What do I want to achieve by investing in Centre Pivot and Lateral Move systems?

Before you can make decisions on investing in Centre Pivot or Lateral Move systems, you need to know what you want to achieve by this investment. To make good decisions, you need to have clear objectives and goals. The goals can be related to economic, environmental or social considerations or a combination of these factors. Your goals can depend on many things including your family circumstances, age, financial situation and the duration for which you plan to be in the farm business. You can talk with private farm consultants or attend seminars, workshops or training courses that cover issues that can help you to better define your long-term goals, so you can work towards achieving what you want.

Some of the aspects you may consider are:

• Are you converting to Centre Pivot or Lateral Move systems from border-check system or from a green field site. This could have different implications with regards to costs and what you want to achieve by your investment.
• Is water saving your main goal for considering Centre Pivot or a Lateral Move system? In sandy soil you generally have substantial water savings, but not on heavy soil.
• Is labour saving your main goal?

• There are substantial running costs associated with Centre Pivot and Lateral Move systems. You need to beaware of this.
• The management of Centre Pivot and Lateral Move systems are different from border-check irrigation. Are youready for it?

This pages from: http://irrigazette.com/en