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Well-timers available for farmers in the Mississippi Delta
The Nature Conservancy announced it is looking for additional farmers in the Mississippi Delta to enroll in its well-timer program.
VICKSBURG, Miss. (VDN) — The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has announced it is looking for additional farmers in the Mississippi Delta to enroll in its well-timer program.
According to reports the timers are provided at no cost and save farmers time and money while also reducing annual water use by about 20 percent.
After launching in the Arkansas Delta, TNC’s well-timer program expanded to Mississippi this year thanks to a grant from the Mississippi Outdoor Stewardship Fund.
This is the first time the fund, which was established in 2022, has been used for a project on private agricultural land to conserve water quantity.
As a result, nearly 140 well timers have been installed or requested. If there’s enough interest from farmers, TNC plans to at least 240 more in the state, which would bring the total amount of farmland enrolled in Mississippi to an estimated 40,000 acres.
TNC is targeting farmland in the following Mississippi counties: Bolivar, Carroll, Coahoma, Grenada, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Leflore, Panola, Quitman, Sharkey, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tunica, Warren, Washington and Yazoo.
TNC created its well-timer program to protect a resource the entire Delta depends on—the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer, which provides water to numerous farms, industry and communities within the Lower Mississippi River Basin.
In addition to reducing pumping from the aquifer, well timers help farmers reduce fuel costs and improve operational efficiency without sacrificing yields.
Each producer may receive up to 10 well timers per year at no cost including installation, helping make this technology accessible to a wide range of farms.
Priority is given to farmers who have completed the Mississippi Master Irrigator Program, operate in areas with severe groundwater declines or grow high water-use crops such as rice.
Mississippi State University will help evaluate the program by comparing water use on fields with and without well timers using flow meter data. Delta F.A.R.M. is supporting producer outreach, technical assistance and field monitoring. The well timers that are being installed through the program are provided by PumpTrakr and FieldPro Management.
For more information or to sign up for the program, go to nature.org/Mississippi.
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