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Some farmers in Prince Edward Island say they don\u2019t want to take any chances when it comes to the possibility of another drought this year.<\/p>\n
After a dry summer in 2025, the P.E.I. government said it has seen an increase in applications for irrigation wells as farmers look to ensure their crops get the water they need for a strong season.<\/p>\n
Derrick Curley, owner-operator of Monaghan Farms in Norboro, said his operation has applied for 14 new wells \u2014 something that’s uncharted territory for the business.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe found in the last a handful of years, the weather has become more and more unpredictable and it’s starting to hinder our quality,\u201d Curley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, quality is king, yield is secondary. So with the back-to-back years with some dry weather and some complications on quality, it’s very important for us to bring our quality back … so we can stay in these markets.\u201d<\/p>\n
WATCH | Irrigation requests spike from P.E.I. potato growers hurting from drought losses:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769398288_891_default.jpg\")
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Irrigation requests spike from P.E.I. potato growers hurting from drought losses<\/p>\n
A growing number of P.E.I. potato growers are applying to add irrigation systems over the next couple of years after drought hit their 2025 crops hard. CBC\u2019s Nancy Russell visited a potato operation in central P.E.I. that has applied for 14 wells \u2014 a multimillion-dollar investment that owners say the farm needs to remain competitive. <\/p>\n
Most of the potatoes produced at Monaghan Farms are exported to be made into potato chips. <\/p>\n
Without adequate moisture, Curley said, some potato varieties become more prone to bruising, resulting in a \u201cchip defect.\u201d <\/p>\n
Droughts can also interfere with internal sugar processes, which can cause the chips to turn brown.<\/p>\n
Curley said yields during last year’s drought were down 25 per cent on average. <\/p>\n
Sean Ledgerwood, manager of water and air monitoring with P.E.I.’s Department of Environment, Energy and Climate Action, said the province has received about 120 applications for irrigation wells since August.<\/p>\n
He said there’s a two-step process for well applications that involves a groundwater exploration permit, then a permit to withdraw the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ones we’re talking about [are] just the exploration permits,” he said of the 120 applications. “Historically, probably only about half of those actually go and end up having a water withdrawal permit where they actually extract water from the well.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
LISTEN | Dry P.E.I. summer leads to flood of irrigation requests:<\/p>\n
This is PEI17:59Dry P.E.I. summer leads to flood of irrigation requests<\/p>\n
Many P.E.I. farmers are looking to irrigate more land after spending much of the summer under drought conditions.\u00a0Mitch explores how the application process works and what rules protect your drinking water.<\/p>\n
Monaghan Farms currently has three wells approved. Curley said they want to add more.<\/p>\n
“We … put 14 applications in just to kind of see where we would end up as far as getting approved,” he said. “Ideally, yeah, we would get … at least 10.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ledgerwood couldn’t say how many wells would be approved for the 2026 planting season, but said a \u201cvery rough guess” would be up to 40. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe amount of high-capacity wells that are in existence now is about 63 for irrigation purposes,” he said. “So it’s a significant increase, but not unexpected with the season we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chip varieties don\u2019t require as much irrigation as some other potatoes, Curley said, and that’s something he hopes the province takes into account when it looks at applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo years from now, if we can get a reasonable percentage of our acres covered with irrigation, it’d be a good risk-mitigation measure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-433538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}