Donovan, M.; Chanes, C.; Gholson, D.; Kadyampakeni, D.M.; Swisher, M.E.; Connor, T. Managing Agricultural Water Resources in the Southern Region: Perspectives of Crop Growers. Water2024, 16, 1841.
Donovan, M.; Chanes, C.; Gholson, D.; Kadyampakeni, D.M.; Swisher, M.E.; Connor, T. Managing Agricultural Water Resources in the Southern Region: Perspectives of Crop Growers. Water 2024, 16, 1841.
Donovan, M.; Chanes, C.; Gholson, D.; Kadyampakeni, D.M.; Swisher, M.E.; Connor, T. Managing Agricultural Water Resources in the Southern Region: Perspectives of Crop Growers. Water2024, 16, 1841.
Donovan, M.; Chanes, C.; Gholson, D.; Kadyampakeni, D.M.; Swisher, M.E.; Connor, T. Managing Agricultural Water Resources in the Southern Region: Perspectives of Crop Growers. Water 2024, 16, 1841.
Abstract
The sustainability of agricultural commodities produced in the Southern U.S. under irrigation is increasingly at risk due to erratic rainfall patterns, inadequate water supplies and compromised water quality. This study assessed the needs of crop growers in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Southern Region. The purpose was to identify growers’ critical water resource management concerns to identify research priorities from the perspective of growers in this region. To obtain this information, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to growers throughout the Southern Region in 2020. The final sample included 112 crop (row and specialty) production growers from the Southern Region. Overall, respondents named the water available to irrigate as the greatest water resource management priority. Within all the water availability priorities asked, respondents’ first choice was declining water supply in the future. Declining water supply and the cost of irrigating presently were the next most frequently named water availability priorities. Growers named both increasing the efficiency of irrigation and development of farming practices to improve soil moisture retention as the first and second focus of future irrigation research, respectively. These results will aid in strengthening existing and developing new initiatives for water research and Extension in this region.
Keywords
agricultural water resource management; irrigation; needs assessment; crop growers; Southern Region; water availability; water quality
Subject
Social Sciences, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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