Grainswest - Spring 2022

Spring 2022 grainswest.com 19 Prairies put pressure on ranchers. “Where do you get your hay from? There is no hay. That means culling of cattle [herds], which take years to rebuild. A multi-year drought is the biggest threat to food production.” Kienzle’s additional research has focused on three of southern Alberta’s most critical watersheds: the Oldman, St. Mary and Waterton. Together, and with contributions from northern watersheds such as the Bow and North Saskatchewan, they provide the major water supply for the three Prairie Provinces. Through his hydrological modelling, he wanted to simply determine whether or not Alberta’s reservoirs will hold adequate water supply in the coming years. He determined two key things. “The good news is average inflow into these reservoirs will hardly change,” he said, but noted the biggest issue and unknown is to what extent increased temperatures may affect evaporation. The root cause of increased evaporation, which is elevated levels of atmospheric C02, will remain in place long-term. Even if no more greenhouse gases are emitted, CO2 remains in the atmosphere for roughly a century. Keinzle suggested greenhouse gas reduction efforts should shift focus from C02 and to methane emissions. It remains in the atmosphere just 20 to 30 years but produces a stronger greenhouse effect on a per molecule basis. And yes, Kienzle is aware flooding occurs, and can be extremely damaging, but it’s nothing compared to drought. “That’s dangerous because drought is a larger threat to society than floods are,” he said. “This [past] year was a wakeup call for what’s about to come.” He does not necessarily think every year will see a heat dome, but that they will continue to occur and this should no longer surprise anyone. While various parts of the Prairies will fair well in the short- to medium-term, such as the west side of Highway 2 between Red Deer and Edmonton, he said the southern Prairies are in dire straits. “Unfortunately, this trend will just keep going and keep accelerating,” he said. Nonetheless, there are solutions for farmers, and Kienzle believes precision agriculture is one of the biggest tools now available to farmers. He sees opportunities through greater uptake in variable rate everything—from water and fertilizer to pesticides and seed. He also envisions solar farms being installed on marginal lands. “You produce energy that you can sell on the market … that will be a good economical system, farmers can double dip on their land.” Further positives Kienzle sees include the continued conversion of open-air irrigation canals to fully enclosed and buried pipelines. Kienzle and others alike know farmers do all they can to be sustainable, yet some things are just beyond their control. This doesn’t deter John Pomeroy from believing in a bright future, despite the heightened uncertainty around precipitation. “We’ve had more warming than the rest of the world,” he said. “[We’ve] already had over 2 C of warming since the late 1950s, early 1960s; going to end of century, we can see another five or six degrees depending on how greenhouse gases are managed.” He points out that it’s hard to find trends in the yearly volume of precipitation on the Prairies over time, but does note the most severe floods and droughts have all occurred within the last 20 years. “[It’s] a bit of an indicator that the variability of our precipitation is going up [with a] greater shift away from snowfall to rainfall,” he said. “Mid-winter and March rainfall has just gone through the roof over the last 50 years in the Prairies. I think most people would be able to notice this, especially the longer growing season.” Farmers must manage their water by managing their snow, primarily through stubble, he explained. Many farmers prefer shorter varieties of just about every crop, yet the stubble they produce is less effective in trapping snow. Farmers can’t have it both ways. “It’s important to remember that in the central Prairies, we might get 350 millimetres of precipitation in an average year and 100 millimetres of that is snowfall. If we don’t hold the snowfall in the field, that’s only 250 millimetres to grow the crops; it’s not enough.” “There will almost certainly be changes to crop varieties favourable to ones that can manage the stresses.” — John Pomeroy