Smart Automated Irrigation: Increasing Farm Profit through Efficient use of irrigation for Dairy Farms

Date Issued:2018-06-30

Abstract

This project, led by the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture focused on the use of data and

autonomous technology in helping farmers make informed decisions and improve their

irrigation efficiency on pastures. The project collected data on water and energy usage as well as

pasture production from five commercial pivot irrigated sites across the North and Northwest of

Tasmania over three irrigation seasons from 2015 to 2018. Using the data, the project team

worked with the farmers involved to make changes improving water use efficiency and

monitored each site to measure the success of these changes.

The major objective of the project was to identify key irrigation system modifications and

practices that could be efficiently and effectively adopted by dairy farmers in achieving

improvements in energy and water usage and increasing pasture production per ML of irrigation

applied. A second objective was the development and testing of an autonomous sensor based

pressurised irrigation scheduling system that could improve energy, water and labour inputs.

Each pivot’s area was mapped to determine variability in soil types and elevation. Soil samples

obtained provided the soils’ water holding capacity and other details of major soil properties.

Weekly pasture growth rates were collected from each of the sites during each irrigation season

using a rising plate meter. As part of the programs management there was no interaction with

the farmer’s during the first irrigation season (2015/16). At the end of the first season,

workshops were held with all participants to discuss what had been found with the energy and

water use and pasture production, on each farm and to provide feedback on possible methods of

improving the management of each irrigation system. During the 2016/17 irrigation season, a

weekly update of rainfall and evapotranspiration for each site was provided to the participating

farmers along with free access to soil moisture and temperature data that could assist with each

properties irrigation scheduling.

In addition to providing weekly rainfall and evaporation data in the 2017/18 season, weekly

discussions were held with each farmer to assist them with their irrigation scheduling decisions.

On one of the five commercial sites, cameras were installed to assess the ability of cameras to

measure pasture growth rates autonomously, and assist the development of the autonomous

irrigation control platform (VARIwise). The camera technology was tested in the 2016/17

season and the VARIwise control platform tested during the 2017/18 season and compared to

both flat rate and variable rate water applications based on VRI prescription maps developed

from electromagnetic conductivity (EM38) and elevation data from the site.

Field days and workshops were held across Tasmania as well as in Victoria, Western Australia,

South Australia and New South Wales, during the three year project. A series of presentations

were developed for use at field days, workshops and online webinars. A factsheet was

developed on Variable Rate irrigation and a number of short videos were developed and

uploaded to YouTube for extension and training purposes. There were also a large number of

media interactions including radio and TV presentations and publication of project outcomes in

newspaper and magazine articles, both in Tasmania and nationally.

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