it has subsidised water here in alta.
Mabey with the deficit and all the bad publicity for this con gov mabey they will try to recover the actual costs.
Then they could bring the grazing rates up for all the welfare cowboys , All this crown land and they dont collect enough rent to pay office expences for the public land dept.

[tipsy]

I guess if the spud-co expericence wasn't enuff we'll try som'mr.

[blackpowder]

Is there not a large untapped irrigation
potential in Saskatchewan? A waste not to
use it. It's not for me to say how you get
it done, but somebody eventually will.

[bucket]

Sure there is plenty of potential for irrigation.

But if the 200 farmers are not willing to mortgage some for a better production and land values then the project doesn't pass the smell test.

You can't have the province foot the bill of a billion dollar project and the end users pay nothing, while the people that gain nothing from it are forced to pay through taxes.

When natural gas was brought to the rural areas there was a fee paid by the user to have that service brought in, some took it, some didn't. The fee to hook up probably covered 75 percent of the cost.After hook up there has been a bill ever since.

So the hook up fee for these 200 farmers on the proposed irrigation project should be to the tune of 500,000 per quarter, based on a cost recovery formula.

[bucket]

And when you start throwing numbers like that as a hook up fee, I think the producer interest fades pretty quickly.

Most could buy more dryland for a fraction of that without any extra equipment or irrigated headaches.

In this area, the land used for irrigation might make 60 bpa canola, 80 bpa cereals irrigated. The dryland yields might be 1/2 of that some years and 3/4 to equal others.

Guys are doing that on dryland in other areas of the province.

Unless saskatchewan gets the climate to grow high value, labour intensive crops irrigation will never make economic sense or you live under a rock and don't understand the true cost to develop an irrigation system or project.

BTW, that hook up fee of 500,000 is just to the quarter line. Add another 150,000 to put up a pivot and service it.

[bucket]

If the article is correct at 110,000 acres to be developed, here is some fast facts.

110,000 acres/160 acres = 687 pivots

average pivot uses 750 gallons per minutes (gpm)

687 x 750gpm x 60 x 24 = 742,000,000 gallons per day.

When I worked at ipsco, they used 1,000,000 gallons of water per day.

The potash mine at belle plaine probably uses 2-3 million gallons per day (not sure)

Now, who do you think should pay for the project?

[bucket]

If you see an increase in yield on these acres. This won't be heavy clay being irrigated more likely 30 bpa land on an average year.

So lets say you go to 60 bpa or a 30 bpa increase on 110,000 acres.

110,000 x 30bpa(increase only) = 3,300,000 extra bushels.

Lets say it was all canola.

3,300,000 bushels x 13bucks a bushel = $42,000,000.00 extra revenue gross.

So thats 42 million dollars on a 450 million dollar investment but add in the pivot development cost on 110,000 acres and the operating costs, there is zero return to the investor, who is the government, who is the taxpayer!!


Sure go in and supply water to the two cities and the industries down stream but irrigation will not make economic sense anytime soon.

Take the 450 million dollars and spend it on dryland farming, it would be a better production and economic investment.