Economic analysis of the controlled drainage with sub-irrigation system: a case study of grain-producing farms in Quebec and Ontario

Abstract

Water table management is a recommended practice to maintain crop production in Eastern Canada. Grain corn is highly susceptible under climate change and adoption of better management practices is almost a necessity. Use of controlled drainage with sub-irrigation is one of the practices recommended. A major question is whether farmers would adopt this practice. Since adoption of new practices often depend on their impact on farm net returns, an economic analysis of controlled drainage with sub-irrigation was undertaken. Results suggest that on grain producing farms, this technology is only slightly superior to the baseline technology of conventional drainage system.

RÉSUMÉ

La gestion de la nappe phréatique est une pratique recommandée pour préserver la production des cultures dans l’Est du Canada. La maïs-grain est extrêmement sensible aux changements climatiques, et l’adoption de meilleures pratiques de gestion est pratiquement devenue une nécessité. À cet effet, le drainage contrôlé avec sous-irrigation constitue l’une des pratiques recommandées. La principale question est de savoir si les fermiers adopteraient cette pratique. Une analyse économique du drainage contrôlé avec sous-irrigation a été entreprise, étant donné que l’adoption de nouvelles pratiques dépend souvent de leur incidence sur les revenus nets de la ferme. Les résultats de l’étude révèlent que, sur les fermes céréalières, cette technologie n’est que légèrement supérieure à la technologie de base du système de drainage conventionnel.

Keywords:

• Corn
• eastern Canada
• water table management
• economic desirability
• financial analysis

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for providing funding for this research under the Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Program through the McGill University. We are also thankful to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions for improving an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This involved two hours of work at $16.72 and $18.50 per hour, calculated as the average agricultural work wage in Quebec and Ontario, respectively, obtained from ESDC (2019), plus the lube cost of US $9.41 (CAD $12.20) per tube for each application. The depreciation of the existing machinery and equipment on the farm was also included, which was considered as the estimated value for an average farm in Quebec (Essien 2016) and Ontario (OMAFRA 2019c).

2 Values of these coefficients for the normal and skew-normal distributions are available from the author upon request.

3 A summary of the values used for sensitivity analysis are available from the author upon request.

4 Numerical values used in these simulations are available from the author upon request.