Geha Foods Evaluation of Irrigation for Processed Tomatoes

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een irrigating in this manner for approximately 140 years. Most of the time the water went from head ditch to furrow with siphon tubes, but this has more recently been shifted to gated pipe in response to declining farm labor for setting the siphon tubes (Fig. 15). The basic principle of this irrigation is convenience including not having to contact the ditch company every few days to turn the water on or off, and the corresponding conveyance losses associated with draining and refilling the canals. Once in place it is really very difficult to make any adjustments to accommodate rainfall or other shifts in plant water needs and no need to collect daily ET estimates. Adopting to Tajikistan Fig. 15. Gated pipe used for surface irrigation in USA, with a discharge exceeding 1 l/s/furrow. Adopting this somewhat ideal example of surface irrigation to Tajikistan will take some effort and will most likely only be done in small stages with close coordination with the farm chairmen, primarily as fields are rotated into processing tomato production. The assumption here is that the farm chairmen have a reasonably good understanding of the needs for improved irrigation but don’t have the financial means for doing so. Thus Geha is providing the means with some effective business plan to recover the costs from the farm. These improvements would blend well with the agriculture support services concept being developed by Geha Foods. There are probably three things that can be gradually improved. 1. Availability of water at the field 2. Field application of water 3. Overall farm water management Water Availability: Increasing the availability of water to fields will allow for more rapid and efficient water applications. This could be done mostly by improving the canal control structures to better concentrate water at the fields being irrigated and eliminate much of the leakage around the different structures as previously shown in Fig. 10, 11 & 12. It would mostly involve removing the improvised control structures and replacing them with true 17
einforced concrete or other permanent materials that provide reasonably water tight seals and easily operated gates. Most likely there are only a limited number of sizes of control structures needed and these can be prefabricated of reinforced concrete at reasonable costs at the factory, transferred to the farms, and installed as needed. There are really only two types of structure involved. One is simple drop structures that safely drop the water from one level to the nexts, and the other is diversion structures that contain some form of gate that can be opened or closed depending on where the water is needed. The simplest gate would be a simple slide gate that fits into grooves in the control structure and can be lowered to raise the water level and allow water to enter a field or canal and removed to allow water to move straight through to the next reach. There are many different styles for constructing these two structures, all of equal value, and you can proceed to develop on your own. The simplest is usually the best. I will attempt to get some illustrations when I return to Colorado. Field Application of Water: Can best be improved by first reshaping the land. Apparently, this was done during Soviet times, most likely using cumbersome land planes, but has not been done since. The land shaping now is best done with laser leveling equipment. With such equipment one laser source can usually control 3 or 4 scrapers spread over 50 ha or more (Fig. 16). The computer controls in the standard laser targets are capable of making an initial survey of the field, and then proceed to move the necessary soil to have the field fully graded. Typically, a 20 ha field can be laser graded in one day, although the first time it might take an extra day because of larger amounts of material to move. It also might take longer if smaller tractors are used consistent with the need for pulling transplanters. The laser source can be set at dead level or on any pre-determined slope, and will grade the field to that standard with an accuracy of ± 2 cm. The ultimate objective is to get a smooth field with an irrigation run of 1% or less. However, an intermittent objective might be to mostly get rid of the benches in the middle of the fields so water can flow smoothly from top to bottom of the furrows. Eventually, it might be desirable to change the direction of the furrows so they are running more parallel to the slope instead of down the slope. Fig. 16. Laser guided scraper with laser target mounted on scraper automatically controlled by the tractors hydraulic system. The laser equipment including source, and target equipped would be a reasonable set of equipment for Geha Food agriculture support service to obtain and make available on rent bases, with possibility of some form of credit being available. I checked the price with some local suppliers and they mentioned the source would run about $4000, while the targets when fully linked to the tractor hydraulics for automatic control would be $25,000 per unit and excluding the cost of the scraper. That is somewhat more than I expected. 18
Page 1 and 2: ACDI/VOCA - Winrock International F
Page 3 and 4: Table of Contents Declaimer……
Page 5 and 6: List of Figures 1. Geha Foods Tomat
Page 7 and 8: List of Acronyms ACDI/VOCA American
Page 9 and 10: 1. Replacing all the improvised con
Page 11 and 12: decisions. Although, they need to b
Page 13 and 14: across individual designated holdin
Page 15 and 16: Fig. 4. Wheat Cut, Windrowed, and s
Page 17 and 18: application rate at least for those
Page 19 and 20: expansion from Denver. Using waste
Page 21 and 22: Fig. 12. Water coming from a cut in
Page 23 and 24: plant. The evaporation has a coolin
Page 25: Options for Improving Irrigation Wh
Page 29 and 30: Collaboration With Farm Chairmen: T
Page 31 and 32: Chemigation Center pivots have also
Page 33 and 34: educing the plant transpiration. Wi
Page 35 and 36: Fig. 22. Alternative emitter manufa
Page 37 and 38: Fig. 26. Cigarette accidentally dis
Page 39 and 40: these because they are what I see a
Page 41 and 42: Fig. 29. Weeds laid on top of tomat
Page 43 and 44: GEHA Foods COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SE
Page 45 and 46: Geha Foods is building a tomato pro
Page 47 and 48: Annoted Itinerary Appendix Correspo
Page 49 and 50: Field size was substantial with a t
Page 51 and 52: managers’ jobs at stake for not m
Page 53 and 54: ----- Original Message ----- From:
Page 55 and 56: Correspondance on Use of Center Piv
Page 57 and 58: A MULTI (4-5) YEAR COMMITMENT REQUI
Page 59 and 60: where we are currently managing thr
Page 61 and 62: Subject: FW: Center Pivot use on Pr
Page 63 and 64: Alabama A&M University Normal, AL A

Geha Foods Evaluation of Irrigation for Processed Tomatoes

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