Smart Automated Irrigation: Increasing Farm Profit through Efficient use of irrigation for Dairy Farms
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.
Files in this item
This item appears in the following categories
- 2018 Final Reports
CRDC Final Reports submitted 2018