Exploring the history of various aspects of the potato industry throughout the years.
ORIGIN: Irrigation is believed to have been created in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Euphrates and Tigress rivers in Mesopotamia and the Nile in Egypt would flood annually, and with these overflows the farmers living along the rivers would divert and direct it to their crops. In Ancient Rome, they built structures called aqueducts to carry water from snowmelt in the Alps to cities and towns in the valleys below.
TIMELINE:
- 6,000 BCE — Irrigation is created in Egypt and Mesopotamia by diverting flood water from rivers to crop land.
- 1847 — Modern irrigation begins with the Mormon settlement at Utah Great Salt Lake Basin.
- 1947 — Nebraska farmer Frank Zybach invents an irrigation system that featured two sections of pipes on skids, suspended by cables from two towers. A later iteration included five towers with pipes running on wheels and could irrigate 40 acres.
- 1952 — Frank Zybach is granted a patent on a larger irrigation system with a 600-foot boom that could water a 135-acre circle (all but the corners of a standard 160-acre section of land) — aka the centre pivot.
- 1954 — Valley Manufacturing, a small manufacturer of farm equipment in Omaha, Neb., acquired the patent rights from Frank Zybach. Its engineers improved the machine’s efficiency and dependability.
STATS:
- An estimated 18 per cent of the world’s cropland is now irrigated.
- By the turn of the 20th century, the Mormon settlement at Utah Great Salt Lake Basin cultivated nearly 2.5 million hectares of irrigated land across the inter-mountain western United States.
- Canadian farmers used about 40 per cent less water to irrigate their crops in 2020 compared with two years earlier.
- Canadian agricultural producers used approximately 1.8 billion cubic metres of water to irrigate their crops in 2020.
- As of 2020, Alberta accounted for over two-thirds of Canadian land that is irrigated.
- A total of 605,907 hectares of land were irrigated in Canada in 2020.
QUICK FACTS:
- Frank Zybach who created the centre pivot left school in the grade seven to help with his father’s farm and blacksmith shop. He became both a skilled metalworker and an inventor who is credited for nine patents.
- Modern irrigation systems use reservoirs, tanks, and wells to supply water for crops.
- During the 1930s to ‘50s, government-sponsored programs to build dams for hydropower, flood control, irrigation and settlement of sparsely populated areas, happened in the United States, Soviet Union, Australia and Africa.
- Canadian farmers use four types of water sources — water from on-farm underground sources, on-farm surface water sources, off-farm sources, and other water sources.
Sources: National Investors Hall of Fame, Pro Green Irrigation, National Geographic, Encyclopedia of Soil Science, Statistics Canada
