Farm Table says:
This article covers the key finding of the Queensland Healthy HeadWaters Program from 2010/11 to 2014/15. The research looked at 5 seasons of benchmarking data related to 138 centre pivot and lateral move irrigation systems, of which 68% were growing cotton.
It also compares the results to benchmarking results of several surfaces irrigated cotton crops over the preceding three years.
Key results:
- Pressurised systems such as CPLMs generally have a greater energy use and cost compared to surface irrigated systems. This is to be expected where the greatest proportion of energy costs is related to irrigation applications.
- But there may also be energy savings with these systems with less tillage use compared with traditional surface irrigated systems.
- In 2014–15 the energy use and cost for the surface system was very similar to that for the overhead systems.
