Columbia Basin, Ephrata, WA | The $50 came from a conversation I had with a larger farmer in this area. I had told him I figured it cost $25 to run water, and he figured $50. The more I think about it, the more I believe his number is probably the better one to use.
By the time you add up man hours, vehicle, fuel, and a bunch of little stuff you need, it adds up fast. If you're running a bunch of full circles laid out on nice even adjacent quarter sections pumping clean well water you won't spend that much. Not everyone has the luxury of that situation. Trying to water the most acres with pivots and dealing with obstacles like irrigation canals, power lines, homesites, etc can make for a lot of small machines that are time consuming to operate. They are often old because its very expensive per acre to buy new for really small machines. Some places still have the little areas watered with hand lines, wheel lines, or siphon tubes, and those take even more time. Throw in dealing with moss and chemigation in the summer, and a guy can have his hands full doing nothing but keeping the water going.
Maybe I should have said "what it costs" to run the water instead of "what wages are", but I didn't want it to sound like we got water bought and pumped for only $50 per acre.
Edited by Big Ben 4/5/2014 15:59
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Net Income/Acre
