Farmers Help Fellow Farmers Irrigate More Efficiently

The Mississippi Soybean Promotion Board (MSPB) recently took a big step toward curtailing the amount of water drawn from the alluvial aquifer for agricultural irrigation. Under its Sustainable Irrigation Project (SIP), MSPB is highlighting and promoting the use of practices and tools that will reduce the amount of irrigation water applied to the state’s crop acres. A recent example of these efforts featured farmers using their experience with these resources to help other farmers become more efficient irrigators.

MSPB and Mississippi State University organize irrigation meetings and demonstrations year-round that help train farmers in all water conservation efforts. Farmers have heard about the tools that can help them save money and irrigate more efficiently, but many require additional hands-on training.

That’s why seven Glen Allan farmers agreed to act as trainers on PHAUCET (Pipe Hole And Universal Crown Evaluation Tool), a computer program that helps improve the efficiency of existing furrow-irrigation systems. Tim Howle, Walt King, Danny New, Trey Nelson, J.R. Nichols, Drew Nipper and Grant Weeks travel to the homes of farmers and walk them through PHAUCET step-by-step.

“PHAUCET has been around for a number of years, and we are trying to get farmers to use it on their computer,” says Mark Henry, Mississippi State University extension associate. “PHAUCET can be difficult to understand. You look at it and you don’t know where to put the X’s and O’s, and that is what the trainers help other farmers understand.”

Data show the water level in the Delta’s aquifer is declining, but water conservation could allow the aquifer to replenish itself in the future. Mississippi farmers are starting to realize the need to save water, and many are becoming enthusiastic users of PHAUCET and other programs. PHAUCET helps farmers cut their water usage by as much as 20 percent.

“These young men are making more of us better irrigators,” says David Whitehead, a Glen Allan farmer who received training. “I’m impressed with these young farmers who are seeing the groundwater level going down and are taking the initiative to manage it. I’ve been assisted by Tim, Danny and Grant and am further along in my PHAUCET training thanks to them.”

Farmers can use PHAUCET to determine the best hole sizes to punch along the length of a polypipe irrigation set to help water a field evenly with minimal outflow at the end. The tool calculates these hole sizes based on pump capacity along the tubing, pipe diameter, the different row lengths that will be encountered along an irrigation set, and the elevation changes in a field.

The voluntary adoption of these conservation tools and technologies should provide a significant contribution to the conservation of the Delta’s water resources, which is why farmers across Mississippi have committed to the program and are becoming more involved in the irrigation-water-conservation effort.

“Glen Allan is a tight-knit community,” Henry adds. “The trainers want to conserve water and they want their neighbors to conserve water.”