Abstract
At a global scale, Canada is the second largest cranberry producer, with Quebec being the largest producing region within Canada. Efficient water use in agricultural production has long been a topic of outmost importance to agricultural producers, and governing bodies. The immediacy of climate change effects sped up the need to find solutions that conserve water. One such promising technology is irrigation using real-time tensiometers, which provides rapidly critical irrigation needs information to producers. Adoption of improved technologies by farmers is dependent on the effect it has on the farms’ bottom line. In this study, we examine the financial performance of real-time tensiometer based irrigation, and compare it to evaporation needs based irrigation (baseline), in the context of a Quebec-based cranberry farm. Our findings show that irrigating using real-time tensiometers technology generated higher economic returns. With a net present value of $96,847, this technology increased returns by nearly 53% compared to the baseline technology. Subsequent sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of these findings, even when changing important farming parameters.
Highlights
Irrigation and drainage practices are necessary to produce high value horticultural crops, such as cranberries
Two financial indicators were estimated for the BMP Technology and compared with those for the Baseline Technology
The study findings show that the Water-conserving BMP Technology increased net present value for the producer by 52.6%
Summary
Irrigation and drainage practices are necessary to produce high value horticultural crops, such as cranberries. There is a concern that water for irrigation purposes might be less readily available in the future This situation can pose serious economic risks to agricultural producers and environmental risks to habitats and ecosystems. Across Canada, and in Eastern Canada in particular, efforts have been made to develop improved technologies and management practices, beneficial management practices (BMPs) that could be implemented with or without government support (such as through cost-share programs). Such BMPs are intended to minimize the negative impacts of agricultural production on the environment. Past experiences and historical data on adoption of these BMPs, in the context of Canadian agriculture, confirm that while some agri-environmental practices (especially those showing positive economic outcomes) were adopted more rapidly and more widely, while others tended to be modestly adopted and with insufficient effects in reducing the degradation of the environment
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