Climate, Weather and Drought

[Brad Mills, Program Host]

Nebraska Extension Almanac. Obviously, water's a critical component of agriculture, and UNL irrigation engineer Derek Heeren, talks about the importance of conservation, and some pitfalls with irrigation on today's almanac.

[Derek Heeren, UNL Irrigation Engineer]

Yeah, water conservation is really critical both at the level of an individual farm as well as at a state level.

And obviously, our water resources are limited, and so we want to use them in the best way as possible to get the most production, some specific things.

You mentioned the drought, and that's a big part of it, and some natural resources, it's really important to not only reduce the use of water for irrigation, but also reduce the consumptive use, and that's the crop water use in particular.

In a lot of places, the level of nitrates is also a concern.

So if we're overusing water for irrigation, we're much more likely to have excess water moving from the root zone, down to the aquifer, and that often takes nitrates with it.

So those are two of the big reasons.

It does seem like droughts are getting more frequent than they used to, as well as large rainfall events, and so more and more, the timing of the rain doesn't match what we would like it to be, and good water management helps us adapt to that as best we can.

So a couple of common mistakes for watering.

One would be, it's really easy to put on extra water.

It's kind of like a cheap insurance policy, and it takes some effort to really be thoughtful and apply the amount that's crop water needs. A lot easier to put on a little extra.

However, in that case, we're using more water than necessary and more energy than necessary, as well, to continue putting water on.

So a little bit of effort, censored data is really helpful, or crop water use data, but being confident to make the decision that we need this water.

I'm going to water it to avoid stress, but I'm not going to put on extra water.

Soil water sensors are really helpful for irrigation scheduling.

And I think over time, they're becoming more useful. More reliable.

Some of the changes are that now there are services where industry will install the sensor for you, provide data on the cloud.

And so it's a lot easier than it used to be.

And, yeah, less likely to have problems with a poor installation, a lot easier to access the data remotely and make decisions remotely and control your irrigation remotely.

Of course there's some cost with that.

But producer's time is really valuable.

So those types of products have become really popular, in terms of potential savings.

You know, it'd be pretty realistic to expect you might reduce your irrigation by, you know, one revolution of the pivot to three revolutions of the pivot, by having that soil water sensor data to give you more confidence on when to irrigate.

From there, it's a question of the energy costs associated with when you do a revolution.

In terms of suggestions for this summer, like the past couple winters were really dry, going into the growing season, and so that's something to keep an eye on.

If you have a center pivot irrigation system, you might have the opportunity to use that to help with emergence, right after planting.

Most years, that's not necessary, but this might be one of the years when it is.

If you have other types of irrigation systems that might not be practical, but it could be an option to think about.

But my suggestion would be to think about one particular step you can make, to improve water management this year.

So, if you haven't tried the soil water sensors, perhaps invest in one of those, and just find out what they're capable of, and see how it works for your operation.

Another possible thing to look at would be to check into some of these industry products, that are becoming easier to use and help with recommending when to irrigate, or another possible thing to look at for improving water management.

I would recommend the Nebraska Extension website has a lot of resources on irrigation.

So they have different resources on soil water sensors, also what's called an ET gauge, which is a gauge you can install in your field that measures the amount of water that's used in the gauge, but it's designed so that it's the same as the water used by the crop, but there are several different tools like that that you could check into and consider implementing this season.

[Brad Mills, Program Host]

For Nebraska extension almanac, I'm Brad Mills. Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR media, and Nebraska Extension. For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.