Flood Irrigation
In 2003 Carl and Larry Oliver of Delta, Utah were producing, on average, less than 5 tons of alfalfa hay per year, and had been for as long as they could remember. In the Spring of 2004 Carl was introduced to the BACTIFEED Soil System and was sold on the simplicity of the program and its practical nature. The Oliver’s started using the BACTIFEED program with their first irrigation that spring and faithfully added BACTIFEED to every irrigation. The area they live in is all flood irrigation so a Bactifeed tank was set up on a trailer and moved to and metered in at the head of each stream of water. At the end of the first year Carl reported “I produced on average 1 ton more per acre and on some fields I did this on one less watering (flood irrigation)…”
Encouraged by this, they continued into the second year seeing even more benefits in production and quality. Carl and Larry said they would go out to their fields and find neighboring farmers walking them, or they would be in town and people would come up to them and and tell them they had been out to their fields and wonder what they were doing. The customer harvesting and cutting their hay told them they had best hay of all the farms he worked or even saw. By the end of the third year on the Bactifeed program they had gone from 3 cuttings per year to 4 cuttings per year and the yield is now up to 9 to 10 tons per acre. The quality of hay is much higher than they were getting with their 5 ton per acre days. Fields that looked as if they were ready to rotate out are now lush and healthy. They used to have large bare areas across their fields where nothing would grow due to high salts, and now those areas are largely gone and getting smaller every year.
One of the Oliver’s neighbors decided to try BACTIFEED for himself on one of his fields. It was a 50 acre field divided into five 10 acre sections. Each section took 12 hours to water. On the first sections of land he had BACTIFEED metered through his water but his tank ran empty before he started the 5th field and he didn’t have time to mix a new tank of BACTIFEED. He thought no more about it until he cut and baled his hay. On the field that didn’t get any BACTIFEED he baled 10 one ton bales, the same he always had. However, to his surprise, as he baled the other four fields that were treated with BACTIFEED, he had any where from 16 to 18 one ton bales per section.
CALIFORNIA
customers in California have seen quick results with the use of BACTIFEED. They have noted that the soil has opened up allowing for quicker water penetration in areas where water normally pools up. Water Penetration has been an issue for many of the Almond Growers, specifically in the Wasco area in Kern County. In some cases, after only a few irrigations with BACTIFEED, growers have reported that the soil is already improving with no more sitting water. This reduction in sitting water means there is hardly any water wasted to evaporation and that it is getting to the roots and delivering valuable nutrition and water. No standing water also means no pest/insect problems, mold issues, fungus issues, all of which are expensive and problematic. Bactifeed solves many issues in an extremely cost effective and simple application method.
Farm Managers new to BACTIFEED have been pleasantly surprised by the results. In Tulare County, a 42 acre field with substantial salt problems produced a crop for the first time. After numerous attempts spanning nearly a decade, the farm manger reported new growth in areas that hadn’t ever produced anything. In Kern County, a farm manager recently explained that it normally takes two hours to irrigate each check on his 70 acre field. After the continued use of BACTIFEED, it now takes about 90 minutes, a 25% decrease in water. This is huge especially considering we are in a severe drought causing many growers to abandon their normal farming plans and many hundreds of thousand acres going fallow in my territory alone!
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