- Author: Ben Faber
SWEEP Grant
Opportunity Workshop
November 4, 2019
Ventura, CA
Co-sponsored by
University of California Cooperative Extension
Ventura County Farm Bureau
Why: Apply for CDFA funding- State Water efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP).Receive up to $100,000 in grant funding to improve your on-farm water and energy efficiency practices through the grant funding program. During the workshop UCCE Climate Smart Community Education Specialist and your local irrigation specialists will:
- Provide a comprehensive review of SWEEP and summary of other future CDFA Climate Smart Grant programs
- Guide you through the required water savings and greenhouse gas reduction calculations
- Show you how to assemble a strong grant proposal
When: Monday, November 4 2019
2 PM – 4 PM
Where: UC Cooperative Extension office, 669 County Square Dr., Ventura 93003. California Conference room
Who: Alli Rowe, Community Education Specialist, UCCE-Ventura County
Ben Faber, Soils and Water Advisor, UCCE-Ventura County
Andre Biscaro, Irrigation and Water Resources Advisor, UCCE- Ventura County
Khaled Bali, Irrigation Specialist, UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center
Daniele Zaccaria, Agricultural Water Management Specialist, UC Davis
Registration: To register go to: http://ucanr.edu/survey/survey.cfm?surveynumber=28554
Questions: Contact Alli Rowe, 805-645-1464, email: amrowe@ucanr.edu
Grant info.: Applications are due December 16, 2019 online at https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/sweep/
The SWEEP provides financial assistance in the form of grants to implement irrigation systems that reduce greenhouse gases and save water on California agricultural operations. Eligible system components include (among others) soil moisture monitoring, drip systems, switching to low pressure irrigation systems, pump retrofits, variable frequency drives and installation of renewable energy to reduce on-farm water use and energy.
Please feel free to contact us if you need special accommodations.
Free One-On-One Technical Assistance to Apply for Grant Funds Need help in developing and /or submitting your project proposal? Schedule your free one-on-one Technical Assistance session, contact your local UC Cooperative Extension Office for additional information at 805-645-1464 |
The University of California prohibits discrimination or harassment of any person in any of its programs or activities. (Complete nondiscrimination policy statement can be found at http://ucanr.org/sites/anrstaff/files/107734.doc). Inquiries regarding the University's equal employment opportunity policies may be directed to Affirmative Action Contact and Title IX Officer, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2801 2nd Street, Davis, CA 95618, (530) 750-1397; titleixdiscrimination@ucanr.edu.
- Author: Ben Faber
A team of University of Connecticut researchers engineered a soil moisture sensor that is more cost effective than anything currently available and responds to the global need to regulate water consumption in agriculture. https://today.uconn.edu/2019/09/engineers-produce-water-saving-crop-irrigation-sensor/
Designed and tested on the university's farm, the sensors are small enough to insert into the soil with ease and less expensive to manufacture than current technology, the researchers write in the Journal of Sensors and Actuators.
“Advances in hydrological science are hampered by the lack of on site soil moisture data,” said Guiling Wang, study author and professor of civil and environmental engineering at UConn. “It's really hard to monitor and measure things underground. The challenge is that the existing sensors are very expensive and the installation process is very labor intensive.”
The sensors developed by the team of UConn engineers — environmental, mechanical, and chemical — are expected to save nearly 35% of water consumption and cost far less than what exists. Current sensors that are used in a similar way range from $100 to $1,000 each, while the one developed at UConn cost $2, according to the researchers.
An alternate monitoring option, soil moisture data collected from remote sensing technology such as radars and radiometers on board satellites, have suffered from low resolution. But the new technology developed by UConn Professor Baikun Li's group can provide high spatio-temporal resolution data needed for hydrology model development in Wang's group.
In the UConn prototype, wires are connected from the sensors to an instrument that logs data. Researchers conducted field tests of the sensors — performing side-by-side tests with commercial sensors under various environmental conditions throughout a 10-month period. The effects of the environmental variations on soil moisture throughout the period were clearly reflected.
Critically, the small sensors can also be easily sent around he world given the fact that soil moisture plays a fundamental role in agricultural decision-making globally.
Accurate soil moisture sensing is essential to ensure a water level that produces the most robust crops while not wasting the natural resource. In some states in the U.S. — Florida and California, for example — irrigation water usage has become tightly restricted.
The UConn researchers are also working on a nitrogen sensor that is the same model of the water sensors. These would help provide farmers with information on when fields need fertilizing. Currently, nitrogen sensors are not available using this type of technology.
