Reinke a big part of Nebraska’s irrigation

Forty years ago last week, a Ruskin, Neb., farmer pushed the button to start up the first “Electrogator” center pivot irrigation rig built and sold by Reinke Manufacturing of Deshler, Neb. Over the years, the Reinke business grew to become one of four leading irrigation equipment manufacturers in the world. The company, still family-owned and based in Deshler, employs about 400 people. The other three leaders, Valmont Industries Inc., Lindsay Corp. and T-L Irrigation Co., also are based in Nebraska. Reinke, founded by farmer and self-taught engineer Richard Reinke, was not the first company to manufacture a center pivot.

Competitor Valmont Industries, now based in Omaha, bought the center pivot patent from Colorado inventor Frank Zybach and began manufacturing its version in 1954. But the Electrogator included two crucial innovations, according to Reinke CEO Chris Roth — who, at 39, is younger than the invention that launched the company’s irrigation business.

It was the first electric center pivot that was reversible, meaning it could be installed in a field too small to allow the pivot to turn a full circle. The 1960s were a crucial time of development for Nebraska’s center pivot industry, with the Lindsay Corp. of Omaha developing its “Zimmatic” system and T-L Irrigation Co. in Hastings developing its hydraulically powered pivot at about the same time Reinke developed the Electrogator.

In 1968, there were probably more than 100 companies seeking a foothold in manufacturing various center pivot irrigation mechanisms, industry leaders said. Only four major manufacturers survived and prospered, all in Nebraska, in part because the state’s semiarid climate creates a demand for irrigation in the area and in part because the Ogallala aquifer provides a ready water supply. The Nebraska Pivot Irrigation Manufacturers’ Association says that pivots now irrigate 4.6 million acres in Nebraska and that, based upon a study by Charles Lamphear of the Nebraska Policy Institute, each pivot results in $76,000 of economic benefit each year.

Roth and other pivot manufacturers said there’s room for growth in their industry, even though much of the state is more carefully managing water usage and many western areas have put moratoriums on additional wells, irrigated acres and new appropriations from streams, rivers and lakes. Pivots waste less water than “flood” methods of irrigation, in which water is delivered into fields via gated pipes and furrows in the crop rows.