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Author name: Tony Tavares

Nevada Farmer Attributes Success of Organic Farm to USDA Agencies, High Tunnels & Drip Irrigation

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Three years ago, Carol Huether, decided it was time to change careers and reinvent herself. So, she took her years of experience managing other people’s businesses and turned those skills into a successful organic vegetable and herb farm in Spring Creek, Nev.

As she transformed her 10 acres into a productive operation, Huether wasn’t working alone. USDA agencies, such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Farm Service Agency (FSA), worked closely with Huether to create a sustainable operation, despite the region’s challenging climate.

“I wouldn’t have been able to even start this kind of operation if it hadn’t been for all the agencies coming together to help me under the umbrella of the USDA,” Huether says.

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Drip Irrigation Helps Nursery Save Water & Labor

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Standing Pine Nursery is growing flowers – and its profit margin – by experimenting with an irrigation system designed for field crops. The low pressure drip irrigation system helped increase the nursery’s efficiency and sustainability by reducing labor demands and water usage.

This past summer, Geoff Denny, who is an assistant Extension professor of horticulture in Mississippi State University’s Department of Plant and Soil Sciences and a few horticulture students installed a small test of the system at the Raymond nursery. Denny modified the system especially for potted plant crops and installed it on part of this year’s mum crop. The test system is now being used on one greenhouse of poinsettias.

Nursery owner, Jody Ogletree, is pleased with the results and plans to expand the system next year. “The drip irrigation system is a gigantic labor- and time-saver,” Ogletree said. “In this business, labor is the biggest expense. While we can’t eliminate labor by using this system, we can free up our employees to do other tasks, such as pulling an order or cleaning foliage.”

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Subsurface Drip Irrigation on Alfalfa

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Drip Irrigation on AlfalfaOne of our drip irrigation experts recently wrote an article for Progressive Forage Grower magazine about subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) for alfalfa and other field crops. The article introduces the origins and benefits of SDI, compares SDI to other irrigation technologies (such as gravity, sprinkler, and pivot irrigation), and presents recent SDI case studies.

For the full article, click here to

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Drip Irrigation Trial on Potatoes

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Once upon a time, no one thought the center pivot would work, mentioned an old Valley farmer leaving the Drip Irrigation Field Day earlier this month.

Producers gathered in both Roger Christensen and Dennis Beiriger’s experimental drip irrigation potato fields to see what happens when a tuber is watered under a controlled irrigation system installed underground. The Colorado Potato Administrative Committee (CPAC) and Rio Grande Roundtable sponsored trial proved Valley crops will grow using the system that delivers water and nutrients directly to the crop’s root and is used in many forms on an international scale, but it still needs a bit of tinkering.

Beiriger and his brothers have turned a small portion their fourth-generation family farm in Hooper into a drip tape demonstration project to prove the benefits of a drip system over a pivot system in a drought-stricken environment.

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Campbell’s Turns to Drip Irrigation to Grow More Tomatoes with Less Water

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Water prices, water rights, drip irrigation, and last year’s dry winter are common topics of conversation for California growers. All have a common thread – the days of cheap limitless water supplies in California are fast approaching their end, and in districts further south in the Central Valley, are already here.

The folks at Campbell Soup know this. Which is why the company set goals last year to reduce water and fertilizer use by 20 percent per pound of tomatoes by 2020. This is on top of a 50 percent water reduction goal for its manufacturing plants.

One especially promising strategy is replacing sprinklers or furrow irrigation with drip irrigation. Though it costs about $1,000 per acre to install the drip system underground, the benefits are obvious. In addition to cutting water use by roughly 10 percent, it saves on fertilizer and helps farmers boost their tomato yields.

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Agriculture Industry Needs To Do A Better Job “Telling its Story”

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All too often, the general public still thinks of farmers as wearing overalls and using very simple practices to grow crops when quite the opposite is true, says Rob Atchley, general manager of citrus groves for Florida and Texas for A. Duda & Sons Inc., LaBelle.

To help bridge that misperception, he called on those in agriculture to do a better job educating the public about current farming practices and how farmers are true professionals.

“Farmers, especially those who grow specialty crops, need to give the public a view of how we really farm, to show these are highly managed businesses and not a couple of guys in overalls with buckets throwing fertilizer,” he says. “They are professional people who do this for a living. They study these businesses. They grow up in these businesses, and they run them at a high level of oversight because the margins demand it. We can’t do things sloppily.”

