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Friday, March 18, 2005

New Irrigation Technology Needed in Agriculture?

Recently in class we have been discussing who has water rights, and where most of the water is allocated. I was very surprised that 87% of usable water is consumed by agricultural needs. With such a large portion of a scarce natural resource being used in this department, I think it is necessary to maximize the efficiency of the irrigation systems being used. This is in no way an easy task, but I found this site that explains their attempts to provide "sustainable irrigation."

The company New Horizon Technologies, claims that in order to identify water wasting systems you must begin with an audit of the hardware and management techniques being used at each specific system. The specialists that work for this company claim that they can help irrigators save water and energy, reduce power bills, and optimize crop yields, by minimizing overwatering, leaching, and runoff. They claim that they can inspect the entire irrigation system to identify cost-effective improvements. I think that this is a difficult but worthwhile goal. I think that if these efforts could be incorporated into the entire agricultural field, you would see positive effects and less water would be wasted, while maintaining the same crop yield.

1 Comments:

At 1:27 PM, Blogger Nicole and Andy said...

I do agree that we need to maximize the efficiency of irrigation systems. There are plenty of people who can help in this area (we even have irrigation engineering here at USU). The problem is that it is expensive. As with anything, New Horizon Technologies or any other group, certainly aren't willing to evaluate a system for free and impliment a new one for free...everything costs. I think one way to overcome that would be with a Pigouvian approach. We could set a tax on those who have not had their system checked and improved to a desired efficiency. The revenue from the taxes can then help pay for the farmers to recieve that service, benefiting others.
Obviously there would be issues with who would get the new systems, which could be up to a lottery, or some other varient method, but overall I believe that would help solve the situation.

 

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