After going on the Bazile Groundwater Management Area field tour earlier this summer, I came away with a few thoughts on groundwater conservation and preservation.

PROTECTING WATER SUPPLIES: Irrigation equipment and new technology, combined with commonsense solutions, are saving water and protecting water quality on modern farms.

These days, you can use aerial imagery taken by drones in-season to manage irrigation and fertility at levels that were unheard of just a few years ago. Technology has changed how we think about water management on the farm. Urban media sources haven’t reported much on how farmers are working to preserve water resources by planting new crop genetics that thrive even under less-than-ideal weather conditions and through new variable-rate irrigation equipment that can apply only what is needed on specific soils and terrain around a field.

I picked up a Central Valley Ag/AquaSystems flier during the tour. In the flier there were several facts that caught my eye. For instance, each inch of excess water removes 8 pounds of nitrogen from the root zone. For producers, that could be reason enough not to overwater, to save fertility costs and to keep nitrogen from leaching into the groundwater or off the field into surface water. The flier also lists the cost of an applied inch of irrigation water as $12 per acre. With corn prices hovering below the “barely profitable” market area, every penny counts.

According to this information, the average irrigator overwaters by about 4.5 inches. Greater adoption of technologies like soil moisture probes, combined with variable-rate irrigation, aerial surveillance and irrigation telemetry, will most likely change that average for the better in the coming years.

Some of the best water-saving ideas probably have little to do with technology and more to do with applied common sense. Farmers in the Nebraska Panhandle know all about water restrictions from Mother Nature. They are planting more crops like field peas that are water misers. While some drought portions of the state had moved to more corn and soybeans during better market years when it actually rained, certainly many producers in those same areas are looking for crops that are still profitable under severe irrigation limitations. Farmers throughout the state are looking more at adjusting crop rotations to save on irrigation needs.

Add to the mix a healthy interest in cover crops, companion and pulse crops. We know that these practices, along with no-till, save soil, water and nutrients under the right weather and soil conditions.

We are also learning more about traditional crops like soybeans. University of Nebraska Extension researchers spoke at Soybean Management Field Days this summer about the timing of irrigation on soybeans. We now know that it is not detrimental to soybeans to stress them a bit during the early parts of the growing season. Saving on early irrigation and watering soybeans during the latter part of the season when pods are forming and filling is what builds yield. This fact, too, helps producers save on irrigation in ways we wouldn’t have thought about just a few years ago.

The bottom line is that producers and researchers are working hard to protect our water resources, raise more crops than ever before for a hungry world and still keep farmers in business at the same time. These are lofty goals, but in light of the research and commonsense solutions being applied now by producers, I have no doubt that they will be met and that our water resources will be the benefactor.