cotton - Greenmount Press

Irrigation
feature…
also see how efficiently Australian cotton irrigators are managing
water when their farms are in full production.
Janelle Montgomery, Irrigation Officer, said NSW DPI will be
working with irrigators from Central Queensland to southern
NSW to establish benchmarks for the 2012–13 season, which will
help to improve individual performance and provide the industry
with valuable benchmarks.
“We use the on-line benchmarking program Watertrack Rapid
developed by Aquatech Consulting, Narrabri. This program not
only calculates a range of standardised performance indicators,
but evaluates crop water use and estimates on farm water
losses” she says.
Watertrack Rapid requires a variety of inputs of which are
easily extracted from farm records. This data includes yield, crop
area, sowing date, irrigation dates and soil type along with daily
rainfall, storage volumes at start and end of season, irrigation
water pumped and harvested, and soil moisture reserves.
Energy use efficiency benchmarks
Energy use benchmarking is in its infancy. In collaboration with
the National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture (NCEA) of the
University of Southern Queensland, NSW DPI is conducting on-farm
energy assessments which identify where, and how efficiently,
energy is used and explore ways to reduce energy use and costs.
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Hamish Johnstone, ‘ Macintyre Downs ’ is trialling EnergyCalc
Lite to assess energy use across his farm.
NCEA has developed assessment tools – EnergyCalc (webbased)
and EnergyCalc Lite (ipad app) which assess direct on-farm
energy use, costs and GHG emissions, diesel, petrol, LPG and
electricity consumption. They examine energy use right across the
farm providing energy use benchmarks for the various farming
practices such as tillage, spraying and irrigation. The availability of
input data for these programs varies across farms.
If actual measurements of energy use have not been taken,
each tool has calculators that can provide estimates. But NSW
DPI and NCEA are encouraging irrigators and consultants to keep
more extensive records and conduct measurements that enable
robust assessments of on-farm energy use.
This season, NSW DPI and NCEA are working with Hamish
Johnstone, ‘Macintyre Downs’, Goondiwindi to measure energy
use associated with irrigation.
Water pumping is a significant energy user, so it’s vital pumps
are working efficiently. NCEA is developed a pump performance
monitor that is currently being trialled at Macintyre Downs. Phil
Szabo, NCEA said the monitor measures diesel consumption,
suction and discharge pressures and water flow during pumping
events. This data is then transferred via telemetry to NCEA where
they analyse it to determine pump performance. In addition,
the monitor provides more accurate information on energy use
required for Energy Calc and EnergyCalc Lite.
Hamish is also trialling the ipad app EnergyCalc Lite. While
the pump monitor will provide irrigation information, he will also
be recording diesel consumption for each farming operation.
This will involve bowser readings before and after an operation
such as planting on inter-row cultivation. Hamish plans to take
measurements from one field and extrapolate the results over
his entire cotton area to benchmark energy use across the whole
farm.
We are looking for more cotton irrigators to get involved in
energy benchmarking with the long term aim to produce industry
energy benchmarks, as we have done for water use efficiency.
Then irrigators can use these benchmarks to compare their
performance and strive for continuous improvement.
This work is part of NSW DPI’s Cotton Research Development Corporation
(CRDC) funded project Promoting Water Smart Infrastructure Investment.
For further information please contact Janelle Montgomery, NSW DPI Moree
0428 640990 or Stuart Bray NSW DPI Gunnedah 02 6741 8367.
28 — The Australian Cottongrower December 2012–January 2013