North Otago’s irrigation capability has been growing for many years. NOIC, the local cooperative irrigation scheme, has a massive network of pressurised irrigation infrastructure which benefits the wider community. The completion of stage 4 in 2017 further helped the regions farmers reduce the impacts of drought, and the scheme now delivers up to 8,000 litres per second over around 20,000 hectares.
North Otago has a very mixed terrain which becomes increasingly rugged before heading towards the mountains. The terrain was a real challenge during construction of the NOIC scheme as it snaked it way from the Waitaki River near Duntroon, through Windsor and down towards Herbert.
Much of the flat irrigatable areas have now been serviced with centre pivot irrigation, but what about all the remaining farmland, including the sloping foothills and corner infill?
Solid set irrigation is ideal for hilly and difficult terrain making it the secondary irrigation system of choice.
The past few seasons have seen a significant growth of solid set used for North Otago irrigation. The local irrigation experts have been helping farmers with small corner infill projects through to large systems.
The regions topography contributes to many farms having marginal cellular coverage, which prevents some irrigation control systems being viable. More and more farmers are using the Water-Insight solid set solution. Our IPC smart controllers perform the programmed irrigation scheduling without cellular signal, or even if there is no internet connection.
Both solar power and mains powered repeaters are also available for the more difficult farm layouts. Repeaters are not needed often as the configurable mesh radio is very capable of communicated between IPC controllers.
Need to know more about the benefits of solid set irrigation? Please click here for the contact details of the industry experts.