High Tech Tools Help Bullseye Farms Hit the Mark in Irrigation
Bullseye Farms is a diversified operation that grows 17,000 acres of vegetables, grains, and tree nuts, including 4,000 acres of almond trees, writes Mindy Robinson at Growing Produce. Located in California’s northern Central Valley, they irrigate their crops throughout the dry summer season. Like other California growers, they constantly contend with drought-related problems.
Six years ago, Bullseye Farms began working with Ceres Imaging to access high-resolution aerial imaging of its farmland, along with site-specific analytics, to help it optimize its irrigation strategies. When Geoff Klein joined Bullseye Farms as Irrigation Manager four years ago, he continued to work with Ceres.
“In the beginning, we mostly used their data to help make decisions for irrigation and fertility, but we also discovered their uniformity data helped a lot during tree harvest,” Klein says. “We found that the drier spots would shake differently during harvest, so our harvest crews actually found those (reports) really useful.”
Going into the 2021 growing season concerned about uncertain water availability, Klein explains that he was working with Ceres to adjust the frequency of data-collecting flights.
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“We usually fly it at least twice a year to make sure there aren’t any big changes in uniformity in a field, but we were flying some fields with known problems more frequently.”
And then the year changed. “We had crazy extenuating circumstances,” Klein says, referring to the 2021 heat wave that hit Yolo County beginning in July and lasting into August. With several weeks of temperatures of 100°F or higher, groundwater levels decreased rapidly, and wells lost pressure. Klein’s job of irrigating crops across thousands of acres became more complicated.
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