It was announced on Thursday, July 4, that for the first time in five years, the entire state of Utah is completely out of drought status. However, this doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods yet, as proper water conservation remains important with 25.89% of the state still experiencing “abnormally dry conditions.” This is where the Ag Water Demonstration, Research and Implementation Program (AG-DRIP) comes in.

Castle Country Radio sat down with Steven Price, Carbon County Director of 4-H and an assistant professor of agriculture at Utah State University Extension to talk about the upcoming AG-DRIP field day, as well as explaining what AG-DRIP is.

“So AG-DRIP is a water optimization program that is a multiagency cooperative. It started a couple of years ago, and this is the first field season where we have had it implemented.” Price explained,” And essentially we’re trying different technologies to optimize how farmers irrigate their crops. So using some irrigation scheduling technologies, water management or measurement technologies and trying to dial in irrigation to where we’re getting the biggest bang for our buck.”

This program in 2023 received a $1 million grant sponsored by the Central Utah Water Conservancy District and the Colorado River Authority of Utah, something which Price explained has been very beneficial to the program. “ Without that money, undoubtedly we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing here. This is one of the first programs that have ever really come out doing this in any state.”

After this, we got into what the AG-DRIP field day would entail,” part of the project is you kind of have to come up with a game plan on how to change this. So we’re going to look at some data, look at how this is all fitting together for AG-DRIP. The past couple of years, we’ve also had some interesting research going on in Carbon County for agriculture; so some of that is some soil sodicity research as well as soil fertility research. So we’re going to walk folks through research studies we’ve done over the past couple of years and showcase those as well.”

The AG-DRIP Field Day is set for Tuesday, July 9, starting at 10 a.m. at the Bill and Kyle Butcher Farm Located at 8000 South Upper Miller Creek Road in Price, Utah. The event not only includes informative demonstrations of the AG-DRIP technologies, but lunch as well.

For more information, you can call Price at the USU Extension office at 435-636-3235 and ask for Price or you can visit the office’s Instagram page here.