New irrigation system efficient

Farmland is essential to Mississippi County and to have a farm full of crops, you have to have a good irrigation system.

That is what Ray Benson and the University of Arkansas Mississippi County Extension Service has been working on for the past seven years — improving local irrigation systems.

“We do a lot of on-farm programs that help demonstrate ways to improve irrigation water use efficiency. There's a host of reasons why we can become more efficient with irrigation water, it’s a reduced cost for the producer. There's less pumping cost. We see ways that we maintain yield and a lot of cases we improve yields, we prevent the over the use of water. Which could water log and produce crop problem,” Benson explained. “Other than the economic benefit and the reduction of water cost, we see a pretty big reduction in total water use, which will be good for sustainability and preservation for our aquifer and our irrigation compacity in the future. All the programs that we’ve set up the last five to seven years are practices that have been shown in research to improve efficiency. Through the Mississippi County Extension agency; this has been a focus for us the last seven years.”

Benson also stated that the farmers that have worked with the new irrigational systems within Mississippi County have been impressed with the demonstration and have even started practicing them on their farmland.

One farm that was shown in the demonstration to the CN was Nelson Ag. John Alan Nelson owns the farms, while his son John David Nelson is farm manager and a board member of Nelson Ag. John David explained he really appreciates the work of the Extension Service, and Nelson Ag believes the investment of the irrigation system on their farms will be worth it in the end.

“I really appreciate Ray Benson and the University of Arkansas Extension Service for letting us be a part of this demonstration. My father, John Alan, and I are always looking for new ways to improve the way we farm, especially when it stands to benefit future generations and the environment,” John David explained. “We consider ourselves small farmers, but our farm alone uses thousands of gallons of irrigation water every minute during the summer months. If we can make even a small dent in that number, and irrigate better than we did before, I’m all for it. The method that Ray presented us was easy and worked very well. The start-up costs to do all of our fields this way would be a small challenge, but I believe the investment would be worth the reward in the end.”