By Clint Thompson
Irrigation automation is not yet a widely adopted practice among Florida watermelon growers in the Suwanee Valley region. Tyler Pittman, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Gilchrist County Extension agent, hopes that trend will soon change.
He moderated a grower panel at the recent Suwanee Valley Watermelon Institute meeting in Fanning Springs, Florida, on Dec. 5. It focused on producers who have implemented automation on their farms.
“A lot of our growers here in the Suwanee Valley are using soil moisture probes to monitor where their water goes and where their fertilizer goes. They’re still cranking their pumps manually. They’re changing zones manually. When I say manually, there’s a person in the field flipping a lever to move water from one part of the field to the other,” Pittman said. “That is difficult to keep a schedule. It’s difficult for a lot of farmers to find reliable help. This takes a lot of that human error out of the farming equation.
“The easiest way to describe (automation) is if you’ve ever had a garden hose timer for your garden. You’re setting the date, time, how long you want to irrigate, when you want to do it, that sort of thing. It’s more complicated than a garden hose timer but it’s the same kind of concept.”
More Efficient System
Producers who implemented the system on their farms last year spent less money and were more efficient with their resources. Growers used 160 million pounds less water, and one-third of their fertilizer usage has been reduced.
“Those are numbers reported to us by the growers using the technology. To be honest, they’re probably pretty conservative numbers. The benefits from a water quality and quantity standpoint, I think are substantial, compared to the way we’ve been doing it,” said Pittman, who noted about 2,000 acres in the Suwanee Valley featured some type of automation last year. “Based on what I’m hearing so far this year and talking to our point of sales for this equipment, I would suspect it to double this year.”
Apprehension and costs are the major hurdles preventing other growers from implementing this technology on their farms.
“Any time you go in and change the way you’re doing something for an industry that’s been doing it for decades that way, there’s going to be apprehension about fully adopting that new technology,” Pittman said. “I think a lot of them have dipped their toe in the pool with it for a year and they have embraced it fully.”
Cost-share programs are in place, however, to help offset the increased expenses associated with automation.