Calgary & Southern Alberta

Wheatbundler, 1949 Courtesy of the Western Irrigation District Strip Farming Courtesy of the Western Irrigation District

In southwestern Alberta, farm experts and farmers worked together to develop strip farming and "trash cover" farming, and to design new equipment such as the Noble Blade. These dryland farming techniques helped save agriculture in the southern part of the prairies. Strip farming - the practice of alternating long, narrow strips of crop and summer fallow - first appeared in southern Alberta before 1920, when two Dutch American settlers, Leonard and Arie Koole, began experimenting with the technique to counter the effects of prevailing westerly winds. Extreme soil drifting in the 1930s prompted experts to encourage this practice. It was soon apparent, however, that strip farming solved only part of the problem associated with southern Alberta's arid conditions.

Soil scientist Asael E. Palmer, assistant superintendent of the Lethbridge experimental station, was the first to recognise the value of "trash cover". Palmer, a former homesteader from Utah and a leader of the Mormon community, observed that the stubble and other plant residue left on the ground surface of unploughed summer fallowed fields protected the underlying soil against wind erosion. In order to benefit from this trash cover, however, the farmer needed a blade cultivator that would go under the stubble and kill the weeds.

C. S. Noble, Iowan farmer and CPR real estate agent, invented the needed implement. Noble began tackling the difficulties of dryland farming soon after he moved to Alberta in 1903. Between 1912 and 1916, he conducted internationally acknowledged experiments in dryland flax, oats and wheat production. In 1936, working closely with Lethbridge researchers, he devised a V-shaped blade, dubbed the "Noble Blade", that solved the "trash cover" problem.

In 1934, the province took over much of the land abandoned by farmers during the worst "Dust Bowl" years of the Great Depression, and turned the properties into "Special Areas". These areas provided hundreds of thousands of acres for private and community grazing. In addition, the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration (PFRA), established in 1935, united federal and provincial agriculture departments to publicise the new soil conservation practices. Although the PRFA was too late to prevent large-scale evacuation of Palliser's Triangle, it restored much of the area, making it possible for people who remained on the land to ranch or stock farm successfully.