“This is really an exciting start to a much larger scope of things we have in mind,” says Li, a study author and professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Towards water-saving irrigation methodology: Field test of soil moisture profiling using flat thin mm-sized soil moisture sensors (MSMSs)
WangchiZhouaZhihengXuaDannyRossaJamesDignanbYingzhengFanaYuankaiHuangaGuilingWangaAmvrossios C.BagtzoglouaYuLeicBaikunLia
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2019.126857Get rights and content
Abstract:
This study examined flat thin mm-sized soil moisture sensors (MSMS) fabricated using thermal press technology on thin compact disc (CD) to solve the long-standing problems of soil moisture profiling. The 10-month field tests conducted at a farm site compared three groups of MSMS with commercial capacitance-type soil moisture sensors (SMS) in terms of accuracy, sensitivity to environmental variations (e.g. water shock, temperatures, dry/wet seasons) and long-term stability. MSMS sensors were mounted on the shallow, middle and deep locations of a hollow plastic rod (length: 1.1 m) and installed along the soil depth to profile the soil moisture variation. The resistance readings of MSMS sensors along soil depth were recorded in a real-time mode. Due to soil settlement over time after installation, the MSMS sensors in the shallow soil suffered from unstable readings, while the MSMS sensors in the middle and deep soil exhibited high stability and had the best correlation with water content values of commercial sensors (R2 value: 0.6264). The contact between MSMS surface and soil particles appeared to be a critical factor determining the stability of MSMS readings. In addition, MSMS sensors showed a prompt response to the sharp change of soil moisture in the water shock tests. The soil moisture profiles collected from MSMS sensors captured the spatiotemporal variation of soil moisture, which enabled the simultaneous profiling at multiple locations. This field study demonstrated the great potential of mass deployment of low-cost but accurate MSMS sensors to achieve high resolution profiling for water-saving irrigation.
- Author: Ben Faber
California Department of Food and Agriculture will reopen the State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP) towards the end of 2019. The SWEEP program provides up to $100,000 for practices that increase water use efficiency and reduce energy use in water management. Practices that are eligible include pump retrofits, installation of variable frequency drives, converting a pump to run on solar, or changing irrigation systems to a more efficient application. While there is no set date for SWEEP to reopen, now is the time to get your project and application materials together.
Stay tuned for more information and date announcement! In the meantime, you can:
- Go to SWEEP website: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/sweep/
- Review the most recent Request for Grant Applications: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/sweep/docs/2018_SWEEP_RGA.pdf
- Create a project design and list the practices you want to implement
- View the list of 2018 recipients and project descriptions: https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/oefi/sweep/docs/2018-SWEEP_ProjectsSelected-for-Award.pdf
- Get quotes for items needed for the project, itemized and with labor included
- Get a pump efficiency test for all the pumps that will be affected by the project
- Get 12 months of energy use data for pumps (e.g. energy bills or fuel receipts)
- Schedule time to talk to a technical assistance provider – Alli Rowe at UCCE Ventura, amrowe@ucanr.edu or Jamie Whiteford with Ventura County RCD, jamiewhiteford.vcrcd@gmail.com
To get your wheels turning, check out these examples of recently awarded projects:
Santa Cruz: This project will install a solar photovoltaic system to power the farm's groundwater pump, switching from fossil fuel based electricity to a renewable energy source. It will also install a variable frequency drive (VFD) at the well pump to improve energy use efficiency and reduce GHG emissions from groundwater pumping. Finally, through this project the farming operation will acquire a flowmeter and five soil moisture sensors to improve irrigation scheduling and water conservation.
Sutter: This project plans to transition from farming 80 acres of rice with a flood irrigation system to farming 80 acres of almonds with a micro sprinkler irrigation system. Also, the old pump will be replaced with a 75 HP pump and moisture sensors will be utilized to help manage water usage.
Riverside: The project proposes to install soil moisture sensors, cloud based data collection, a flow meter, weather station, and automatic shut off valves to increase water savings. To reduce greenhouse gas emission the project proposes to install a solar system to power well pumps.
- Author: Ben Faber
Spotlight on SWEEP in Citrus
Shulamit Shroder, UCCE climate smart agriculture specialist - Kern County
In 2014, Bruce Kelsey in Kern County received a grant through the California Department of Food and Agriculture's State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP). He used the funds to set up 8-foot-wide plastic weed mats underneath his mature organic citrus trees. He also decreased his electrical consumption by about 30% and installed soil moisture sensors, a water flow meter, and a pressure-sustaining device.
Benefits
Labor: The installation of the weed mat was a labor-intensive process, but it ended up paying off in the long term. It diminished weed populations so that he no longer has to weed under his citrus trees. Now he only mows with a small mower in the lanes between his trees.
Water usage: His overall water usage decreased by about 10%. The weed mat decreased evaporation and weed pressure while the other devices allowed him to better manage and schedule his irrigation.
Drawbacks
Pests: Bruce experienced an increase in earwigs in the weed mat orchard. The plastic covering provided the perfect humid environment for the insects.
