Alabama ag receives irrigation tax break

The Agricultural Irrigation Systems Tax Credit signed by Gov. Robert Bentley on May 14 gives farmers, nursery owners and greenhouse operators a tax credit equaling up to 20 percent of the cost of new or improved irrigation systems, with a cap of $10,000 per farm.

Just 120,000 acres of Alabama farmland is irrigated out a possible 2.5 million acres, said Sam Fowler, director of the Auburn University Water Resources Center. Mississippi and Georgia each have about 1.5 million acres of crops under irrigation.

"We feel confident ... that we have the potential to do a lot more irrigation in Alabama," Fowler said in a prepared statement.

Chad Fincher, a Semmes Republican and head of the Alabama House Agriculture and Forestry Committee, said in Auburn's statement that adding 1 million irrigated acres in the state would have the same economic impact as adding two auto plants, or 26,000 jobs.

Behind the legislation is a decade of collaborative and comprehensive research conducted through the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station at Auburn, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the University of Alabama and Alabama A&M and Tuskegee universities participated in research that led to the passage of the incentive.