MSU Extension MI Ag Ideas to Grow With

All right. Good morning. My name is Younsuk Dong, From 10-11 I'm going to talk about the value of irrigation uniformity and sprinkler choices. First, I thought it would be good to start to see in Michigan whether the common sprinkler irrigation system that we have. This is from the USDA survey that you've been filling out. What farmers have been filling out, what irrigation system they're using from all the way from 2002-2017 As you can see it clearly, the pivot is the most irrigation method that we are using in Michigan. Then the beacon, the traveler follows it. Drip, trickle, which are used for a lot of orchards, the vegetable and the fruits are also common for those industry. And the solid set and some other system. But it's clearly the center pivot is the most common irrigation method that we are using in Michigan. Here's some photos of the example of center pivot irrigation system, The travelers overhead, the solid set systems and the drip irrigation system. It's all the irrigation system, depending on what crops you're growing, the size of farm, the land, the management practice that you have, a water capacity, all those things contributes to decide which irrigation system the method is the best fit for your farm. And these are some of you exam photos showing different navigation systems in Michigan. When we look at Center Pivot Irrigation System, there are over 8,000 center pivots in Michigan. And at least one third of the Michigan Irrigation systems are more than 20 years old. Based on the USDA survey data showing that about 10% of irrigation system in Michigan still use high pressure sprinkler package. Which tends to be not energy efficient as the low pressure sprinkler package, depending on the size. Some studies shows, if you convert from high to low pressure, the energy, the costs can be saved $200 or maybe $400 per season. There has been not a big encouragement from the utility companies to support converting the high pressure sprinkler package to the low pressure sprinkler packages. In Michigan, we have about 2,300 diesel power irrigation system. This is, this really depends on the location, right? If the field doesn't have three phase power available nearby. If it's too much cost to bring that line to the field, then maybe the diesel might be option. But the diesel is typically less energy efficient and cost more to operate and maintain. When you compare to the electric power irrigation systems, when we look at Center pivot irrigation systems lost the photo, There are a number of things that we're considering and looking at where the water is moving in the center pivot irrigated field, the first droplet evaporation. When the sprinkler spray, there's some amount of water evaporates. Evaporates in the air. It goes before it lands, to the crop or soil, it evaporates. That's called droplet evaporation. There's canopy evaporation. When the water applies, then some water applies on the plants that tends and that water tends to to be evaporated. Probably not used for the crop, that is called the canopy evaporation. Soil evaporation is basically the water that applies to the soil. The evaporate, the transpiration is what crops are using, the water. And we got runoff and deep percolation. Deep percolations, basically leaching, if you over apply the irrigation, if soil is already at the fill, the capacity means that any excessive water could leach below the root zone that water we call the deep percolation. When we look at the irrigation sprinkler system for center pivots, there are a number of sprinkler options for center pivot irrigation system. One is the overhead sprinkler, which is it's most common method that we are using it. When we look at the water application efficiency for overhead is around 60%. It's not efficient compared to some other irrigation system, But overheads is pretty common because of the ease of the installation and the maintenance compared to some other irrigation types. For, if you're growing corn, the overhead might be a better option because some of the drop nozzles can be tangled, can be dragging by the, the corns which could cause some other maintenance. The issues. That's why overhead is pretty common. There are other types. It's called the MESA, LESA, LEPA, the middle elevation spray application. Low elevation spray application and low energy precision application system usually operates at the pressure of 25. 40 PSI. Have the water application efficiency around the 75 to 85% The spray application is more efficient than the overhead. The overhead irrigation system typically require higher pressure, maybe from the 35 up to the 80 PSI. Depending on the length of the system and the capacity, the MESA is require less pressure and more efficient. LESA, we're dropping the nozzle close to the ground. The nozzle are located about 12 to 18 " above the soil surface. The LESA system typically use the operating pressure really low, the ten to 15 PSI, and they are more efficient. The companies been estimating their water application efficiency are 85 to 95% because the nozzles so close to water. So we can apply water directly to the soil. Lower energy precision application or LEPA the drop socks and bubblar nozzle. We hardly see this LEPA system in commercial form, but this is newer technology. What sprinkler company has been making to increase water use efficiency. This