|
Polytubing Reduces Cost, Uses Less Water
LONOKE, ARK.
When Rick Bransford switched from using aluminum irrigation pipe to poly irrigation tubing, he saw immediate benefits: less labor, less cost and less wasted water.
“Poly irrigation tubing is a far more efficient way of putting water on crops,” Bransford said. “We can lay down two to three miles of polytubing a day and get water on the crops a lot quicker. There is no metal pipe to store, lug around and connect. We also use less water because we can get water where we need it, rather than wasting it at pipe joints.”
Bransford’s row crops are irrigated using 15-inch polytubing manufactured by Arkansas-based Delta Plastics. Bransford grows corn, cotton, soybeans, rice, wheat and green beans on 2,100 precision-leveled acres near Lonoke. His soil type is half sandy and half buckshot and he uses 38-inch row widths on all crops and irrigates the middles.
Bransford said that at the end of the harvest season, he simply rolls up the polytubing with a tractor, deposits it in a central location and Delta Plastics picks it up at no charge to be recycled into other products.
“It’s a wonderful service,” Bransford said. “We don’t have to stack pipe or take up valuable farm space to store it. The fields are neat and clean afterwards. Most of all, it is an environmentally responsible thing to do.”
Polytubing is recyclable and can be used for making other products. After harvest, the tubing is collected by Delta Plastics, then cleaned, shredded, melted, processed into postconsumer resin and used to manufacture other products, such as consumer trash bags and Revolution Bag industrial can liners. Revolution Bag is a subsidiary of Delta Plastics.
This process is a classic example of “closed-loop recycling,” in which the waste of one product (irrigation polytubing in this case) is used to make another product (postconsumer resin).
Before Delta Plastics introduced its recycling program, farmers were burning, burying, dumping or landfilling polytubing after the harvest season. Since 1998, the company has recycled more nearly 300 million pounds of plastic from Arkansas sources.
Leaders in agriculture
A graduate of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a degree in vocational agriculture, Bransford taught vocational agriculture for three years before joining his father, Dick, in the family farming operation. He is also actively involved in the Arkansas agricultural community as a member of the Arkansas Plant Board, vice president of the Agricultural Council of Arkansas, vice president of the executive board of the American Cotton Producers, a National Cotton Council delegate and leader in the Lonoke County Farm Bureau.
He has five full-time employees, and his dad still checks the fields every day.
The Bransford name is well known in Arkansas agriculture. Dick Bransford has a long history of serving the agricultural community, including president of the Lonoke County Farm Bureau, president and treasurer of the Southern Ginners Association and a delegate to the National Cotton Council for 13 years. In 2001, he was inducted into to the Arkansas Agriculture Hall of Fame.
The Bransford family was named Arkansas Farm Family of the Year in 1995.∆
|
|