With increased pressure on agriculture to use fewer resources, the fundamental challenge remains: how can we maximise crop yield and quality while using less water? The answer lies beneath our feet—understanding how water moves through soil is key to scheduling irrigation effectively and ensuring optimal crop performance.
In today’s agricultural landscape, the pressure is mounting. Water is scarce, costs are rising, and farmers—whether small-scale or commercial—are expected to produce more with less. Precision irrigation offers a practical and effective response to these challenges, providing farmers with the tools they need to make the most of every drop of water, every unit of fertiliser, and corner of your farm.
Bringing improved water-use efficiency to vineyards, drip irrigation has added a lot of value to the wine grape industry. As technology improves and our knowledge expands it will continue to do so. The more we align irrigation with soil movement dynamics, the greater our ability to enhance both sustainability and profitability in the vineyard.
Water-wise farming to produce sugarcane for ethanol production is a cornerstone of Greenfuel’s approach.Day-to-day water delivery to the sugarcane fields is managed with a very high level of precision. The GreenFuel drip irrigation systems are in line with the highest global standards and allows us to achieve up to 95% water efficiency in the field. The system is fully automated for both water delivery and fertilizer delivery and advanced fertigation equipment forms part of the GreenFuel precision irrigation toolbox. Beyond this, very strict operation standards and a religious maintenance programme is followed.
Dripline selection boils down to selecting the correct product for the crop and circumstances, selecting a quality product that can do the job at hand in difficult conditions and selecting the product that will offer the best return on investment on the other hand.
Citrus Research International (CRI) recently presented the first in a series of irrigation courses. Netafim South Africa is proud to be the main sponsor of these events.
When you develop a new greenhouse system a host of questions must be answered, and a team of experts must be involved in the process. Fact is, these intricacies become less complicated if we pool expertise from all the relevant fields. It is not only important that the producer involves experts in the process, but that the several experts involved are in sync and share data and knowledge.
Dripper clogging must be prevented at all costs, as it is very difficult to return flow once a dripper has clogged. Preventive maintenance is therefore crucial to ensure that drip irrigation is successful.
We are living in a world of less. Less water, less arable land, less climate stability. In this age of less, the world demands more – more food for more people. Agriculture is challenged to produce more with less - to feed the rapidly growing population with limited resources whilst protecting the environment for future generations. Efficient irrigation is not only about using water responsibly, but also about the vital task of ensuring food security and sustainability across the globe. In this context, PRECISION MEANS SUCCESS.
Netafim South Africa recently ran a series of informative articles and podcasts on www.foodformzansi.co.za. The posts introduced readers and listeners to Netafim, precision irrigation and growing more with less.
In the precision planning process of a drip irrigation system, one of the crucial steps is to determine the correct delivery rate and dripper spacing that will be required for optimal irrigation for your conditions.
To determine the required delivery rate and dripper spacing, we need to understand the way water is distributed in soil. To understand this, we need to ask: what affects water distribution in soil?
Agriculture is challenged to produce more with less - to feed the rapidly growing population with limited resources whilst protecting the environment for future generations. Efficient irrigation is not only about using water responsibly, but also about the vital task of ensuring food security and sustainability across the globe.
Niger, like much of the globe, is experiencing the effects of climate change but to an extreme. With its temperature rising 1.5 times faster than the global median and averaging 45 degrees celsius, farmers across Niger struggle to grow food in scorched, sandy soil, resulting in an unprecedented high rate of chronic malnutrition among young children.
In November 2021, the Netafim team and a group of Pecan farmers set off to the Lowveld. They visited several farms in Mpumalanga and Limpopo to learn about current soil management practices and how they can apply it in their orchards.
Journalist, Lindi Botha, joined the tour and wrote the following piece for the Netafim South Africa Knowledge Hub.