Roric Paulman, his wife Deb, and their son Zach run Paulman Farms near Sutherland, NE, with the help of eight employees and two agronomists.

Their biggest challenge as growers is variable weather: their area receives only sporadic rainfall. As a result, 80 percent of their 6,500-acre farm is irrigated with center pivots of varying sizes. Water supplies are limited, requiring careful attention to water usage.

“We’re in an area where pumping is highly restricted, so all of our withdrawals are measured and tallied,” Roric says. “We have a five-year budget for water, but we could burn through most of our allocation in one year if we weren’t paying attention. After 30 years, we’re pretty good at controlling our water usage, and AgSense has allowed us to become even more precise.”

The Paulmans understood the value of remote monitoring and control of irrigation pivots. They began using AgSense in 2011 and currently use Valley Field Commander^® to monitor and control their pivots and Valley Crop Link^® to track weather and real-time pumping gallons per minute. With Crop Link, Zach says, “You can tell how much rain you’re getting in different locations.”

Roric, Zach and two of their employees use AgSense daily, relying on cell phones and notebook computers to monitor and control the equipment, and a desktop PC to set up and configure the user interface. Their irrigation system includes equipment from several manufacturers, and AgSense is compatible with everything they own.

In addition to monitoring water usage via Crop Link, the Paulmans rotate crops to conserve water, improve soil and minimize threats from insects and disease. Typical crops include milo, yellow corn and popcorn, hard red winter wheat, black turtle beans, black- eyed peas, yellow field peas and soybeans. Planting begins in April and the last harvest takes place in December.

Before the advent of today’s technology, Roric says, farmers relied on gut instincts and agronomists’ estimates to make irrigation decisions. “Almost all operators had a feel for how to irrigate, but we didn’t have the precision or the tools that we do today,” he says.

One of the primary benefits of using AgSense is the time saved, according to Roric. “To physically visit the pivot point and well of every machine we own, we have to travel 143 miles. We still need to do that sometimes, but AgSense has allowed us to utilize our time much better. When a pivot is stuck or broken, we know about it immediately and we can prioritize our work.”

“All of our electric wells are monitored,” Roric adds. “We get a text message when they go on and off. AgSense keeps building out more reporting and access and putting the data into a more usable format so we can decide whether to change our water application across a field. We can hone in our end guns and make sure they’re not wasting water on a road ditch or in a pond or on a county road. There’s so much we can do with it.”

“Trying to decide what to adopt and what not to adopt and how to utilize certain technologies on our farm is something that we talk about quite often,” Zach says. “Different technology is right for different users. AgSense offers the greatest pieces of technology we’ve got. It’s simple to use, and it hasn’t let us down yet.”