With record high water tables, producers are frustrated with the level of saline soils they are having to deal with.
Charlotte Asplind, manager of the Carrot River Valley Watershed says this is not a new issue but one that may continue to worsen if more dry years are in the forecast.
“With a drier year last year, water levels went down in many places in the watershed. There is a lot of speculation that we may continue with some drier years.”
While there are other places in the province that are dealing with higher levels of salinity than producers in the Carrot River Valley, Asplind says it is still an issue for a lot of producers.
With increased salinity a possibility in the next few years, Asplind says they considered this to be an important time to discuss causes of saline soils and possible ways producers can alleviate the impacts to their yields.
Victoria Nameth, Regional Crop Specialist with the Ministry of Agriculture, wanted producers to understand the reality of soil salinity.
With a high water table and a dry 2017, water is coming up through the soil to evaporate leaving behind salts in the soil, she says.
There is no quick fix.
“You can’t just fix the problem for its symptoms, you really have to understand what the mechanism is to know how to manage it properly.”
The three mechanisms with saline soil creation, artesian drainage, bathtub rings, and side hill seeps, all have to do with water movement through the soil and aquifers.
As owner and agronomist with Field Good Agronomics Ltd., Larry Durand sees the impact saline soils are having on local Carrot River Valley Watershed producers.
Quoting Les Henry and his article in Grainnews in 2016, Durand concurs that, “there is only one fundamental cause of soil salinity: a high water table and conditions where evaporation exceeds precipitation.”
Taking acres out of production and seeding perennial grasses is a way farmers could save money on acre.
“If you farm them status quo, just putting in all your crop inputs, which can be very expensive, you’re not getting much yield out of there if you’re only getting five to 10 bushels, in some cases no bushels (per acre).”
In Durand’s example for wheat, canola, barley, and peas, reducing those areas meant thousands of dollars in producers pockets by removing those non-productive areas out of production through planting perennial grasses and forages.
Using high water using plants and saline tolerant plants are also going to keep down evaporation while also allowing water to move down in the soil to move salinity.
Smaller salt patches are becoming big salt patches which are taking away from yields and there are ways of mapping and tracking that, Durand says.
However, producers have to know their fields and the variable that comes with managing yields.
“We can make a lot of pretty maps but we’ve got to take those maps into the field and this is where the boots to dirt comes in and ground truth those maps so you know what the maps mean.”
Durand presented on the economic impacts of saline acres and ways producers can reduce the impacts on soil salinity with a few options available.
With some organizations like Ducks Unlimited paying producers for those non-productive acres to be planted to grass cover, this is a viable option for producers in dealing with saline soils.
Other options include variable rates of input with producers putting in lower fertilizer and higher seed rates into saline areas and tile drainage which can help lower the water table in certain areas and keeping salts out of productive soils.
These options can also be used together to help keep saline soils productive instead of a money drain, says Durand.
Producers have to consider the price of these options as well and whether these will be long term solutions.