Organic certification: The weed mats will eventually start to disintegrate, which could contaminate his soil. To maintain his organic certification, he will have to rip them up once they start to break down. Smaller, younger trees do not protect the plastic from the sun, which quickly destroys the plastic. For this reason, he recommended against using weed mat in immature orchards.
Figure 1. Weed mat in place.
- Author: Allison Rowe and Ben Faber
How to irrigate is probably the most common question in irrigated agriculture, even with 10,000 years of cultivation knowledge to guide us. The complexities of irrigation and the unique situation for each grower makes this question so difficult. Not enough water, and plants have diminished growth or the propensity for disease and disorder 1. Too much water leads to root disease and nutrient problems 2. So, it can't be too much or too little, but just right. There are times when citrus can handle a little more water stress than other times, which can lead to water savings 3, especially in a drought year or in areas where water costs are crucial. Salinity further compounds the question of irrigation where striking a balance determines the health of your tree. Staying in tune with your orchard and using appropriate methods to measure water need, water use, environmental water demand, and soil water-holding capacity will help inform irrigation management decisions.
There are all kinds of ways of estimating tree water need 4 , a valuable piece of information for irrigation decision making. An inexpensive and often overlooked method of estimating tree water requirements is grower observation in the orchard to assess leaf color, leaf size, the look of the leaves, and canopy fullness. Pure observation and knowledge of your trees yields a lot of valuable information regarding irrigation management. Beyond observation, a direct measure of the tree with a porometer, pressure gauge (bomb), sap flow meter, dendrometer or other device gives an absolute or relative number of tree performance. Technological advances, such as telemetry and imaging with drones or satellites, holds promise, but are still being perfected for general irrigation use. In general, technological devices yield informative data, but tend to be expensive, delicate, and require manual monitoring to account for tree-to-tree variation in the orchard.
Soil moisture sensors can be an effective method of evaluating water use by the tree. The most basic way to measure soil moisture is with a human powered shovel or soil tube 5. While it requires an operator who knows what they are doing, the technique is easily learned and repeatable. A human and shovel can move around an orchard checking out different suspicious spots that are not easily done with fixed-in-place sensors. Installation of soil moisture sensors systems range in cost and capabilities, yet provide specific data on water use. Integrating certain systems into communication relay systems allow for the monitoring of multiple sites at once. Some sensors can measure soil salinity, as well as soil moisture, to give a sense of whether the water in the soil will be useable by the tree. If soil moisture sensors are used, correct placement of where roots are taking up water is imperative to get an accurate assessment of water uptake. Overall, it is critical to keep the entire orchard in mind and understand that fixed sensors only take a specific location's reading.
Another great technique to inform irrigation scheduling is an estimate of the demand that drives water use. An evapotranspiration estimate either by CIMIS, a private weather station with ET-calculation or atmometer gives not only an amount to apply but also when to apply that amount based on the water holding capacity of the soil and the rooting depth of the crop. Soil moisture holding volume can be complicated, but can be estimated from the NRCS table in the previous paragraph5 or from tables in the Web Soil Survey 7.
Simply running an irrigation system for a specific amount of time and probing for depth of water penetration and extent of wetted area is the best way to get an estimate of soil moisture holding capacity. This knowledge is needed in order to decide whether the active rooting volume is getting wetted sufficiently or too much is being applied. Emitters are rated by gallons per hour, but that 1 gph, 5 gph, 20 gph emitter output might differ according to water pressure that can vary over an irrigation period. On the flip side, monitoring soil moisture depletion over time can give an approximation of how depletion compares to ET estimates. Soil moisture depletion can be measured by soil moisture sensors or by shovel and feel. This estimate of applied water compared to output and ET only needs to be done once at a given growth stage of the orchard. If the orchards is young, it will need to be done each year as the trees fill out. An estimate of canopy growth can also be used to better approximate young orchard ET.
All of these methods suppose that a grower has the capability to irrigate when, where and for how long they need to. If water delivery is on a fixed schedule and the amount of water can be controlled it is valuable to understand specific water needs. Knowing the rated applied amount of an emitter is important, but that amount shouldn't be assumed, especially considering natural wear and tear, damage from harvest, poor filtration, clogging, or damage by wildlife. Maintenance to insure good distribution uniformity is critical to the operation and the correct application of water to trees and for the maintenance of tree health. Low-pressure systems are wonderful but they should be evaluated on a yearly basis and tuned up in preparation for every irrigation season. Many growing areas have mobile irrigation labs that will evaluate system performance and make recommendations for improvement.
All said, knowing the orchard and evaluating tree health will inform irrigation management decisions. Applying technology where technology is appropriate will help. Using it to help advise irrigation decisions is valuable, but new tools will not always be the answer.
It's important to know what is being applied.
Trust but verify.
Drought Tips & Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKSQRuHAnYA ; https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8549.pdf