LEPA system used operating pressure near 15 PSI and they're estimating water application efficiency is around 95%. It's pretty good application rate depending on what crops you're growing. If you're rotating corn, soybean ,potatoes, and you have to find maybe one sprinkler system that works for all across the crops, that's some consideration. You will have it when you're deciding which sprinkler you're going to use for your field, when should we replace our sprinkler packages? The typical industry recommendation is ten years or 10,000 hours of operation. In Michigan, I think we're going to hit ten years first than 10,000 hours of operation. Because depending on the year, some years we don't apply irrigation as no more we do. So as the industry recommend, ten year or 10,000 hours of operation. I think in Michigan, sprinkler is going to hit the ten years, the first and 10,000 hours of operation. But this depends on the water quality we work with, one of the growers in Southeast Michigan. The water quality is not great. They have to change sprinkler. I think every once in five years, once in four years, five years, there sprinkler wear out the faster than the other areas in Michigan, because of water quality. Please check the water quality. Maybe once a year or once every other year. See what water quality that you have in your water system to make sure to make sure you're at a good standard. If not, then you might have to change the sprinkler the sooner than what the industry is recommending. We also see pressure regulator wear out or breaks earlier than the sprinklers. Pressure regulators is very important when you buy sprinkler package. Right? You're buying the pressure regulator as well, right? I don't know if you can see the cursor here in the middle. There's especially the field has the heal. If there's pressure regulator, then the pressure regulator helps to keep the optimal pressure so that you have the uniform application whether you have a heal or not, if you don't have a pressure regulator. The lower area, when the pivots in the lower area, when there's the lower area will likely get over water. The reason is about 1 ft of one of head equals 0.4 SI. Let's say you have about 30 feet of elevation changes which equals 13 PSI. The lower area, the pressure will be 13 PSI, higher than the top of the hill. So there is pressure change based on the elevation. The pressure regulator is necessary items, especially if you have a hill, if your field has a hill on the right, all the way to the right photo. This is I capture from sprinkler irrigation system notebook for the solid set but still apply for a sprinkler system if it's normal pressure. As you can see, the water drop nil that close to the sprinkler are fine because the inner circle you're covering the smaller area. So by applying the finer droplet, you're putting less amount. But as you can see, the droplet is the further from the sprinkler, the droplet size larger. Because you have to cover the large area, which I'm going to cover in next couple of slides for the center pivot concept. This is what the optimal the water application with the proper pressure. If the pressure is too high, it's not going to throw as what they intend to. All the droplet size will be really fine. Really fine size. So you're not going to get good uniform application. If it's too low, then all the droplet size is going to be larger, right? So you got to apply maybe more water than what you're intended to the pressure regulator. If you fail or if you wear out, then maybe that is good time to change the sprinkler packages. The last thing we see when to change the sprinkler package is the uniformity. When the uniformity is poor, then that is good time. The next slide here, it talks about the importance of checking the irrigation system uniformity. If it's perfect irrigation system, then we will have the good distribution uniformity on the left photo, as you can see, the application depth is uniform across the field. Some area, some sprinkler got clogged. It's been applying water less than what you're designed. If it's underwater, then the crops maybe under water stress which will impact the crop yield and grain quality. But if there is some areas over watering, then we can, it can cause the runoff or the leaching water or nutrient below the tone. So overwatering is not a good for environmental standpoint and underwatering, definitely not a good for the crop production, right? So that is why it's critical to have the uniform application for your irrigation system. As the Don talked about earlier, presentation was about irrigation scheduling. Lyndon also brought up this point that even before you start doing scheduling, you have to have good irrigation system, right? You have to have good uniform application from your irrigation system. This is the first thing. You should check it, make sure your irrigation system is properly operates and also apply the good uniform. Okay. So here's this slide from the Lyndon and as you can see the further area, further sprinkler center pivot. The span are covering more area. The first span will cover the two acres. Second span will cover six acres, 10, 13, 18, 22, 25, 30 acres. This is about 126 acres size field. The last span is the one cover the 30 acre, this field. What if you have really bad sprinkler on at the end? Or if it's applying less water than what you design the