Cedar Farm covers 850Ha of Grade 1 agricultural land in the Norfolk Broads. The farm produces potatoes, sugar beet, wheat and barley. The potatoes are grown for food processors with factories in north-east Norfolk and used to make crisps, waffles and frozen potato products such as chips and wedges.
To meet the exacting yield and quality requirements of their customers, Cedar Farm irrigate their potatoes using groundwater. As well as being applied directly to the crop, a proportion of this is pumped into a storage reservoir. From here, it is used to help buffer the high crop-demands that are experienced during prolonged periods of dry weather.
The Cedar farm irrigation system is complex and to minimise abstraction related risk to a nearby wetland site of special scientific interest (SSSI), a “smart” water management system has been installed. This is based on data collected from the reservoir, a pumphouse control system, a weather station, soil moisture and crop evaporation monitors, monitors on the rain guns and groundwater level measurements from a network of observation boreholes, including some in the SSSI. The system underpins an abstraction management plan and once fully developed, this will allow targets for sustainable abstraction in the vicinity of the farm to be met while maximising the volume of groundwater which is abstracted and used. The system cost £75k to install and plans are in place to use AI and other sophisticated data management techniques to exploit the value of the data it generates.
