UC Delivers

Sustainable crop production in California’s San Joaquin Valley (SJV) relies on efficient management of increasingly scarce irrigation water and farm labor resources. SJV producers face powerful pressures for new, cheaper, and more efficient water-conserving cropping systems. A potential means for achieving greater farm production efficiencies may result from the merging of two new technologies that are widely used in other parts of the world, but not yet in California. Coupling overhead low-pressure center pivot irrigation with no-till practices may be a “systems” means for achieving the kinds of production efficiencies that will be required in the SJV in the future. The merging of these technologies is common in several regions of the world including the Pacific Northwest, throughout the Ogallala Aquifer region of the U.S. Great Plains, and in Brazil and Argentina, but neither technology is currently used much in California.

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