Irrigation Automation in the San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley runs from the Delta south toward the Tehachapis. It is one of the most irrigated stretches of farmland in the country, and it does not share one water supply or one crop. RowCodes is for the valves, pumps, and records on those farms.
Crops and how they are watered
Permanent crops dominate large parts of the valley: almonds, pistachios, walnuts, and grapes for wine, table, and raisins. Row crops and forage — processing tomatoes, cotton, alfalfa, corn for dairies — still occupy serious acreage, especially where rotations or dairy feed demand them. Citrus shows up toward the east side and the foothills more than on the valley floor.
Drip and microsprinkler are common on the permanent crops. Furrow and drip both show up on row crops. The controller question is the same either way: how many zones share a pump, and who starts them. The crop pages go further for almonds, pistachios, walnuts, vineyards, and row crops.
Water is not one system
A valley farm may pump groundwater, take a district delivery, or both. Federal and state project water, Friant, and local districts do not arrive on the same terms, and plenty of farms have none of that surface water in a given year. West-side soils can be saline. East-side ditches and wells are a different operation. Treating “San Joaquin Valley water” as a single number hides the farm in front of you.
That is why records in RowCodes stay attached to a well, a delivery, and a field. Groundwater and district water are not added into one total and mislabeled.
Groundwater plans differ by basin
Much of the valley sits in medium- or high-priority groundwater basins with their own GSAs and groundwater sustainability plans. Some basins have moved to allocations, fees, or metering expectations. Others are earlier in that work, or the rule that matters this year is a district’s, not the GSA’s. Look up the basin on the SGMA Portal (opens in a new tab) instead of assuming the neighboring county’s rule applies.
RowCodes can organize metered pumping and a monthly extraction file. It does not decide what your GSA requires, and it does not certify compliance. Read SGMA water monitoring. California Department of Water Resources (opens in a new tab) is the state overview.
What automation is for here
Sets are large, labor is not standing on every riser, and a missed shut-off is expensive in water and in attention. Wireless valves with an auto-close timer, a pump dead-man timer, and a phone that still offers Close are the practical fit. Satellite crop health can point you at a block to walk. It does not tell you to change a horticultural practice.
Reference evapotranspiration for scheduling decisions is published by CIMIS (opens in a new tab). Crop guidance is at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (opens in a new tab). the California Department of Food and Agriculture (opens in a new tab) is the state’s agriculture department, not an irrigation manual, but it is the right office when the question is about the industry rather than a valve.
Questions
Can you automate a ranch that uses both well water and a ditch?
Yes, if the valves and pumps are ones the hardware can control. Keep the ditch delivery as a delivery record and the well as a metered well. Do not blend them.
Keep reading
RowCodes runs valley valves, pumps, and records
RowCodes opens and closes field valves, sequences zones that share a pump, and keeps groundwater and district water as separate records. Log in to a farm you already run. Installers sign in on their own login.