Precision irrigation and storage technology plays a big part in the economic sustainability of Dee River Ranch near Aliceville in western Alabama. There, the Dee family farms 4,000 acres of tough clay soils, including 3,000 acres in a no-till corn-soybean-winter wheat rotation under center-pivot irrigation

“Because we get 50-60 inches of rainfall annually on our farm, many question our investment in irrigation, but it’s helped us boost our yields, even in wetter years, and shows us very positive returns on investment,” explains Annie Dee, who farms with her brother, Mike, and her sons Seth and Jesse about 25 miles west of Tuscaloosa. 

“Western Alabama has generous annual rainfall averages, but most of it comes from November to February, many times leaving the growing season hot and very dry.”

The family moved from Florida to Alabama in 1989 and switched to no-till in the middle 1990s as a way to improve the heavy clay they encountered.

“We were accustomed to light, sugar-sand soils, but the clay we found here invariably seemed either too wet or too dry to farm conventionally,” she explains. “No-till helped, but it didn’t solve…