Irrigation

Irrigation plays a big part in the worlds cropping and vegetable growing. Without irrigation many of our crops would not be able to survive, millions of people would starve and huge amounts of money would also be lost. There are many different kinds of irrigation spanning from pouring water onto crops from a bucket to a centre pivots that can cover many acres of land. All of these are effective in different situations but to maximize profit and to decrease cost farmers need to use the most efficient way of irrigating their crops.

Irrigation is a very important part for growing crops and in most cases it’s the most expensive ingredient in growing crops, so if a farmer can cut water cost by 30 percent he will be making a profit of 30 percent. This is a huge benefit to any crop grower. There are many different way to decrease the cost of water. Some of the main ways water wasted is from surface evaporation, water running off the ground or if the ground is not even then water can pool up in hollows, this is no help because it won’t water any of the crops.

Famers have used many different techniques of irrigation to overcome this, including centre pivots which are a big machine that moves along the ground and sprays water on crops from 2-3 metre’s above. The centre pivot can run for many kilometres and are attached to a pipe in the ground, from which it pivots around. This is a good way to irrigate large amounts of crops but there is still a lot of water lost, as it gets evaporated before it reaches the ground on a hot day. Probably the most effective method of irrigation is to lay pipes 20- 30 cm under the ground; these pipes have holes in them all the way along so water can leak out. The amount of water that is used can easily be controlled plus there is no surface evaporation and most of the water is at the same level as the roots so it all gets soaked up, very little of it is wasted. This is the best method for irrigating crops to decrease cost and optimize water use.

In some poorer countries where irrigation is needed, it can’t be provided efficiently because all forms of irrigation costs to much. People in small villages with little income can not pay for sprinklers and other methods of irrigation so they have to collect water in buckets then pour it onto the crops. This is a lot of work for the farmers and is also hard on the ground because causes salinization and doesn’t water the crops effectively.

Salinization is a big problem with irrigating, when people in dry hot areas of the world irrigate crops and the water stays on the surface and quickly evaporates in the hot weather, salts come out of the soil and form a layer on top. This layer is very infertile and no plants will grow in it. So in the short term irrigating crops like this might be good but in the long term it is ruining the soil. Salinization affects 10- 15 % of irrigated area’s in the world in some way and 0.5- 1 % of irrigated land is lost every year because of salinization.

Irrigation is a very important tool in the farming world; if we didn’t have it, then we wouldn’t be able to provide half as much food as we are at the moment. Although irrigation is very helpful it is also slowly ruining all our land through salinization. There are lots of downside and up sides to irrigation, but with new ideas people will come up with more effective ways to fix the downsides.