Water required for agriculture is becoming a major concern for water and food security across the province of British Columbia. This issue will only get worse over the coming decade as the climate dries and warms. Many parts of BC will face significant water shortages with growing conflicts in allocation between groundwater and stream flows and between supporting irrigated agriculture and meeting the environmental needs for salmon and resident fish.
Consequently, the BC government is tackling this major risk to water security with a newly crafted strategy supported by a Watershed Security Fund.
A key part of this strategy will be to make more efficient use of water used in the agricultural sector. There are many farmers who have secured more water than they need through historic water licensing. There are even more farmers who cannot secure water required for expansion to meet the growing demands for food.
Learn how a new approach to reallocate water can resolve these conflicts and gain insight into a variety of resources and information relating to regenerative farming.
Ted van der Gulik is an agricultural water specialist who has spent 35 years as an innovator in irrigation and water management. He has won four BC Premier’s Awards for finding creative solutions to water use in the agricultural sector. He has devised a water calculator model which can accurately predict the precise amount of water required for a wide range of crops and soil types throughout the province. You will be able to see this model in action in this webinar and witness how it will contribute to greater water security under the continuing changing climate.
Rhona McAdam is a poet, holistic nutritionist and food writer based in Victoria, BC. She has a master’s in Food Culture & Communication from the University of Gastronomic Sciences (Slow Food’s university in Italy), is a longtime volunteer with Haliburton Community Organic Farm, teaches Eco-Nutrition at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition and has been involved with the Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers for many years.
Since 1984, she’s published 10 books, including three poetry chapbooks and six poetry collections, most recently Cartography (2006) and Ex-Ville (2014), She’s also the author of Digging the City (2012), an urban agriculture manifesto. Rhona is working on a new poetry collection, called Larder, which include poems on bees, bugs and lots of food.
Rhona will share a short poetry video and provide a synopsis of highlights from this week’s Farmfolk CityFolk Farmers for Climate Solutions conference.
Dr. Jim Schaefer is the founder, chairman and president of Soil Technologies Corp., a company that develops, manufactures and internationally distributes a family of natural technologies to serve eco agriculture with sustainable regenerative solutions.
He is also a Senior Research Scholar at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, home to one of the first Master Degrees dedicated 100% to regenerative organic agriculture, and one of the founding Founding Advisory Board Members of the Vedic Organic Agriculture Institute.
Dr. Schaefer is also the president and board member of Partners for World Peace, a non-profit corporation engaged in philanthropic work worldwide to support the improvement in the quality of life for all people on earth. He resides in Fairfield, Iowa.
Links & Resources
BC Water Calculator
Mountain Road Forest Fundraiser
Maharishi International University
SoilTech Corp
Virtual Seedy Saturday Videos
Subscribe to Creatively United on YouTube
Join our mailing list
Additional Q&A
Q. Are there any issues with groundwater quality? And, if so, how would pollutants be mitigated?
A. In British Columbia there are some aquifers that have nitrates, bicarbonates etc. In some instances treatment can be used if the water is for irrigation purposes. For the most part groundwater in BC is good for irrigation.
Q. Are licenses permitted annually or one time permit?
A. Licenses are a one time application and issued for a period of 30 years. A rental fee for the water is issued annually.
Q. In the NE part of the province, is fracking which is impacting agriculture being charged sufficiently high fees to be a disincentive to expand wells?
A. Water fees are quite low and are not a disincentive.
Q. Could the tool be adjusted for regenerative agriculture practices, i.e., increase understanding and desirability of shifting to those?
A. Yes, as long as the correct scenarios are put into the tool and someone with understanding of agriculture and the results does the diagnosis.
Q. Please remind us of the tragic story of California’s Central Valley where farmers are extracting ground water from wells in the 500 foot range now, limiting opportunities for smaller and poorer farmers.
A. This is one of the reasons why the groundwater regulation has been initiated, to protect the smaller historic wells from going dry because another well has been installed to close.
Q. Does the mapping in BC include First Nation’s land?
A. Yes.
Q. Can the calculator be used for parks and private urban landscapes that are non-agricultural?
A. There is another tool that has been built for landscape and urban areas using the same climate data. It can be found here.
Q. Has BC looked at rainwater capture and storage?
A. Yes but for irrigation it has limited use except for small landscapes and especially if drip irrigation is used.
Q. How do licenses relate to water-bottling companies? Is this outside today’s discussion?
A. Bottling companies also pay a fee but it is quite small. Under legislation the province cannot increase the bottling water license fee without increasing fees for other uses.
Q. Are cisterns being encouraged to capture the extreme rainfalls in both urban and rural areas to encourage local gardens as well as commercial farming?
A. Some local governments offer cisterns at a reduced cost to residents
Q. If agricultural needs will require 15% more of the water resources in the future and the population of BC is going to increase. Won’t we run into water resource problems?
A. I think that is the message, we will need more water for many uses, will need to become water efficient as water resources will diminish during summer months in the future.
Q. Who should get to decide the priorities for how water is allocated? Do you agree with the notion that water should be declared a basic human right and how might that impact prioritization of water usage in the future?
A. The province makes domestic use the highest priority now. Prioritization is currently done by the province. I have not come across any other agency that would like to take this task on – it is very controversial.
Q. Managing the use of water is worthwhile to optimize use of a precious commodity. How is market demand for crops factored into licensing?
A. It is not, but anytime we buy products from other countries or we export to other countries we are virtually trading in the water that was used to develop those products.
Q. Site C affects farmland/food security and water. Could you all discuss?
A. It does but it also supplies renewable and clean energy, something that we will certainly need once we convert over to electric vehicles.
Q. Is ALR owned privately in BC?
A. The ALR is generally privately held. Most of the agricultural production in British Columbia is in the Agricultural Land Reserve