PROJECT OVERVIEW a) Project Background Irrigation has positive impacts on farm production through increased yield and opportunities for a broader range of more stable and reliable crops. Understanding the factors that drive success of irrigated farming is key to further intensification and expansion. Cost-of-production information is the basis for informative decision-making, Government economic policy development, and building a sustainable agriculture industry in Alberta. This particular project aims to collect and provide analyses of producers’ irrigation crop data for the three years of 2025, 2026 and 2027. The information will be used to develop cost-of-production benchmarks and identify critical drivers of profitability and farm competitiveness. This is especially important for managing production, Government policies and monitoring industry’s growth given challenging economic conditions. The data and information will also be used in a number of applications such as developing benchmarks that Agriculture Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) uses as guidance for their suite of Business Risk Management programs and for updating Cropping Alternatives, a crop planning and budgeting tool widely used by Alberta producers and other stakeholders. Published economic benchmarks will also benefit commodity associations, applied research associations, and creditors/lenders. The purpose of this RFP is to engage a contractor to recruit producers, with farms under irrigation, in Alberta and complete an electronic Microsoft Excel based data collection survey consisting of detailed farm financial and production cost and returns for irrigated crops. The Contractor will use the Excel collection instrument to assure consistency in data capture, precision and accuracy. The Contractor will provide clarification of data discrepancies, as well as a report based on participant feedback on process and report interpretation for future program enhancement. The target number of Participants in the irrigated cost-of-production project for each of the three production years is 40.
b) Project Objectives:
• Collection of production and financial data for irrigated crops from Alberta producers.
• Identification of major farm financial and productivity factors that drive profitability and competitiveness of irrigated crop production.
c) Project Structure The Contractor will submit completed electronic data survey from each Participant to the Economics Section of Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation. The Economics Section will generate individual enterprise business analysis reports for the participating producers, free of charge.
These customized reports show the revenue, costs and profitability of each enterprise on the whole farm. These reports detail enterprise production costs and returns on a per unit basis (i.e. per bushel, per tonne).
d) Key Stakeholders Key stakeholders include:
• Agriculture producers (specifically crop and livestock) – providing the information needed to help assess practical, on farm management options;
• Industry groups and associations – providing performance indicators relating to industry competitiveness;
• Alberta Government - monitor the ongoing economic and financial performance of Alberta’s Agriculture industry, and helps support Agriculture Financial Services Corporation’s (AFSC) Business Risk Management (BRM) suite of programs;
• Applied Research Associations (ARECA) and academia - Collaborative research efforts investigating a range of issues such as productive efficiency in agriculture, agricultural risk management, environmental issues and agricultural production management, and the farm level economics of ecosystem service production.
