The Growing Importance of Center Pivot Irrigation in Today’s Agriculture
February 2, 2022 Driving across parts of the Midwest or flying over some Western states, observers are likely to see plenty of circular crop fields with irrigation equipment installed on them. Many of these are center pivot irrigation systems, and their role has grown in importance for agriculture over the past decade or so.
That’s the view from Reece Andrews, Product Manager, FieldNET and Zimmatic Controls for Lindsay Corp., Omaha, NE, as the needs of today’s grower-customer have adapted to the changing environmental climate. “Center pivot irrigation is important, because getting the water where it needs to be is critical for farm operations,” Andrews says.
To appreciate how the center pivot irrigation marketplace has changed, it’s helpful to look back at some history. As Andrews points out, agriculture’s reliance on irrigation goes back decades, with the same goal driving development. “In farming, your land either has access to water or not,” he says. “If not, you as a grower had to figure out a way to get water to your crops. Back in the day, many growers used flood irrigation to do this, slowly flooding one field and then channeling that water to another field, and so on, using such equipment as syphon tubes or gated pipes. But this was not very efficient, with a lot of water wasted along the way.”
Instead, many growers began looking for a way to better control water usage in their fields. This led to the introduction of center pivot irrigation systems. Soon, center pivot irrigation systems were a common sight in crop fields across such states as Idaho, Indiana, and, of course, Nebraska. “These are places where rainfall tends to come in bunches during the early parts of the year,” Andrews says. “But there isn’t much rain in these areas during a typical growing season, so center pivot irrigation offers an answer to this problem.”
I cover this topic in great detail in my article “The Growing Importance of Center Pivot Irrigation in Today’s Agriculture.” The article was part of Meister Media Worldwide’s recently released Irrigation Technology Annual Report.
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