VLakkenheuwel Boerdery, located in Swartland, South Africa, recently ordered a completely new pump station to meet the needs of the farm. Using ITC’s technology, they achieved a very efficient use of water, energy, and fertilizer.
Nowadays, VLakkenheuwel produces wheat, canola, grapes, almonds and more and is in an expansion phase. Therefore, they needed an efficient, accurate and sustainable irrigation installation with the use of water and energy in a facility where drip irrigation was used.
Therefore, this new pumping station made optimal use of water and resources, resulting in greater conservation and more efficient use of water and irrigation. In addition, ITC’s metering pumps allowed for an accurate and energy efficient fertigation system.
Water conservation and extraction accuracy as key factors
As mentioned above, the VLakkenheuwel Boerdery farm uses mainly drip irrigation, so finding an accurate fertigation system was paramount. This was stated by Daniel Gouws, farm manager at VLakkenheuwel: “Water conservation and accuracy of extraction are factors that we take into account, and our goal with the pump station was to ensure more efficient and accurate use of water and irrigation.”
Daniel Gouws also highlighted how the new pump station would “allow them to expand,” stressing that “everything had gone according to plan” and that all the factors included were in place.
ITC solutions
ITC’s fertigation equipment facilitates very precise dosing and maximum quality and accuracy in the use of water and fertilizers, one of the main objectives of the Vlakkenheuwel team.
ITC presented a needs study to Agriplas, distributor of ITC equipment in South Africa, and a system with three main lines was proposed, each consisting of:
Dostec AC 600l/h pumps: each of the lines has its own Dostec AC 600l/h pump, an EC conductivity sensor, a pH sensor and a pressure sensor.
Control system: everything is connected to an ITC controller which, together with Gulf Radio receivers, allows the customer to monitor and control the entire irrigation and fertigation system via the Cloud Manager.
All data in one place: the ITC system informs the farmer about EC data, proportional flow rate, volume and dosing time.