Precision Irrigation to the Rescue for California Growers
Once a call is made for “zero percent district water allocation,” there is only so much a grower can do on his or her own … and for only so long. Such was the case this year for Matthew Sani and other growers in the Alta Irrigation District on the eastern side of California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Their problem originated in 2020, when the San Joaquin Valley received a minimal amount of rainfall and recharge for the basin used by Sani’s farm, Sani Citrus, and its 100 acres of mandarin trees. Paired with depleted and already underperforming water basins, every grower within the district was forced to operate solely on pumping well water.
“By the time the issue had become prevalent and detrimental, about half of our operating budget had been spent for this season’s crop,” Sani says. “While it would have been nice to retroactively change the inputs and amount of labor spent for our crop, we knew that was not an option.”
As irrigation requirements began to increase in the late spring and early summer of 2021, Sani began to see a drop in pump output and irrigation system pressure. That was not enough to draw huge concern, he says, but, again, in hindsight he knows this was the canary in the coal mine. Over the next few weeks pump output and pressure steadily declined. Sani’s deep well began to pump air sporadically.
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By mid-May the system at Sani Citrus went from pumping 190 gpm to only 85 gpm at 10 psi. At this time Sani sounded the well to find that the static water level had dropped from 35 feet to 85 feet within just five months.
Learn how Sani turned to three leading tech companies to save his season in Thomas Skernivitz’ article “Precision Irrigation to the Rescue“. The article was part of Meister Media Worldwide’s recently released Irrigation Technology Annual Report.
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