New Irrigation Specialist

Emily Bedwell developed tools as a University of Georgia graduate student that are helping farmers in the south to conserve water and reduce production costs.

As University of Idaho Extension’s new irrigation specialist, based at the Kimberly Research and Extension Center, Bedwell is now devoting herself toward improving Idaho irrigators’ bottom lines.

“Irrigation here is necessary — these crops don’t grow without it — whereas in Georgia it’s supplemental,” Bedwell said. “This position has such potential for an incredible impact, and I look forward to connecting with growers and seeing what their needs are, making sure a system is compatible with field-specific conditions and really finding answers to their specific questions.”

Bedwell loves numbers and solving problems and once planned on becoming an accountant, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree in accountancy from Mississippi State University.

“I had an internship doing taxes for an accounting firm and I realized, ‘This is not it,’” Bedwell recalled.

She credits a favorite accounting professor, Brad Trinkle, with helping her change the course of her career. The professor asked her what she would choose to read while waiting in a dentist’s office with a good selection of magazines. Bedwell replied that she would reach for a National Geographic every time.

Based on her response, Trinkle urged her to consider a degree in environmental resources.

She went on to earn a master’s in wildlife, fisheries and aquaculture with an emphasis in precision agriculture from Mississippi State University, and then a doctorate in crop in soil sciences with an emphasis in precision agriculture from the University of Georgia's Tifton campus.

For her master’s thesis, Bedwell helped develop a decision support tool factoring historical yield patterns to help farmers compare the economics of keeping marginal ground in production versus enrolling it in a land conservation program. Subsequent graduate students continued working on the tool, which is now undergoing final revisions prior to publication.

She later worked under Professor George Vellidis, who is known for creating variable-rate irrigation, for her dissertation. Vellidis tasked her with developing a tool that provides irrigation scheduling recommendations based on real-time weather patterns, current crop growth stage and soil conditions. Her app performed well in testing in the spring and has been widely downloaded and used. A blog post Bedwell wrote explaining how to use the app for University of Georgia Extension had more than 650 views during June alone.

To Bedwell, who was seeking positions in the Pacific Northwest, the U of I irrigation specialist position represented a dream job. She learned about the job opportunity through the department head of her school at University of Georgia, former U of I Department of Soil and Water Systems Professor Jodi Johnson-Maynard.

“When I started looking at what research land grant universities were doing, U of I stood out,” Bedwell said. “It seemed like there was a good collaborative network among the departments and a strong Extension system. I love irrigation, but I’m passionate about Extension.”

Bedwell has identified a couple of important projects to prioritize early in her tenure at U of I. First, she’d like to evaluate irrigation systems on the market, calculating their efficiencies while factoring in potential wind speeds, drift and other region-specific conditions. She also plans to update crop coefficient curves, which depict the exponential increase in water demand by crops as they grow and can guide irrigators in the efficient use of water. U of I hasn’t updated the curves since the 1970s. Bedwell anticipates using the updated curves as a foundation for creating new decision-support tools, like the irrigation scheduling app she launched in Georgia.

Bedwell also plans to quantify nutrient loads entering crops systems through the application of dairy wastewater and partner with UI Extension forage agronomist Pramod Acharya on analyzing soil-water irrigation deficits for alfalfa.

In her personal life, Bedwell loves recreating in the outdoors, including biking, hiking, swimming, cycling and kayaking. She and her husband, Cameron, both compete in triathlons. Cameron is a musician who works as an education representative for the musical instrument supplier Dunkley Music.

Published in Catching Up with CALS