Speaker Bio: Manuel is a licensed Professional Engineer with 16+ years of NRCS and agricultural water-resources engineering experience across the Northeast, Rocky Mountain, and Northwest regions. He now works as Senior Engineer with American Farmland Trust, specializing in irrigation systems, drainage, flood mitigation, and other resilient farm infrastructure.
Description: As drought stress becomes an increasingly common challenge across the Northeast, fruit growers need reliable, cost-effective strategies to optimize limited water supplies while protecting crop health and yield. This session will provide a practical, engineering-based approach to drought management, with a focus on planned deficit irrigation, soil moisture monitoring, and automated irrigation tools suitable for diversified orchards and fruit operation.
The session will cover how to select, install, and interpret data from soil moisture sensors, and how to integrate these sensors with automated or semi-automated irrigation systems to ensure timely, precise water delivery. Growers will also be guided through the process of developing a farm water budget, including estimating crop water demand, evaluating existing water supplies, and identifying system bottlenecks during dry periods. The session will conclude with a framework for creating a property-level water plan, outlining how to assess opportunities to expand or diversify water sources—such as ponds, wells, storage tanks, and captured runoff—to improve long-term drought resilience.