Key findings

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The main objective of this study was to produce Canadian agricultural water use statistics for the reference year 2001 through different methods. Water use was estimated for several farming activities including irrigation; spraying herbicides, insecticides and fungicides; frost protection, sanitation washing, and harvesting; on-farm processing; livestock watering, livestock sanitation and other miscellaneous uses.

In 2001, Canadian agricultural water use was estimated at 4,786,590 thousand m3. The geographic distribution of water use varied greatly from one region to another. Together the three westernmost provinces accounted for 92.3% of total national agricultural water use. In these provinces, most of the agricultural water was used for irrigating crops (96.1%) and the remaining part was mainly used for watering livestock (3.1%).

For the other provinces, the distribution of the different types of water use within each province varied. In Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, water used for watering livestock accounted for more than 42% of total farm water use. It accounted for about one-third of total farm water use in remaining four provinces.

Within each province, agricultural water use varied greatly. Among the 477 SSDAs that contained farms in 2001, there were few that had important amounts of water used for agriculture. Most of these watersheds were concentrated in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, where irrigation was intensively practiced.