SASKATCHEWAN

Water Security Agency

Heggie Demonstration Project

For Kyle Heggie, a properly installed tile drainage system is crop insurance.

Once he plants a crop, the tile, buried 36 inches underground, ensures excess moisture is drained away if the water table rises. Without the tile, the crop would be saturated.

“It’s now got an insurance policy under the ground on it,” he explains, adding, “That’s a good thing, because you now have an insurance level at the bottom and you have crop on top acting as flood control because it didn’t die off.”

Heggie is part of a family farm corporation and pedigreed seed growing and cleaning operation in the Leross area. Approximately 7,000 acres are cultivated in cereals, pulses and oilseeds, while 2,000 acres are left in natural bush and wetlands. Recalling the heavy snow melt of 2010 and rain events in 2012 and 2014, Heggie believes building the water-holding capacity of the landscape must be constant through floods, droughts and everything in between. The lack of water management infrastructure during those weather events left no way of “letting the bathtub plug out.”

“You want to be able to let that plug go at the right time so the people downstream can take that water. The goal is water management – capture as much as you can, use as much as possible and, if you have to, release what you have to.”

A collaborative, three-year project with the Indian Head Agricultural Research Foundation (IHARF) and the Saskatchewan Farm Stewardship Association, of which he is vice president, is conducting research on the benefits of tile drainage. Installing tiles on the smaller sloughs that tend to fill and spill has positive impacts on the soils, crop yields and input costs. Soil tests in and around the sloughs indicate nutrient levels, enabling Heggie to be more precise with variable fertilizer rates.

The project is demonstrating how every seed and input can be accounted for through water management to control moisture in wet and dry years. In the 2021 drought, the tiled areas produced the best crops.

“That’s the beauty of tile; it does work in both extremes,” says Heggie.

The research is showing how temporary wetlands can produce crops and build organic matter. Crops are better able to absorb nutrients and water, which can result in less accumulation of agricultural contaminants, according to IHARF Research Associate, Christiane Catellier.

“In prairie pothole landscapes in particular, we might see less overlap of field operations on the margins of the tiled area, and so potentially less input accumulation and less soil compaction in this area as well,” says Catellier. “Tile drainage can help alleviate salinity, but the process would take longer in dry conditions as it is dependent on water movement downwards from the surface.” 

For Heggie, the speed with which he seeded the sloughs is telling. In 2012, he seeded 20 acres an hour. In 2021, that climbed to 32 acres an hour with the same drill.

“That’s 33 percent more efficient on the landscape. That’s huge.”