Tuesday, January 27, 1998

Peanut producers say "yes" to poundage quotas

By J.T. SMITH / Farm Editor

Poundage quotas for peanuts will continue.

Peanut growers have approved poundage quotas for the 1998 through 2002 crops of peanuts.

Preliminary results from the December referendum have been put together and show that 94.8 percent of farmers who voted nationwide favored peanut quotas for the next five years.

The last peanut poundage quota referendum approved poundage quotas for the 1996 and 1997 crops of peanuts.

USDA has announced a national peanut poundage quota for the 1998 marketing year of 1,167,000 short tons.

That's up 3 percent from the 1997 level.

The increase in the quota will be allocated to both eligible quota and non-quota peanut farms.

Quota farms will receive the quota increase based on the farm's production of peanuts considered produced on the farm in the history of production during the three preceding years.

Non-quota farms will get a quota increase based on the farm's actual peanut production during the three preceding years.

Tenants will share equally with farm owners in the quota increase as the results of the tenants' production of additional nuts.

<B>Computer automation of irrigation can save water<B>

For the past four summers, cotton plants on a test site at Lubbock have had all their water needs scheduled by computer, with no waste water, fertilizers or other dissolved chemicals.

This work is fine-tuning the conservation of water.

The computer decides whether to turn on the irrigation pumps for the cotton based on readings from soil probes combined with weather updates every half hour, plus information from a computer model on crop water use.

This prototype - still in the research stage - is believed to be the only such totally automated irrigation management system in the nation.

Steven R. Evett, a soil physicist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Bushland, designed a key component of the system in the electronic probes that give the computer its soil moisture readings on the half hour.

Evett also wrote the computer program that drives the soil moisture readings.

A Texas A&M University team, based in Lubbock, was led by soil physicist Robert J. Lascano. They wrote the computer programs that combine water content and weather data which automatically make irrigation decisions.

Dynamax, Inc., a Houston firm that sells and manufactures scientific instruments, sells the probes.

Working with the Dynamax company and USDA's Evett, Lanscano has demonstrated the workability of joining the programs with a field weather station and the computer model of crop water use that he has designed.

Meanwhile, Evett has adapted the model for personal computers and continues to update it.