Corn needs about 1 acre foot of water to grow properly. Of course this is all dependent on soil type and environment and wind and temperature. If you can grow 150 bushels of corn under ideal conditions you are looking at $3.33 dollars of expense per bushel of corn in water that is produced by this method. This puts corn out of the question as a crop to be grown using this method of water production. The point is that this method is only viable for high value crops that need much less water.
I am not against this method of water production but one must always remember what it costs to do it, and what can you sell your crop for.
If you want to know how to utilize limited water resources in agriculture, go to Israel. They have little water and use what they have to the absolute max efficiency.
Corn needs about 1 acre foot of water to grow properly. Of course this is all dependent on soil type and environment and wind and temperature. If you can grow 150 bushels of corn under ideal conditions you are looking at $3.33 dollars of expense per bushel of corn in water that is produced by this method. This puts corn out of the question as a crop to be grown using this method of water production. The point is that this method is only viable for high value crops that need much less water.
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If you look upthread to the beginning you’ll notice that I posted a link to sundrop farms in australia which runs a green house that produces tomatoes. The green house is along one of the desert coasts of australia. It gets its water and heat at night from a similar array as seen above and sells its tomatoes locally. They plan to scale up in the next year or so.