The Deschutes River Conservancy recently announced a tour of a North Unit Irrigation District patron who practices “water wise farming”. Clearly, there are farmers who should be applauded for utilizing good irrigation practices and understanding how they do this is valuable. Unfortunately, according to the US Department of Agriculture, there are only 1,542 farms (those with typical revenues over $1,000) in Central Oregon. (No, that’s not a typo, you only need to make $1,000 to be considered a farmer.) At the same time, there are over 7,600 irrigation district patrons. These other irrigators are commonly called “hobby farmers” and they frequently use practices that could not be called “water wise farming”. It would be great if the DRC would talk about this as well. Below is a picture of a field close to where I live that uses flood irrigation, a water delivery method first used in Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago. Even wheel line sprinkler systems lose around 45% of the water that is sprayed into the air before it reaches the ground.