LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – After Michigan’s last couple of dry months, experts are expecting an increase in new irrigation systems to help keep crops alive. 

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Irrigation provider, Michigan Valley Irrigation, expects a 20% increase in new systems because of how “devastating” earlier months were to crops according to John McGee, President of the full-service irrigation company with several locations in Lower Michigan. 

Currently, center pivots irrigation systems account for more than 85% of irrigation systems within the state, with recent estimates that these devices have used nearly 40% of the state’s consumptive water use, more plainly, roughly 106 billion gallons of water withdrawn in 2019. 

According to researchers with Michigan State University Extension, there are some ways of increasing these devices’ efficiency despite increasing temperatures. 

“The two greatest factors affecting irrigation efficiency are irrigation system uniformity and proper scheduling of irrigation applications,” MSU said in a report. 

A presentation from last year demonstrated that by manipulating certain parameters to increase uniformity among center pivots, resulted in “water savings of 1.2 inches per acre in a typical season.” This equated to 3.2 million gallons of water saved and more than $600 of energy savings in a 100-acre irrigated field. 

While uniformity among the devices can lead to some savings, some farmers are already seeing an increase in irrigation system prices heading into the summer. 

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Gratiot County farmer Ben Chaffin weighed some of the benefits of obtaining systems. 

“You need to know your numbers, though. It’s not just ‘irrigate everything.’ The bigger the field, the cheaper your costs can be depending on pivot layout and water source costs,” he said. “So what’s your pivot layout? What does the well cost? Where’s the water coming from? So, it’s coming out of a river. Well, that’s a lot cheaper than it is if it’s coming out of a deep well. There are a lot of things that go into it.”

He also compared the increase in cost to other farming equipment. 

“[Pivot prices] are up 30% to 40%, no different than John Deere equipment,” he said. “When you see that, it kind of makes you wonder, but our crops are worth more. It’s pretty expensive not to have the yield to harvest.”

The U.S. Drought Monitor ranks drought intensity on a scale D0 to D4, D4 being exceptional drought, throughout the U.S. and places all of the Lower Peninsula within a drought intensity of D0 to D2, or abnormally dry to severe drought conditions, while roughly half of the Upper Peninsula has no drought conditions to D0 conditions.