system, then all these area may get some yield effect. You might get less yield outer side. That's why the uniformity is good. To check it, make sure the system is operating properly. One method that we do is setting up the catch cans. Basically it's the metal pole, and we place the cups every ten feet from the center to the out. And the cups are typically placed at three feet from the ground. Okay? So three feet from ground and the space from the cups to cup is about ten feet. One thing to keep in mind when you do the catch can test is the precision of uniform testing decrease when wind exceeds 2.2 mile/hour. Make sure you do this uniform testing when wind is calm. If the wind speed goes beyond 11 mile/hour and this test may not be valid, that's before you start taking the measurement, make sure you check the wind speed, whether it's good environment to do this testing. Here's some area image that shows of our catch can demonstration. As you can see here, the white cups are placed ten feet from the center to all the way to the outs the slide from the Lyndon and he has a material and how to put the catch can test unit together. Basically we need 32 ounce disposal plastic cup and a half inch PVC pipe cutting four inch section and drilled about in 1 " from the end. There's going to be a hole right here which we're going to use the round, about 13 in length. Plastic cable zip tie will be placed right here, and the cup will sit right here. You probably need the gradual cylinder to measure how much volume of water it's been collecting on each cups. Here's the uniformity, the co-efficient spreadsheet, the evaluation tool, which I'm going to pull up later, probably at the end of the presentation to show you real time how we've been using this tool. Basically, you enter the farm name, application rate, operating pressure, the length of evaluation area, all those background information, and the wind speed, right? Make sure you check, you record the wind speed. The main thing is here in this bottom table under the catch volume in milliliter. This is where all the information that you collect from the catch can, will go in here, the coefficient uniform on the top, it's going to be calculated and this is most important data. The rule of thumb is 85% if the CU coefficient uniformity is 85% or greater, which means irrigation system is not likely need a major adjustment to the sprinkler package. If it's 80-85% it may need further analysis of sprinkler package and there might be some individual section of the irrigation system could be corrected to improve coefficient. If it's less than 80% it's more likely. More likely change the whole sprinkler package. That's why we've been finding anything below that, 80% There's just more than a couple individual section needs to be repaired. It's just worth it just to replacing the whole sprinkler package. Then we can start with the good distribution uniformity. Here's some case study, we've done it last couple of years. The pivots from I think Three River. The graph is showing there's pre-retrofit and pos- retrofit. Basically what we've done here, after we've done the uniformity testing, the coefficient uniformity came out at 73, which is lower than 80% And the producer decided to change the sprinkler. After that uniformity of coefficient we got was 91. It was pretty big improvement. This chart showing the value y axis is the volume as the milliliter, x axis is the distance from the center by feet. This is about a 50 feet length. The center pivot irrigation system, as you can see, each dot represents the cup. There's a lot of fluctuation. There's some area been outputting about over 200 milliliter compared to some area. The lowest one was about 40 milliliters. There's big differences in the water application within this irrigation system, but after sprinkler packages, it's much more uniform. We also found there is a couple places still needs to be adjusted. I think it was more joint area flanges. Probably the gasket needs to be replaced in a couple places, which we suggest to correct them. But in general, overall you can see it's pretty good improvement by changing sprinkler package. After that, some of the thing we done was the cost analysis, average energy costs per acre, per inch in order to apply 1 " application. How much energy cost? How much energy cost does farmer pays? There's some study done, I think 56 years ago. The range from $3.16 up to $7.50 per acre per inch application. The case study number one, the field was 100 acres, and we just use the middle values, $5.33 per acre per inch application. This 1.2 inch was we estimated water saving because of improved efficiency. And it came out about $6:40, I'm sorry, $640 per year energy savings. This farmer purchased a sprinkler package which was cost about $3,000 with $640 in energy saving per year. The pay back period came out about 4.7 years. Considering typical sprinkler replacement is recommended once in every ten years, retrofit or upgrading the sprinkler. Here's another case study we've done down in Constantine. It's pretty long pivot. It was about 1,500 feet. Before replacing the sprinkler package, the uniform coefficient was 75. There's some area we get putting 44 times more water than the average values after the producer replaced the sprinkler package. And now the uniform coefficient is 94. And as you can see, it's showing distribution uniformity