A Kansas State University study found that Ray and Ryan Flickner use about 40% less water than the average farm in their county. On their 1,000-acre corn, soybean and wheat operation at Moundridge, Kansas, the father and son run more than a dozen research trials with universities and collaborators at any one time, and water is at the centre of most of them. In the dry 2024 season they produced about 26 bushels per inch of irrigation applied — some 10 bushels more than the local average that year.

The foundation was laid in 2001, when the family installed a Netafim subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) system, the first in the area: drip tape buried 18 inches below the surface delivers water — and fertiliser such as UAN, injected when the crop needs it — straight to the root zone. "It was an expensive proposition, but it's paid off through labour savings and improved water use efficiency," says Ray, who farmed alongside about 35 years in agricultural finance. The system, converted from pneumatic to radio control, is run from the house by zone and duration. Their county, he says, probably now has the most subsurface-drip acreage in Kansas.

Drip changed how they till. With tape every 60 inches and corn in 30-inch rows, the strip-tilled strips are set 15 inches from the tape so that every plant is the same distance from its water. The Flickners were also among the first in the area to strip-till, in the early 2000s, and they no-till wheat into corn stalks and double-crop soybeans into wheat stubble, largely to hold spring moisture for germination. "We have neighbours that are still conventional tillage, and they have problems with getting the crop to sprout," Ray says.

SDI has one weakness — it cannot germinate a crop if the seedbed is dry at planting — so on the 600 drip-irrigated acres the rotation leans on cover crops rather than wheat: soybeans are planted into a cereal rye and turnip mix drilled in late September, terminated about a month before planting in dry years. "We're growing three cash crops in two years," Ray says. This year the farm is 13 inches below its 33-inch average rainfall.

On the other 40% of the farm the pair test newer tools. In 2019 they fitted Netafim Precision Mobile Drip Irrigation to a pivot, laying water on the ground through drip lines instead of spraying it. They were the first in Kansas to run a 360 RAIN, a three-wheeled autonomous machine that waters and feeds the base of the plant, is designed to use 40% of a centre pivot's water, carries 3,000 feet of hose and suits low-volume wells. Phytech sensors on plant stems and an AI-driven Autonomous Pivot that takes up to 300 soil-moisture readings a rotation tell them when to water and when to stop.

"For a long time in the irrigation community, the idea was that you couldn't put on too much water," Ray says. "But we discovered that we could reduce the amount of irrigation application and still maintain yield and improve our profitability." Ryan, who describes himself as "a son of a banker", tracks the farm's "water duty" — bushels produced divided by inches of water applied — and is already wondering whether the 360 RAIN could pump dairy-lagoon manure or interseed cover crops as it goes.

Source: Precision Farming Dealer