Irrigation

India plans to expand its farmland underirrigation by at least a tenth in the next three years, potentially boosting grains output by an equal proportion in the world's second-biggest rice and wheat producer, a topgovernment official told Reuters.

The extra irrigated area would cut India's dependence on annual monsoon rains that water crops grown on nearly half of the country's farmlands. Rice, cane, corn, cotton and soybean are the main monsoon crops. 

Irrigation New Zealand has launched a framework called SMART Irrigation to ensure that future irrigation in New Zealand is implemented and managed sustainably. This is a first for irrigation in New Zealand.

The SMART (Sustainably Managed, Accountable, Responsible and Trusted) framework provides three simple steps for irrigators to better manage their environmental footprint.

(1) Design future irrigation systems to industry standards and codes of practice

(2) Annually check the irrigation system is performing as it should

Valley Irrigation, the leader in precision irrigation, is putting the latest soil moisture monitoring technology into the hands of growers with Valley SoilPro 1200, powered by AquaSpy. SoilPro 1200 delivers the most detailed soil moisture data in an easy-to-understand format. With just a few clicks, growers can see the depth of their crop root zone, soil moisture levels by depth, soil electrical conductivity, temperature, and water penetration from rainfall and irrigation.

Drought-plagued California will ease some protection for fish in the fragile San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta, officials said Tuesday, a move expected to make more water available for farming and ease political tensions in an election year.

The move marks a retreat from restrictions imposed earlier in the year which had widely been expected to be tightened further, rather than eased, and was welcomed in the agricultural community.

 Global farmers could get better decision-making help as refinements are made to North Alabama soil moisture modeling research being done by an atmospheric science doctoral student at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH).

The models indicate how much added moisture would be needed in a given area versus historical data to achieve various crop yields, and they could aid in making expensive infrastructure investments by helping to determine their economic viability.

Deere & Company (NYSE: DE) announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to sell its irrigation operations to FIMI Opportunity Funds, the leading private equity firm in Israel.

After being involved in the production of irrigation products for seven years, Deere announced in September its intention to seek strategic options for the irrigation operations known as John Deere Water.

Isn’t it remarkable that we recognise the fact that the world faces huge problems in terms of water, energy and food security – and yet we tend to tackle these as separate problems, as if they have no interconnections.

So here’s a radical idea. What if the world’s food, water and energy problems were tackled together, in a way that lowered costs and made the whole greater than the sum of the parts?

Global Easy Water project joins Business Call to Action by providing low-cost irrigation systems for rural farmers

The Business Call to Action (BCtA) has partnered with a leading social enterprise, Global Easy Water Products (GEWP), to deliver low-cost micro-irrigation systems to 300,000 families and smallholder farmers in India by 2018.