As a state agriculture expert—and as a third-generation Delaware farmer—Donald Clifton grapples with the issue of irrigation.
Clifton, Delaware Executive Director of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, grows corn on his 1,000-acre farm in Milton. He has irrigated one quarter of his land and allows nature to water the rest of it.
Each year Clifton does a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether to expand his irrigation system. So far he has held off.
Corn grown on irrigated land can gross up to $900 an acre, he notes. But it costs about $500 an acre to grow. That takes a big bite out of profits.
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“Is your net income going to be enough after you’ve paid for the irrigation system and maintaining it?” Clifton said. “It’s tight.”
The difficult choices come back year after year in drought-prone Delaware.
The state generally experiences at least one or two periods of drought each summer, according to Professor Daniel Leathers, deputy dean of the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment at the University of Delaware.
The severity of the droughts can vary depending on the cause.
“The big problem we get into in Delaware is soil-moisture droughts, and that's what we are experiencing right now,” Professor Leathers said. “The southern two thirds of Delaware has very sandy soils that don't retain water. In my 20 years of experience in Delaware, you very rarely see a summer where we don't have pretty severe soil-moisture drought in some part of the state.”
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Droughts are hard to gauge, says UD Prof. Leathers.
Emerging technologies are making irrigation more efficient, according to said David Brown, president and owner of Sussex Irrigation in Laurel. He notes that while traditional high-pressure irrigation systems direct only about 60 percent of water to their targeted crops, newer low-pressure irrigation technologies can target 90 percent of the water where it’s needed.
But although newer systems reduce waste, they are expensive.
“The bigger the machine, the cheaper [the cost] per acre; the smaller the machine, the more expensive per acre,” Brown said.
Delaware’s Department of Agriculture does not provide assistance for farmers facing drought, said Deputy Secretary Mark Davis. He notes that in 2008 the U.S. Congress earmarked $251,000 for the University of Delaware to conduct research on making irrigation more efficient in Delaware and for a cost-sharing arrangement to install new irrigation systems at several farms throughout the state.
In addition the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control is working on “a few energy initiatives to explore the option of solar energy with irrigation systems,” Davis said. “It’s still being looked at to see if it’s economically viable and profitable.”