After heavy rains flooded his yard, a Saskatchewan farmer turned to a consolidation drainage and irrigation project to better manage water on his land. Here’s how it works — and how the WSA and funding help make it happen.
Irrigation
Turning excess water into an asset with consolidation drainage
Farmers in the “prairie pothole” region are using its natural storage capacity to their advantage
Taking dairy wastewater to the irrigation pivot, via wetlands
A new nature-based solution could help dairy farmers in Alberta against water shortages
Many Alberta dairy farms rely on irrigation water to grow feed crops to sustain their cattle herds, but drought and water shortages in recent years has made that more difficult. Federal ag researchers are seeking one of those dairy farms to help develop a possible new source.
ReinCloud 3 app offers improvements for irrigators
Nebraska’s Reinke Manufacturing updates its software for farm managers
Compared to previous versions, the new version of Reinke’s ReinCloud is billed as more intuitive, allowing irrigators to flow more data-driven information into their water management.
Selenium: Agricultural, environmental and human concerns
Agronomy Management: From a water quality standpoint, health of rivers and lakes should be of highest priority
As selenium accumulates in soil over years, more Se will be taken up by plants, making crops less suitable or unsuitable for human or livestock consumption.
Reinke introduces updated E3 irrigation system
The new model brings new features and improved distribution accuracy
The Nebraska company describes E3 as its first precision series of spans and end booms with uniform coupler spacing — which helps ensure a uniform water application rate along the entire length of the machine.
IrriCup wheels improve traction on pivots
CupWheel airless tires from Galileo Wheel reduce risk of pivots getting stuck
The design uses a unique concave sidewall that allows for a flatter, track-like contact with the ground, which manufacturer Galileo Wheel says offers a 30 per cent increase in traction over regular tires.
Galileo Wheel introduces airless SkidCup skid steer tires
Improved traction and puncture-free performance with new tire design
In 2011, at Agritechnica in Germany, Galileo Wheel’s co-founder Avishay Novoplanski debuted a completely new ag tire design for tractors, called the CupWheel. It uses a unique concave sidewall, giving the tread surface a flatter, track-like contact with the ground, which the company says offers a 30 per cent increase in traction over regular tires. […] Read more
Restore productivity on your eroded knolls
Landscape restoration, cover cropping, residue redistribution and adjusting crop inputs are some management practices that can help
The eroded knolls or hilltops common in Prairie farmland are typically the least productive, often yielding considerably less than other parts of a field. Curtis Cavers, an agronomist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada based at Portage la Prairie, Man., says there are ways to boost crop productivity in these problem areas. Cavers provided an assessment […] Read more
Selenium sits on thinnest line between health and hazard
Agronomy Management: Removing selenium from water is costly and difficult at best
There are increasing concerns about the potential effects of a proposed coal mine development in southern Alberta and the impacts selenium could have on the environment in southern Alberta and into Saskatchewan. The proposed Grassy Mountain Coal project would be an open-pit mine built on a former coal-mining area about seven km north of Blairmore […] Read more
Understanding tile drainage
Tiling can be a good solution for fixing multiple problems, but it can also be complex to install, and costs vary widely depending on the farm. Make purchasing decisions easier by doing your homework first.
Removing excess water is the big payoff for tile drainage. Submerged fields and saturated soils can slash yields, cause salinity problems and even spell the loss of the entire crop, if it’s bad enough. However, it is not an inexpensive fix, nor is it a simple solution, and it won’t work for every farm. That’s […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
