James Adkins, the irrigation specialist at the UD research farm, gave a guest lecture to our class about irrigation. He showed us how irrigation systems have evolved through the years and which methods are the most efficient. It was amazing to see how advanced the technology was that could tell farmers when to apply and how much. This is especially important in some states where water is becoming harder and more expensive to resource to aquire, such as California, the biggest agricultural producer in the U.S. All the new irrigation technologies use precision ag for field mapping, data collection, and many other things. Irrigation has a very significant impact on yield, but soils and nutrients and rain fall also influence yield. Delaware for example has no where near the amount of topsoil as Iowa, therefore Iowa’s soil can hold a lot more water for a longer time period.  It was interesting to hear a lecture from someone with such an increasingly important job.