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Leave us a comment and let us know your story or how you are a professional in the agriculture industry.

To learn more about Toro’s story, visit toro.com. Or, check out one of our many drip irrigation case studies to learn more about how professionals in the agriculture industry are using drip irrigation to improve their farming practices.

To read more about “telling the story”,

Agriculture Industry Needs To Do A Better Job “Telling its Story” Read More »

Drip Chemigation Basics

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Chemigation, in general, can be defined as the application of an agricultural chemical through any irrigation system, using the irrigation water to distribute the chemical. Chemicals include pesticides (insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, nematicides), fertilizers, plant growth regulators and other materials. Chemigation can be applied only if the product label allows such application, and only according to the label directions and restrictions.

The three basic crop irrigation systems include overhead/sprinkler, drip/trickle, and surface/gravity flow systems. The proper equipment, depending on the irrigation system, is essential for successful (as well as legal) chemigation. Although overhead irrigation and surface flow systems may be suitable for some vegetable crops, drip irrigation is widely used in vegetable production.

Many growers throughout the vegetable-growing regions of the U.S. are already using drip, or trickle, irrigation as a water management tactic. Chemigation via drip irrigation allows growers to apply pest control materials through a distribution system they already have in place (the drip system), thus saving significant time and money over ground-applied chemicals. Over the past 10 to 12 years, many field tests throughout the U.S. have demonstrated that application of insecticides via the drip system results in highly effective control of specific insect pests of vegetable crops using low rates of labeled insecticides.

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Pivot Sprinkler Irrigation Economic Comparison

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Although center pivot sprinkler irrigation (CP) is the predominant irrigation method in the US Great Plains, there is growing interest in the use of subsurface drip irrigation (SDI). Pressurized irrigation systems, in general, are a costly investment. Producers need to carefully determine their best investment options. In 2002, Kansas State University developed a free Microsoft Excel template to compare the economics of center pivot sprinkler irrigation and subsurface drip irrigation for field corn (maize) production.

This template has been updated annually with new input and revenue costs and assumptions. Important factors that have always affected CP and SDI competitiveness are field size and shape suitable for center pivot sprinkler irrigation and longevity of SDI system allowing longer amortization of its greater initial cost. The primary factors that allow SDI to have greater economic competitiveness than was the case in 2002 are greater corn yields and corn price. Using the base assumptions in the template for a square 160 acre field, an SDI system lasting at least 11 years can be cost competitive with a center pivot sprinkler with a life of 25 years.

Click here to find out how SDI compares economically to CP irrigation and to download the whitepaper, “Comparison of SDI and Center Pivot Sprinkler Economics.” Or,

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Why Midwest Growers Are Converting to Subsurface Drip Irrigation

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In the Midwest, the land where pivot irrigation is king, some growers are converting to subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) to save water, decrease energy and labor costs, and increase crop yield and quality. Though there is an initial investment cost, the water savings and yield improvement reduce the payback period and the benefits of subsurface drip irrigation out-weigh many of the drawbacks of pivots, which include limited reach, costly additions, un-watered acres, and water loss to evaporation – just to name a few.

To learn more about SDI, check out the new “how-to” guide to subsurface drip irrigation. Or, continue reading to find out why Midwest growers are converting to subsurface drip irrigation.

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NRCS Chief Tours California Farms & New Drip Irrigation System

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USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Chief Jason Weller toured local farmland in Los Banos, California that is benefiting from a federal partnership between NRCS and the U.S. Department of Interior Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) to protect the Bay-Delta Watershed. Approximately $6 million was invested by the two agencies, from 2011 – 2013, to upgrade irrigation water delivery infrastructure and on-farm irrigation equipment to conserve water for San Luis Canal Company farmers.

“Water is the lifeblood of agriculture and the environment,” said Cannon Michael, a local farmer. “Farmers have a duty to be good stewards of our resources and conservation is a key element of good stewardship. Improved water use efficiency and reduced runoff benefits farmers and the environment. Our partnership with NRCS has yielded very positive results and their programs encourage conservation on a large scale.”

Weller toured Michael’s new drip irrigation system, funded by NRCS, and nearby infrastructure improvements funded by Reclamation.

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