| | Graham Caskey
The Caskeys’ farm near Oyen lies within a semiarid region of southeastern Alberta. This region presents a variety of farming challenges and has recently come through a trying period of successive droughts.
Graham Caskey employs various strategies to meet these challenges. For example, he practices a combination of reduced tillage and no-till in a continuous cropping system, he has a fresh water hauling service to provide non-farm income, and he takes part in diverse organizations that are relevant to his farming business.
Caskey says, “In this area we have a lot of soil erosion from wind, so no-till has been a great thing for us. It keeps the soil on the ground and builds organic matter.” He adds, “We’re still in the process of trying to make continuous cropping work because of our moisture limitations.” Although no-till conserves soil moisture, successive years of drought have made continuous cropping a tough option, so he is considering altering the proportions of chemfallow and minimum-till in his crop rotations.
Caskey is involved in many associations related to agriculture. For example, he’s a member of the Alberta Canola Producers Commission, and through that he sits on the Canadian Canola Growers Association and the Canadian Farm Safety Net Committee.
He’s been a member of the Alberta Conservation Tillage Society for about 15 years and is currently a director on its voluntary board. This society, now 27 years old, recently changed its name to the Alberta Conservation Tillage Society II, to reflect its updated role. Its mission is to promote the development and adaptation of conservation in agronomy (the science and economics of crop production and farm land management).
“ACTS II is a grass-roots producer organization. We like to be actively involved with anything to do with our business and to give input from the grass-roots,” notes Caskey. ACTS II members sit on a wide range of boards and committees such as the Red Deer River Watershed Alliance, Soil Conservation Council of Canada, Alberta Environmental Farm Plan Company and Alberta Surface Rights Federation.
Caskey also serves on the Reduced Tillage LiNKAGES steering committee. As a member of the AESA Council, he sits on the Council’s Greenhouse Gas Team. Reduced tillage systems sequester carbon in the soil, which lowers greenhouse gas levels in the air. So ACTS II is interested in understanding “the linkage with carbon credits and how it would be beneficial for our producers.”
At more and more of the meetings that Caskey attends, he finds that the biggest issue for farmers is maintaining profitability in the face of low market prices and rising input costs. He says, “Without profitability, you can’t be sustainable.”
Alberta Irrigation Projects Association
I’ve been an irrigation farmer all my life and my father before me, and my grandfather before that. I’m in my 19th year of being involved in the Alberta Irrigation Projects Association. And those of us who have worked with irrigation and have seen how great its impact is, we are really enthusiastic about it. We feel that what we are doing is extremely important for the province and for the economy, not just of Alberta, but of Canada,” says Jim Csabay.
Energized by such enthusiasm, Alberta Irrigation promotes water conservation practices and increases awareness of the value of irrigation. It does this through education and outreach, research, innovation, partnerships, and policy and regulation review.
The association’s primary members are the 13 irrigation districts in the province. It also has associate members from agencies involved in the irrigation industry.
Csabay, who farms near Coaldale, has just completed his three-year term as chair of Alberta Irrigation. One of its major initiatives during his tenure has been to increase public outreach. For example, partnering with such agencies as Inside Education, teachers and school boards, the association has created a unique information package for youth outreach. He explains, “We have just finished filming the last of a series of four educational videos that will be in classrooms for Grade 8 Science students this coming spring. The teaching resources focus on fresh water resources in Alberta and interpret the curriculum on the Alberta landscape. The final video uses irrigated agriculture as the case study for the unit.”
Irrigation’s wide-ranging benefits include tourism and recreation, water supplies for communities and individual residences, habitat, stock water supplies, and, of course, water for growing diverse crops, including high-value crops like potatoes, sugar beets land comprises only about 5% of Alberta’s arable land, it contributes almost 20% of the province’s primary agricultural production.” It also provides the foundation for industries that process and transport products from irrigation farming, as well as irrigation service industries.
Conserving water is fundamental to Alberta Irrigation. “While irrigation is the largest user of water in Alberta, we are very conscious of the value of water and our effect on the environment,” says Csabay. Through innovations in practices and equipment, Alberta’s irrigation districts and irrigation farmers have increased the water efficiency of irrigation and are using about a third less water per acre than just 10 years ago.
On AESA Council, Alberta Irrigation is represented by its executive director, David Hill. For more information, visit www.aipa.org. |
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