is we also did the calculation. This is about 140 acre size field and the producer provided how much he spent paying per acre, per inch application, which was $3.50 cent. The water saving in this field was higher, we estimated, and it came out about $1,600 The producer paid the material about $4,300 for the labor. It was about $2,200 And the total cost he invested was $6,580 With $1,600 in energy saving per year. The period of this updating sprinkler system is approximately four years. Again, this is another case study we found that we can, we can significantly improve uniformity. Also saving energy cost, um, the potential source of low uniformity, there are a lot of them, especially for sprinkler nozzles, some area might be missing for some out or clogged by the chemical deposit or bugs or insect. They also contribute. Maybe some sprinkler wear out or it should rotate it but maybe stuck, so you're putting more in water or the pressure difference within the system. Unstable pressure could be a problem and the pressure difference within the system can be caused by elevation change or the pipeline friction loss. That's something to consider. So what would you do if the uniformity of your system is poor? First, check the water pressure right at the pipe. At center of the pipe, there's place you can put a pressure gauge. Manual. Manual, water pressure gauge. Pressure gauge is about $20 you can buy and just read it. Record it once in a while. See what the pressure, what the pressure of your system is. Um, and make sure the pressure is right, it's correct. Correct pressure check the emitter or the sprinkler emitter is for the drift but sprinkler make sure it's clogged. Check the equipment were Lyndon always emphasized on the writing. When you bought the system you can see how many, you know, sometimes if you've got a multiple pivot, sometimes we forget. I'm not sure when I replaced the sprinkler package in last time or the pump or the pipe writing all the maintenance items. The operation is really critical for the long term. Right. And that will really help you to keep track of what equipment or what material that you've been frequently buy and you can prepare, prepare for the future if something is going to happen during the season, right? Which if something, some problem happened during the growing season, you probably have to, you probably wanted to fix it right away, right? So also check the leak, right? The winterization is critical, right? Sometimes we forget to winterize. As you can see here, this plastic pipe, there's a leak, right? So if it's a leak, then maybe the water capacity, what you had, it, it won't be the same because of the leak and the pressure to please check the leak. Maybe before the season, you go out to field and just inspect your irrigation system. Some thing that we've been working with, Dr. Eric Anderson from MSU Extension is using the UAV, these drones to detect faulty sprinklers. As you can see from the side view of the center pivot which has an overhead irrigation system, what we've been observing is, is there any sprinkler showing different water pattern. That's one thing we're looking at from the top view, whether this rotating sprinkler got stuck over summer. This is something we also been observing from the drones which has been pretty useful to the quick assessment and center pivot irrigation system. One thing we also see is from the area image is how far this angle really covering, right? So you can clearly see here this dark area and this lighter. So means this angle is covering above this circle. So you can also check whether your gun is operating properly or not with this image. I thought might be good to share quickly about the drip irrigation system. You can do same thing, same uniformity testing with the drip irrigation system. The typical set up we do is using the four inch PBV cup, but you can use any cups, something to catching the water under the emitter. One little the trick we do because whenever drips, whenever we detest it, if there is a little slope, the water will follow with the line. Right? So what we done was we slip this to, it's basically Ram tubing. The blank tubing. We slice it, we cut it, and then we flip onto each side. There's emitter right here on each side. So when the water comes out, it's going to either way, it's going to catch here and then it will fall, fall out of the line and we catch the water. This little trick that we do to catch the water and collect the water from the drip emitter. As you can see, the set depending on your, how much time you have it and the size of field. But here you can see there's four people lined and I think this is every ten plants ten drip emitter. We measure the uniform, measure the volume of each, drip emitter. One other thing I really highly suggest to check is pressure. I know there's a lot of lines or the tapes are called the pressure compensated drip, which are really good. But you do want to, let's say if your water source is here, you do want to check the pressure at the end, make sure you're providing enough pressure, right? The longer tape you're having, there's friction, right? So your pressure is going to be lower at the other end. So as you can see, if I can see here, maybe that. Okay, so this side of what we saw was irrigation water source here, the pressure was 50. But at the end I think it was about 100 plants. At the end it was 