Advantages Of Automatic Watering

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30302, 30 November 1963, Page 6

Advantages Of Automatic Watering

; Automatic irrigation will 1 be the central theme of a field day for farmers to be held at the irrigation research station at Winchmore beginning at 9 30 a.m. on December 11, but the day will be of interest to dry land farmer as well for a wide range of experiments, not strictly of an irrigation nature, will be inspected and reviewed. Discussing automatic irrigation demonstrations this week, the superintendent of i the station <Mr W. R. Lobb> ’ said that it was hoped to | impress on people preparing ■ land for irrigation that there I were some advantages to be | gained in preparing it for | automatic irrigation. One of the prerequisites of nonmanual control of water was to establish the races and discharge sills correctly at the time the paddock was prepared. It would appear that the main advantages to be gained from irrigation could be associated with the elimination of the element of human decision. he said. If the control of water and the shifting of water were left to the farmer, interruptions for morning and afternoon tea and to attend to callers were likely to cause wastage of water. If the farmer did not i have to attend to the water. ■ and the clock, which was I part of the automatic system, i did this, it would do it within a half minute of the desired time and the decision became a mechanical and certain one. The second main advantage of automatic operation, where the race was properly con-

structed, was that water discharge from the race and watei- loss were controlled to a point where the efficiency of irrigation appeared to rise fairly steeply. Initial figures indicated tha' this could be of the order of an acre an hour increase in watering, even on an area that had not been correctly prepared. During the day farmers would have the opportunity of seeing automatic equipment operating and several types of equipment for automatic control would be inspected and the set-up of this equipment would be demonstarted as a normal procedure.

In endeavouring to combine irrigation with a roster system of water availability, some considerable advantage in favour of irrigation could be achieved if the decision as to when to irrigate could be made on a calculated

basis, rather than being determined by the farmer, who might wish to avoid irrigating because of its possible inconvenience in relation to other work, with the result that the efficiency of irrigation farming could be seriously reduced. The method of using this calculation would be explained in association with the actual automatic unit, and although farmers might not be able to determine their irrigations as accurately as this, the method could be recommended to farmers who were committed to irrigation production. Mr Lobb said that irrigation on the 160-acre automatic unit would begin on December 9 if the weather co-operated and the soil moisture deficiency recorded at that date was an inch plus or minus five points. Should this be realised farmers would have an opportunity of seeing how far irrigation had proceeded by the field day and would see the unit in operation that day.