Congratulations to Jody Rysavy of Glenside for having the top term paper in the School of Agriculture's SL SC 24 - Soil Conservation and Land Quality class. For his efforts Jody receives a three year membership in the Saskatchewan Soil Conservation Association. The class is taught by Mike Grevers of the Soil Science Department at the U of S. The majority of the papers were written on wind erosion, next water erosion. However the top paper by Jody Rysavy was written on soil salinity.
Jody's paper describes what causes soil salinity, possible cures and what he is doing on his own farm to stop it's spread. " Soil salinity has been and will always be a concern for producers of any field scale crop. If preventative measures are not taken, soil salinity can result in many acres of lost or marginal production. Some areas of the province have already fallen to this "silent white blanket", but with careful management practices, these "patches" can be prevented.
As a management practice Jody states "Barley is probably the most common crop planted in problem areas because it can grow in moderate to severely saline soil. The best way to manage moderate salinity problems is to establish a heavy cover crop, and do as little as possible to disturb the soil surface." With this in mind direct seeding has a positive fit manage saline soils. " Some areas have too much salt to grow any commercially viable crops. In these cases, a ground cover forage or grass is used. Some of these include Altai Wild Ryegrass, Slender Wheat Grass, Salt Meadow Grass and Tall Wheat Grass.
Jody continues to explain his own farm management for salinity. " the largest area of salinity (on his farm) is an artesian discharge, the water recharge may be several miles away. Just finding the general recharge area would be hard enough, let alone trying to convince the owner farming it to plant high water usage crops. The solution to this problem unfortunately now lies with myself, trying to manage the problem that is already there rather than preventing the cause.
If crops that are less tolerant to establishment in saline soils can be planted now, they will not have too much problem germinating at the present time. Later when the salinity has increased they would be harder to establish. By planning ahead I hope to prevent a big mess in the future." Jody hopes to seed the area to forages in the future to prevent the spread of the saline area.
Jody concludes with " There unfortunately no quick cure for salinity, good management skills are needed to work with patches already formed. If the water table can be kept as far away from the surface as possible, the probability of salinity is reduced greatly."