Irrigation summit to be screened locally this week
Katernia Cole
Franklin County Extension Coordinator
In one notable respect, Alabama agriculture is a story laced with irony and missed opportunities.
Consider this account of a Tennessee Valley corn farmer who could have made a hefty yield — if only he had irrigated.
As one writer recalls, he did everything correctly right up to harvest. The problem was that Mother Nature didn’t cooperate. The rains didn’t come and he ended up reaping only a third of the yield he expected — ironic, considering that his cropland was located near the Tennessee River and that he could have easily compensated with irrigation.
Here’s another irony: This story occurred 60 years ago. It was reported by the late Extension Director P.O. Davis, writing in the December 28, 1951, edition of Farm and Ranch.
Like so many agriculture officials in the present day, this mid-20th century Extension administrator used every opportunity to urge farmers to irrigate if the money was available. Following the publication of this article, four consecutive years of drought followed. Yet, only a few producers heeded Davis’ call to irrigate.
That remains the case today: Few farmers are heeding the call to irrigate, despite the immense advantages this practice offers.
Now, a group of educators, researchers and policy makers are hoping to relieve this story of both its irony and missed opportunities. They’re holding an irrigation summit Aug. 15 in Montgomery to bring farmers, policy makers and water-use experts together to explore irrigation’s immense potential not to enhance this state’s agricultural output but also to revitalize the state’s declining rural communities.
The Summit will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industry’s Richard Beard Building, located at 1445 Federal Drive.
You can also participate in the summit locally by contacting the Franklin County Extension Office at 256-332-8880 and making arrangement to view the Summit live at the Franklin County Extension Office Auditorium located in the basement of the Franklin County Courthouse.
Along with other organizers, Dr. Sam Fowler, head of Auburn University’s Environmental Institute, who is spearheading this effort, hopes this meeting will spark a frank dialogue, one that will lead to a comprehensive strategy for the widespread adoption of irrigation practices. He’s also hoping it toward removing barriers that have historically hampered the widespread adoption of irrigation.
The summit will also provide farmers with information about how the state’s new income tax credit can be used to adopt irrigation technologies and practices.
Fowler believes Alabama farming has no time to lose. In a state that receives roughly 55 inches of rainfall annually, row crop production has declined by millions of acres within the last half century.
The state’s rural localities have also suffered from this decline. While row-crop farming typically generates an estimated $500 to $900 an acre each year within rural economies, the timber farming and conservation set-asides that have replaced it in many rural localities within the last 50 years generate less than $100 an acre.
Speaking of missed opportunities, while Alabama has fewer than 120,000 acres of row crop irrigation, the neighboring states of Georgia and Mississippi each have well over a million acres under irrigation. With similar levels of irrigation, water-use experts contend there is no reason why Alabama could not compete favorably with those regions of the country most prized for its agricultural output — the West and Midwest.
Row crop models, experimental research plots and, most significant, real irrigating by Alabama farmers have demonstrated that with adequate levels of irrigation, Alabama farmers can compete effectively with these regions.
Small wonder why so much hope rides on this Summit.
