Decatur County held an irrigation management demonstration day on Thursday to demonstrate integration of WiMax wireless Internet with an irrigation management solution.

The event was held at the Cloud Livestock Arena for a briefing and portal demo, and at Glenn Heard’s Farm. This was an informational event for the farmers of Decatur County.

Decatur County and its Internet operator, Mainstreet Broadband, have deployed a county-wide wireless Internet system with remote farm management as a benefit of the deployment.

Decatur County has contracted with i-Linc Technologies to deploy a smart farm management and irrigation scheduling solution. The solution was originally developed under a USDA/NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) program, to aid the producer/farmer in deciding when and how much to irrigate. The system uses smart sensors, telemetry, Internet, video surveillance, irrigation controller, and software to help make irrigation scheduling decisions remotely in real-time.

This is a unique system because of its state-of-the-art technological features and its integration with either WiMax or cellular Internet cloud.

We believe the benefits of this project will be water conservation, energy conservation and higher crop yields with better quality and higher profits to the producer/farmer.

The partners of the project include Decatur County Board of Commissioners, Glenn Heard Farms, Mainstreet Broadband, i-Linc Technologies, Spring Creek Watershed Partnership and Decatur County Extension Service.