Conserving water in the desert southwest
With all the produce grown in Yuma, you may wonder how farmers are able to be smart about water conservation.
In this week’s Home Grown segment, we take a look at the ways in which farmers can use water wisely in order to keep up with the high demand of food produced.
Paul Brierley, the Executive Director of the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture told 13 On Your Side about how working with irrigation management can determine exactly how much water farmers should use.
“One of our biggest projects is about irrigation management so we can conserve water, and what we want to do is quantify everything as far as how much the crop needs, how much evaporates, how much is going into the soil and leeching the salts down because that’s an important use of irrigation, also it’s to keep the salinity down in the soil where the roots are,” Brierley said.
The United Nations says they need 70 percent more food produced by 2050.
In order to keep with the high demand, YCEDA makes it a priority to produce the best crops while meeting the demands of the market.
NASA has partnered with YCEDA to use satellite images to show exactly how much water crops need. Because of this, YCEDA has been able to use about 18 percent less water than 30 years ago while producing double the amount of crops.
