At an annual general meeting in Lethbridge for the largest irrigation district in Canada, it’s standing room only.

These AGMs for the St. Mary River Irrigation District, located in southern Alberta, are normally sleepy affairs. But this year is different as the province is staring down challenging drought conditions.

What’s expected today is big news for the 200-odd people filing into the room, some wearing jackets bearing the names of their respective operations.

Semi-arid southern Alberta, which relies heavily on irrigation, is expected to be hit with particular challenges — and new data from Environment and Climate Change Canada paints a striking picture of Canada’s Prairies.

  • @[email protected]
    17•7 months ago

    “As a hydrologist, I definitely agree that there’s always a cycle with the water,” Stadnyk said. "But what the science says is that this is one of the regions in the world where we can expect more frequent drought cycles, and longer drought cycles. “That begs the question about economic viability, right? How long can farmers and irrigators hold out without that water and still be productive and still have a viable business?”

    This is what it boils down to. I think that unfortunately, we’re going to have to either develop more water-effective measures of irrigation (which all cost significantly more than the standard sprayers), or the yields are going to fall significantly. Either of those mean that food prices will continue to climb.

    Its not a good situation, and there’s not a good solution.

    • @[email protected]OP
      5•7 months ago

      Its not a good situation, and there’s not a good solution.

      Tbf there was a good solution 50 years ago but gov’ts didn’t do anything about it.

      On a related note I’m currently visiting friends in northwestern Ontario (I left about 13 years ago). On the way here I saw quite a few white birds migrating north and mistakenly thought they were snow geese. Turns out they’re swans that started migrating further north about 10 years ago.

      We are utterly FUBARed at this point.

      • @[email protected]
        3•7 months ago

        Its always scary to see the impacts of climate change on an individual basis.

        No one here, especially those reading these articles, were around then. All we can do it mitigate and reduce future impact.

        Part of that is understanding that shits gonna get expensive for us. BUT if people collectively push against the government and complain about things like high food prices (when driven by actual food scarcities, not ‘inflation’ and corporate greed), the response will be to offload problems to another generation by stealing water from elsewhere, increased use of fossil fuels, or some other short term stop gap.

        We as a society will not get the same life our parents and grandparents had. Full stop. If we try to, we will fuck things up even more for the next generation. It sucks, but I don’t see another way around it. It can still be a good life, but we need to change a whole lot to get there.

      • @ikiddEnglish
        2•7 months ago

        I’m in N Alberta and swans have migrated past here this time of year for the half-century I’ve been alive. My dad says they’ve done that as long as he can remember. And we don’t get snow geese through here, it’s definitely swans, because I’ve seen them land.