39. So there's about ten PSI loss throughout this line. Check the pressure at the end of the line. Make sure you have you still have optimal pressure for your drip tape. If you drip tape, say drip tape is operating between 12 to maybe 20 PSI. You have that pressure, right? You should still have the pressure at the end of the line, right? So please check the pressure. So this is something we've done of the uniformly for this blueberry chart. And as you can see there's some area were out of the, I think it was greater than 30% from the average. And this is where we saw there is a little ponding, right? So there was a little leak on this tape and we correct them. Checking the uniformity. It takes time. It takes labor, takes lot of labor. But it's worth it, right? Even before doing scheduling, this is really important. The practice, we should do it. Okay. So I'm going to jump on the irrigation runoff, right? We saw the ponding. But for the sprinklers or in the field, In the any field, there are a number of things that can be affected. The runoff, the lower pressure sprinklers, which might put more water. If you're applying larger water, then what the can accept it, The infiltration rate, right? Infiltration of soil then the water is going to be ponding in the runoff is to compact. Compaction is high then there's high risk of runoff. Heavier soil, high risk of runoff. The slope as well, the low hilling. I think this is Lyndon, showing the potato field potatoes usually have a hilling which can be about nine in from the lower area or close to 12 ", this lower area. It's going to be causing some runoff. That's something to think about Michigan. The place southwest Michigan are sandy soil. This is USDA, the Hydrological Soil Map, NRCS. They group the soil into four different categories. The A soil, sand or gravel; B soil sandy loam, milo; C soil clay loam and D soil clay. As you can see, Northwest area are the green and the Southwest which is sandy loam and loamy sand which we are seeing a lot of place here. And the Southeast and the sea is clay loam, so there's a lot of clay area and the thumb and the southeast area. Um, I'm going to also demonstrate this web soil survey later if I have time. But the soil texture, knowing the soil sample is important for scheduling, like Lyndon mentioned earlier, but also important for minimizing runoff. One really easy way to find out your soil of your field is going to USDA Web Soil survey and check the soil variability of your field. You can see this field, this area has two different soil type. The majority field is Oshtemo and the other, the upper right corner is spink soil. Once you know the soil, you can actually go into the report and so physical property and hit the view. So report you can get available water capacity in inch per inch, which can be really helpful to understand the water capacity for the soil. I jump this slide because Lyndon probably already show this slide earlier, but Oshtemo and Sphinx are the most common soil that we've seen in irrigated fields in southwest West Michigan area. As you can see from the NRCS data, we can calculate water hooding capacity for 24 inch and 36 ". All right, So there's some other things I want to talk about is checking the flow, right? The flow can be changed over time, right? And flow can be changed even within the season. It's important to measure the flow. I think typically we measure flow when we putting new wells or when we change the sprinkler package, right? Because when you change the sprinkler package, they require what the flow, right, what the flow of your system is. We typically use ultrasonic flow meter. I believe there's other riglers has this unit, this equipment, basically there is two transducers. You can put it outside of this pipe and measure the flow. There's a couple of things I just want to point out. If you are going to use this ultrasonic flow meter, make sure put the sensor, place the sensor where the water flows from bottom to top, which means the water has to have constant flow. You can use this sensor where the water coming from top to bottom, right. Place this sensor and the pipe where the water is flowing from bottom to top. If you're putting the transducers and the horizontal pipe, if there's 90 degree elbow, make sure you give enough space from the 90 degree elbow to the sensor location. I literally took photos of the manual of this ultra sonic flow meter. They recommend that placing this transducer about ten times greater than the diameter pipe. Let's say I have for this is the 4 inch pipe. There is 90 degree elbow here, supply line. The distance from this 90 degree elbow to the sensor has to be at least 40 inch space. It has to be 40 inch here. If it's less than that, it may not provide accurate measure because of all the turbulence is happening here. 90 degree elbow, if it's a return line, you can do at least five times greater, five times of the diameter. If it's four inch PBC or four inch aluminum pipe, then it's probably only require 20 in at least 20 inch distance from the nine degree eble. Want to point out the importance of pressure measurement. You can have this manual pressure gauge, which is pretty inexpensive. You can place the pressure sensor to track the pressure changes over time. This is some data we collect on one of the Lyndon's pivots. Then you can see the pressure close to zero when there is no operation. When