That report gives me an idea or the scale of irrigating in the UK. 200,000
hectares or 772 square mile or a block 28 miles on a side. The size of small
county in Oklahoma. We have 2 people that work part time on irrigation for
230,500 hectares
http://www.nass.usda.gov/census/cens...-36/ok1_41.pdf
about the same amount of irrigated land as the UK on it's biggest year but
we have a lot less rain fall and lot higher temperatures. The numbers in the
census are low because it appears to me to not includes Bermuda grass
pasture which is a very large use of water in the Red River valley and will
thrive in salt levels that kill most plants. I know it exceeds the number of
acres of irrigated cotton by a good deal. There are no records kept on it at
all in many cases so it doesn't show up anywhere.

That paper is a nice over view of the situation. There is very little in it
that would be of practical value to some one putting in an irrigation
system. The guys I used to work wiht at Oklahoma State have a good deal more
that can help with decisions but the extension people on the Texas high
plains and the High Plains Water District can tell you every thing you need
to know in an hour if know the questions to ask if you don't they can walk
you though anything you need to know. They are used to working with crop
share landlords that just inherited an irrigated farm and don't understand
the way it works.


I just went through it for real with real mony and a lot of it in Texas
installing drip irrigation. The fellow in extension here at OSU hasn't got
ready for the cost of drip. We are always 20 years behind the high plains of
Texas on irrigation. The Plains have to have irrigation to farm we can make
a living with out it in most of Oklahoma except the Panhandle and those guys
don't pay any attention to the down state folks anyway the operate the same
as Texas and Kansas.

While working for the university I did a lot of work on soil moisture
sensors. A great deal of money can be made/saved by getting the water just
right and the one answer is a lot of cheap accurate sensors scattered over
the feild reporting to a central station via wireless.

I had a very small well that would irrigate 10 acres of cotton when I was
farming. The only time I got it right was the time I went fishing and when I
got back I though I should have started water a week earlier. Of course
using limited water weather after the irrigation has some effect on the
outcome so trying to get it right is difficult.

It is very understandable that not much work has been put into irrigation in
the UK. With your low temperatures and high humidity and not that much area
irrigated there is not much pay back from it. In your climate buried drip
doesn't have near the advantage it does in mine. The old pipe with emitters
stuck in it where you need them is probably pretty close as good for a
forth the price or less in an orchard.

Also the UK has a very few dwindling resources in the agricultural
engineering and hydrology along rest of the world except China. So I don't
expect to see much effort in that area unless it become a serious problem.
If it does they will probably have someone in that is on sabbatical from an
irrigated area an address the problem.

Reuse and proper application of water probably payback better than reducing
evaporation losses in most of the country. The irrigation game is entirely
different over there then it is here just as it deferent in west Texas as it
is to southwest Oklahoma. Your local microclimates will have a lot of effect
as well on the water needs. Making a sweeping solutions like we can do over
here work over there.

Gordon

"Michael Percy" wrote in message
...
Gordon Couger wrote:

Going thorough them carefully all I could find that could apply to the
UK was done some were else.

Keith Weatherhead and Jery Knox at Silsoe has most certianly done work on
water balances in England, and I am pretty sure Tim Hess has too.

From WWeatherheads personal page at Cranfield I found a link to this
nifty report
http://www.silsoe.cranfield.ac.uk/iw.../ofwc/ofwc.htm

Mike

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