Flood Irrigation in Arizona

Our co-host David Woodruff has David Lamoureux, and they were talking about flood irrigation practices in Arizona. 

 

"Yeah, well, it's out south. It's about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson, down south of Eloy, a little place called Picacho, down there by Picacho Peak."

 

And it's all flood irrigated? 

 

"Right." 

 

When you come on raw land in Arizona and you go to flood irrigate it, there's a little bit of leveling involved, or is there a lot? How do you do it? 

 

"When we bought this farm, it was already being farmed, but we went in and laser leveled it and put cement irrigation ditches in and turnouts, and so it had where we could flood irrigate it and take care of the water, and it does a great job. But in Arizona, that farm down there was part of the CAP, the Central Arizona Irrigation Project. We got cuts on our water, so we don't have all the water that we used to, so that's been hard for us. Part of the old Santa Cruz River bottom runs through our farm, and we've got that fence, and we run cows down there in the mesquite, so when you get the rains, you get some good desert feed. But where we're at in Arizona, unless you have flood irrigation, you just don't do much. But it's just a bonus when you get some rain."

 

Dave Lamoureux on the Cattleman's Corner.

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