the pumps kick on, pressure jumps, you can see there's sometimes it fluctuated. And if it really fluctuated much, then there might be some problem. This pressure inexpensive way to check and check your system is operating properly or not. Pressure is very important for the uniformity as well, because a lot of times when you buy sprinkler package, they provide what is the optimal pressure for the sprinklers. Um, I'm also going to demonstrate if I have time, but this is the water app Applied Estimator Chart that Lyndon and Bruce put together. But this is really helpful. I know there's a lot of irrigation dealers already provide. what it means if you set the 40% how long it's going to run. The number of hours to run the circle. Go around the circle and how much water it's going to apply. From the information we can find, what if we set 30% timer, The speed, how long it's going to run, and how much water is going to apply. Um, if there's I know there's a controlling most of the controller box. When I open it, there's a little one pager showing this data. But if you lost this for somehow, if you want to be calculated, then you can download this water applied estimated chart from our irrigation extension website. To calculate it, I want to point out the 441, 442 USDA EQIP programs. The 441 is for micro irrigation, some more drips. 442 program is for the sprinkler system. This is the EQIP funding. As I already mentioned, the uniform equefficient. If it's lower than 85, then you are eligible to apply this grant. They actually support to support the cost to replace the sprinklers in order to improve efficiency. Please check the USDA NRCS EQIP program. You can contact your local USDA or farm services agent, or you can contact us, Lyndon or me. We'll be happy to walk through how all the NRCS EQIP program works and the paperwork. We have a lot of resource about irrigation Standard Pivot system. Recently we published extension bulletin. It's called Consideration for Planning and Selecting Pumping Plan for sprinkler irrigation. We talked about all the way from the well, how do you calculate the optimal pressure required for your irrigation system, depending on the length of pipe and so forth. If you're interested in, please check our website. I'm showing my E mail address in Lyndon email address, our irrigation website. If you need more resource, please visit our website. This is water apply estimated chart. So let's say your system is the timer is set 40 which takes about 48 hours to run the circle which apply 1 ". Let me change to 1.25 all right. Then it will recalculate these numbers when my pivot, when I set my pivot to 50% it will take, it's going to take 38 hours to run the circle and which will apply 1 " application. This is really helpful for operation standpoint. The spreadsheet is available on our irrigation website. I'm going to show another Excel file. This is the evaluation tool where all the green line is what we're asking you to input. If you're using different can, then you can change the diameter of catch can. If you change this to 15 centimeter, if you got larger diameter can it would change all the calculation here. 9.9 is what we've been using. But if you got different catch, can you can plug in here we also suggest to record the wind speed, my per hour. Length of the evaluation area. Catch spacing distance, ten feet apart from the catch. This is the standard method, so you should follow that ten feet. One thing you notice, the first catch can, we don't account for the uniformity because we know this is not uniform, this area is not going to be uniform and the standard also agrees to it. So we don't even put this first five data set and start the sixth cup. We start putting all the data up to end. This is the space sheet that is also available on our website. See if I can go back here. There you go. Okay. I think it works. The all right. So Okay. Expired. All right. So this is the USDA Web Survey. I got a lot of question on how to use it Once you go on the USDA NRCS Web Survey website, right here, star WSS. And here you can drop, you can put the address here, or you can put a GPS coordinate right here to zoom into your feel. Or you can just, let's go one of feel, okay, Right here. Okay. So let's say this is my field. All you do is here, area of interest, this is square. If you got all different weird shape, you can use that. Or if you get square field, then you can just use square, the tool. Once you select the AI area of interest on the map, you can click the solar map here and it will show here. It looks like it's all stale, sandy, but looks like they are a different slope. It's going to be some hilly area. Ten, right here. Ten is hill, stale, sandy loam. Six to 12% slope. Ten D is the 12 to 18% slope. You can see the variability of the hill in this case because soil is all same on your field. If you want to go a little further, you can go to the So data explorer here. Soil properly, solar physical properly. You can see different water capacity. But I usually go report here and go to the solar physical properly and physical properly. And hit the view report here. Here is stay in per inch from the zero to ten inch. The capacity is from 0.13 to 0.16 and the average is 0.18 You can get this information to calculate the water ding capacity for a different I'll stop here. Is there any question? I don't see any question. Yeah.