As water supplies shrink and food demand grows, new interdisciplinary research from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln offers a practical way for farmers to manage irrigation more efficiently while protecting their bottom line.
“Agriculture uses about 70% of the world’s freshwater, and nearly 40% of food production depends on irrigated land,” said Erkut Sönmez, associate professor of supply chain management and analytics at Nebraska. “With water supplies declining in many regions, finding more efficient ways to irrigate crops has become critical.”
To determine the soil moisture thresholds that signal when irrigation should begin and end under varying weather and soil conditions, Sönmez teamed up with Derek Heeren, professor of biological systems engineering and irrigation engineer at Nebraska, and Baris Ata, Sigmund E. Edelstone Distinguished Service Professor of Operations Management and Applied AI at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Their paper, "Dynamic Irrigation Management Under Weather Uncertainty and Soil Heterogeneity" published in the top journal, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, in March.
“We introduced simple, smart irrigation rules that help farmers decide exactly when to water their crops and when to stop,” Sönmez said. “Instead of relying on guesswork, farmers can monitor soil moisture and irrigate only when it drops below a certain level and apply an optimum depth of water. The system works much like a thermostat, automatically maintaining the right balance.”
The researchers found their irrigation strategies can increase farmers’ profits while reducing water use compared with traditional practices.
“Even more importantly, the benefits grow stronger as water becomes scarcer, making these methods especially valuable in drought-prone regions. For farmers looking to stay profitable while conserving resources, these results point toward a new sustainable solution,” Heeren said.
Sönmez also noted how the research demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary collaboration.
“Our research combines ideas from supply chain management and agriculture to help farmers make better decisions,” Sönmez said. “In particular, we adapted inventory management policies used to manage products in a warehouse to instead manage water in the soil, which has never been done before.”
To test the approach, the researchers compared their irrigation policies with traditional practices through extensive computer simulations using historical farm conditions, soil characteristics, weather patterns and economic factors.
“The next step is to take these insights from the computer to the field and repeat our comparison on actual corn and soybean fields in upcoming growing seasons,” Heeren said.
Beyond irrigation, the researchers plan to apply similar analytical and data-driven approaches to help farmers in other areas of farm management, such as nitrogen fertilizer.
“This work shows how methods from one field can be applied in entirely new ways,” Sönmez said. “I look forward to continuing to combine these disciplines to improve efficiency and sustainability across a wide range of agricultural applications.”
