Clay Smith says he remembers his father talking about using pressure transducers to help determine if particular wells on their farm near Walcott in Greene County, Ark., were actually pumping water.

“That really didn’t go anywhere, but 15 years later here we are, and we can use these new systems to see if the well is on or off,” said Smith, a speaker for the 24th annual Arkansas Soil and Water Education Conference, which was held online this year.

Smith and Joe Massey, a research agronomist with the USDA-ARS Delta Water Management Research Unit, based at Arkansas State University, discussed studies being conducted on the Smith Farm and other locations to test methods of automating the irrigation systems on farms across the Mid-South.

“As a researcher, I’ve come to the conclusion that to further our water conservation goals in the region we need to help farmers with some of appropriate level of technology, owing to the scale of the operations and the labor issues that always seem to be present,” said Massey.

Besides knowing whether an irrigation pump is running when it’s supposed to be, the systems being studied can also allow growers to start or stop irrigation pumps remotely or, in more advanced automation systems allow moisture sensors or rice flood levels to initiate or terminate irrigation.

Reducing human interaction

“The way we see it is that automation is any technology or process that reduces human interaction with an irrigation-related decision or activity,” said Massey. “And we say that to say automation does not necessarily have to mean a full-on automated system. There’s many levels of technology that might be more appropriate to your farm.

“For example, in this way of thinking about automation, a Murphy Timer Switch is a form of automation just like a manual rice flood depth sensor is a form of automation. There are electronic equivalents of these such as the remote pump control shutoff and an ultrasonic water level sensor that can be used singly or as part of a more complicated system.”

Massey said the ultrasonic sensor could provide feedback to the pump control system to control the pump. “We have found that the ultrasonic sensors are particularly good at determining when to irrigate such as in a row rice field, but they’re not so good at determining when to turn off the irrigation. So we often just use a simple timer for stopping the pump.”

Setting up system

Smith said setting up an irrigation system with Delta Plastics’ Pipe Planner software is a first step in moving toward some form of automation.

“We’ve used Pipe Planner on our farm, and we’re using the remote on off,” he said. “I think Pipe Planner provides the framework or the footprint to go forward with these systems. If you have all your hole sizes done correctly, then you can turn it on and off remotely.”

The different degrees of automation can reduce stress on the farm from dealing with those hard-to-reach fields, he noted. “It can also help prevent your polypipe from rolling, and you know how big of an ordeal that is. It takes half a day or a full day to fix that. Shutting the pump off remotely can also give you more time for other activities such as crop scouting.”

To view the presentation, visit www.arkswec.com and click on the 24th annual Arkansas Soil and Water Education Conference icon.