Row-Crop Irrigation Automation
Processing tomatoes, cotton, and corn change blocks, and sometimes change irrigation method, from one year to the next. Alfalfa is a multi-year stand, not a crop you pull at the end of one season. RowCodes is the valve, pump, and record layer for the season you are actually in.
A layout that moves
Permanent-crop zones stay put for decades. Annual row-crop zones often do not. Drip tape is pulled. Furrow runs depend on a different set of valves or gates. Alfalfa stays in the ground for several years, so its zones and its water year should stay with that stand instead of being folded into the next tomato crop. The useful controller is one where you can rename a field, rebuild a sequence, and keep last year’s water with last year’s crop.
If a set is still a shovel and a ditch, a wireless valve does not apply until there is a valve to actuate. Where drip or a gated pipe is already valved, remote open and close is the same product as on an orchard, with shorter, more frequent sets.
Water records in a rotation
Metered pumping can be tied to the field that received it. District deliveries can be logged next to applied water. That split matters on rented ground and on ground that switches crops. It does not, by itself, satisfy a GSA. See SGMA water monitoring. Metered water is totaled as metered. A run with no meter but an entered flow rate is counted and labeled estimated, never shown as metered. Water with neither is “not measured,” left out, and never shown as zero.
Crop water use for tomatoes, cotton, and alfalfa is an agronomic question. UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (opens in a new tab) is the reference. CIMIS (opens in a new tab) is the ET network. Your crop adviser or irrigator owns the recommendation. RowCodes does not reprint those tables or claim a water savings.
Questions
Is this for center pivots?
The product controls valves and pumps it is installed on, including sets that feed drip or sprinkler. Pivot-panel control is a different job.
Keep reading
RowCodes runs row-crop sets from the phone
RowCodes opens and closes the valves, starts and stops the pumps, and keeps metered water with the field. Log in to a farm you already run. Installers sign in on their own login.