Drone + software adds up to significant irrigation savings
Aug. 3, 2026
By Mary Hightower
University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture
Fast Facts
- Farmer requested help after June flood wiped out prior irrigation plans
- Research supported by the Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board
(870 words)
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WEINER, Ark. — With a drone, three pieces of software and about 60 minutes, Mike Hamilton and Walker Harris could be saving one farmer 28 hours of running a power unit and millions of gallons of irrigation water this season.
Hamilton, an extension irrigation instructor for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture and irrigation water management specialist with the Arkansas Natural Resources Conservation Service, has been working with Gary Sitzer, a Poinsett County rice and soybean grower. Harris is a farm technician based at the Judd Hill Foundation Farm.
Hamilton and Harris are working on a project titled “Increasing Adoption of Elevation Data and Irrigation Scheduling on Furrow-Irrigated Soybeans,” research funded by the Arkansas Soybean Promotion Board.
After a pair of heavy rains, Sitzer gave Hamilton a call. He needed help with part of a soybean field he’d already planted in May, but had to replant after heavy rain, including the June 22 downpour.
After that rain, Sitzer said “it would be after July 4th before we could plant a third time. I’m glad we didn’t plant a third time because rain would’ve taken that out too.”
Instead of trying to design a new irrigation scheme manually, “I asked Mike. He said it would be more exact to use the drone to map the surviving soybeans,” Sitzer said.
The June 22 rain dropped more than “7 inches of rain in less than four hours, flooding out and drowning the lower section of the field,” Harris said. “The grower's original irrigation design could not be recovered, and new designs were built from the field parameters the real time drone imagery provided.”
Hamilton, who was out of state at a conference, said he “sent Walker to fly a drone over one of Sitzer’s soybean fields.”
The next step was to analyze the data picked up by Harris’ drone flight. Using Pix4Dfields, a drone and satellite mapping software for aerial images, plus ArcGIS Pro, a geographic information system developed by Esri, the Environmental Systems Research Institute, “we determined a new boundary for irrigation, and pulled that into Pipe Planner,” Hamilton said.
“This was pretty easy. That’s all the software we’re using,” he said.
Hamilton said the drone flight took 7-8 minutes. Pix4Dfields stitched the RGB images together in a matter of minutes.
“ArcGIS took 20 minutes at the most, plus using Pipe Planner took at most an hour total to get it done,” Hamilton said.
What Harris’ and Hamilton’s hour of work did was to cut the total number of acres Sitzer was irrigating in that soybean field from 47 to 24 acres. Aerial imagery captured by the drone was used to define which acres had surviving beans from those drowned by the June rains.
What would have taken 58 hours of irrigation at 1,100 gallons per minute was now down to 30 hours.
“That’s a 28-hour savings at 1.8 million gallons per irrigation event,” Hamilton said, adding that it meant less water being pulled from a lowering aquifer and less diesel being burned to run irrigation pumps.
An Olympic-sized swimming pool holds about 0.66 million gallons of water.
Rounding up to a 30-hour irrigation event, Harris said there would be a savings of 105-120 gallons of diesel. Using the July 14 farm diesel price of $4.05 per gallon as a benchmark, Harris estimated Sitzer would save between $425-$486 per 30-hour irrigation event.
With his fields just beginning to dry out, Sitzer said the first real test of the new system would probably occur this week.
Tight margins
Every dollar matters for row crop growers.
“Margins remain very tight for farmers,” said Scott Stiles, extension economics program associate for the Division of Agriculture. “Every cost has to be closely scrutinized. Unfortunately, we haven't seen lasting relief from high diesel prices. Mike's adjustments here will help offset some of the $1.10 per gallon increase in diesel we've seen over the past month.”
Stiles said that “prior to the Iran conflict, UADA’s 2026 crop budgets were built around an estimated diesel price of $2.46 per gallon.
“Today, the cost per gallon for diesel is about 75 percent higher,” he said. “Farm diesel prices were $4.34 on July 22. Initially, we were budgeting about $35 per acre for irrigation fuel expense for the entire season.
“At today's fuel prices, irrigation costs would be closer to $61 per acre,” he said.
Ag Nerd
Hamilton said he has eight other soybean fields in this project, as well as a rice irrigation project supported by the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board.
He loves the work.
“I’m just a big nerd with the drone stuff,” Hamilton said.
Growers can find a free online irrigation calculator from the Cooperative Extension Service that can assist them in dividing fields into manageable sets depending on acreage and water flow.
Water levels
According to the 2025 Arkansas Groundwater Protection and Management Report, much of the groundwater west of Crowley’s Ridge is considered critical. A great deal of the aquifer is covered by farmland.
According to the report, “the areas with the most severe groundwater declines continue to be the Grand Prairie and Cache River study areas,” especially in areas without direct access to surface water such as the Arkansas, White and Mississippi rivers.
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit uada.edu. To learn more about ag and food research in Arkansas, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station at aaes.uada.edu.
About the Division of Agriculture
The University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s mission is to strengthen agriculture, communities, and families by connecting trusted research to the adoption of best practices. Through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the Division of Agriculture conducts research and extension work within the nation’s historic land-grant education system.
The Division of Agriculture is one of 22 entities within the University of Arkansas System. It has offices in all 75 counties in Arkansas and faculty on three campuses.
Pursuant to 7 CFR § 15.3, the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture offers all its Extension and Research programs and services (including employment) without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, religion, age, disability, marital or veteran status, genetic information, sexual preference, pregnancy or any other legally protected status, and is an equal opportunity institution.
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Media Contact:
Nick Kordsmeier
nkordsme@uada.edu