WSU has received two grants totaling more than $900,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture to work on methods of increasing irrigation efficiency in Washington and cheaply transporting manure nutrients from animal-dense regions to high-demand areas.

One grant, for about $456,000, will go toward educating farmers on irrigation efficiency, providing assessments of irrigation systems and recommending improvements, and providing consultations to help farmers adopt irrigation equipment upgrades, according to a USDA news release. The project involves enrolling farmers in the Irrigation Scheduler Mobile system, which monitors efficiency and is associated with 20 percent water savings.

For the other project, for which WSU received a $460,000 grant, the university plans to build a relationship between the state dairy industry and forage growers and help both better understand manure nutrient recycling and management. The goal of the project is to develop technologies to improve cost efficiency in transporting these nutrients, according to the release.

Both grants were awarded through the Conservation Innovation Grants program, administered by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The Conservation Innovation Grant program is competitive and helps privately held farms and forest land minimize environmental impact, USDA secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack said.

Reporting by Cody Cottier