Practicing Conservation and Sustainability 

Madison ranches has been on the forefront of water conservation and innovation for several decades. Our lack of water supply has forced us to develop highly efficient, and unconventional irrigation practices. We employ real time soil moisture probes and weather stations in our fields, and real time flow meters and pressure gauges on all of our pump stations. This allows us to always ensure that the system is running as efficiently as possible, greatly reducing the ranches demand on power and squeezing the most production out of every drop of water we pump. Having all this data at our fingertips allows us to make informed decisions on the fly as conditions change.

Madison Ranches also conserves water using the Patented 3R Valve, which is an Aquifer Recharge Valve. We are able to filter excess winter snow-pack melt through engineered basins that we pick up out of the shallow alluvial aquifer. This drinking quality water is then pumped back down into the deep basalt aquifer to be stored for use later on during the Summer season. We also pioneered technology that allows us to run our deep well pump motors in reverse during the recharge process to generate and net meter hydro energy when we are pumping water back into the basalt aquifer.

Most of our wheat is grown for seed that we clean and sell to neighbors and other wheat growers in several states. The seed corn we grow is processed locally here in Hermiston by Pioneer, while our grain corn is sold as feed for local cattle producers. We also lease ground out for both rye and fescue grass seed, peas, beans, sunflowers, sweet corn and cattle pasture.

Madison Ranches is a deficit-irrigated farm, using 50 percent of the flow that a fully irrigated farm would use. Our crop rotation is managed in a way that helps us make up for our lack of water with lower-valued, lower water-use crops strategically located in combination with higher- value, higher water-use crops.