In the early days of Roberts Irrigation, the normal irrigation pipeline was made of heavy steel that had to be carried from place to place in the field. Simple “big gun” sprinklers were used to irrigate large areas and required a tremendous amount of hand labor. The technology and automation that we know today has remarkably improved since then. In the 50 years since the beginning of the company in 1957 we have seen both the company and the state of water application techniques improve dramatically. Advances came in the form of lighter-weight aluminum pipe, as well as less time consuming methods of irrigation such as the wheel line and soft hose traveling gun system. When we look back at these systems from today’s perspective they don’t seem very high-tech but they saved a lot of back-breaking labor carrying pipes through the field. Today, many farms are advancing rapidly into high-efficiency production and the automation of equipment plays a big role. Center Pivot systems communicate and can be controlled remotely by a variety of devices such as radio modems and even satellites. Producers can control their systems from the office or even from their phone in their farm truck. Founder Hal Roberts started the company in a simple way - out of the back of a station wagon. His wife, Nancy, was armed with an engineering degree but was known to make deliveries of pipe pulling a trailer with the family sedan. The founder’s son, Paul Roberts, recently retired from the President position after serving the company for many years. Roberts Irrigation today operates as an Employee Owned company (since 2019) providing a wide variety of water-based systems for the farm and beyond. We provide high-capacity water well drilling and rehabilitation, pump repair and design, Reinke Irrigation system design and sales, dewatering, dust suppression, HDPE pipe fusing/install, electrical services and more. Our service crews are now often armed with laptops and can diagnose PLC computers and Global Positioning Satellite systems. We have an expert staff of over thirty people dedicated to serving our customers and moving water. Over the first 50+ years we have experienced many changes and are looking forward to the next fifty!
