Making the desert bloom

[dsheehan-millang]

I talked to an East Indian farmer in Osoyoos last week who grew tomatoes, cukes, peppers as well as fruit. He had a pretty modern operation and awesome production. His whole farm(8 acres) was equipped with drip irrigation, which he had installed 3 years ago. Said it cut his water bill to 25% of what it was before and the plants did a lot better.
Would it be feasible to irrigate out of large dugouts(using drip irrigation) on the prairies? Not for field crops but for high price crops like tomatoes or cucumbers? How much water would you need for say 5 acres of tomatoes? Or 5 acres of saskatoons?

[jwright]

I've tried it with strawberries, in a fumbling, ad hoc way, in eastern Alberta.

Suppose you need an additional 12' of rain to grow one of these crops. That's one acre foot of water. About 43,000 cubic feet. Times 6 gallons per ft cubed, or 250,000 gallons, the size of a standard PRFA dugout. Suppose drip irrigation uses 25% of the water above. That means you could irrigate 4 acres from a standard dugout.

But how are you going to get the dugout full? My dugout has been empty for two years and if I had planted strawberries this year, they would be essentially dead.

Many of these crops are much more sensitive to moisture deficiencies than are traditional crops, so you are in a boom and bust cycle, if you depend on runoff in the 'desert'.

[cowman]

I have a dam that the drilling rigs regularly haul out of. It is spring fed. Now for the average hole (1900 meters) it takes from 40 to 60 loads of 100 barrels each. 45 gallonsX 100X 50 loads=225,000 gallons. They pump it down a bit when they are filling the pit but by the time the well is finished(about 9 days) it is right back up and running over the spillway. I've had as many as 5 wells in a month. So how many acres do you think I could irrigate out of this dam if I used drip irrigation? These springs never freeze up and they always keep running. These springs have been a money maker for a real long time...maybe better than actual farming!

[edbaker]

Hi cowman,

Get a carload of small plastic bottles.

Fill 'em with your water.

Sell 'em in the supermarket.

Bottled water (in small bottles) costs more than gasoline.

(Not true in large bottles - so not really a fair comparison, for gasoline comes in bulk.)

Canada has more fresh water than any other country in the world.

Recently, I pay $3.99 for 4 litre bag of 2% milk (same price for 1% or skim, in most markets - whatever sense that makes). I drink it like it's going out of style - about 2 bags a week or slightly more - and buying it is a routine decision.

I pay $4.50 (most of the time, occasionaly about $3.50) for 4 litre jug of apple cider. Not much higher cost, but it's a decision to buy a jug and I don't think of drinking cider in anything like the quantity that I drink milk, though both are good for me.

Habit is an interesting thing.

Ed

Who said humans are rational?