When every bushel and every gallon of water count, corner technology becomes the profit driver, not an afterthought. Valley’s EnCompass™ leans on real-time GPS pulsing but falls short of substantiating real value.  Reinke’s Electronic Swing Arm Corner (ESAC™)—soon to be offered with E3™ 290 ft and 330 ft swing arms, the longest Swing Arm Corners in the industry— pushes Christiansen Uniformity beyond 85% and, in real-world cup tests, boosted water-use efficiency by 16% over legacy corners.

In acreage terms, ESAC™ reclaims nearly the full 160-acre quarter. The difference is more than a spec sheet—it’s how each system thinks, how much hardware you have to service, and how fast the technology pays for itself.

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Quick-Look Comparison

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Why Swing Arm Corners Matter

A bare ¼-mile center pivot irrigates a circle of only 125.7 acres, leaving roughly 34 acres dry in the four corners of a standard 160-acre quarter. At a 3-year average price per bushel for corn or soybeans, that dry land can mean $19,000–$22,000 of forfeited revenue every year. Adding a Swing Arm Corner solves the geometry problem, but the uniformity problem is just as important. Over-watering strips nitrogen, under-watering wipes out yield, and both erode ROI. Good corner technology must expand acres and hit high, repeatable CU.

Technology Breakdown

Why ESAC™ Wins on Uniformity, Coverage & Water Savings

·       Area-factor normalization divides the corner path into thousands of small land polygons, calculates each polygon’s area down to the square foot, and assigns flow rates proportional to land area.

·       Reinke’s Swing Arm Corner is the industry’s longest, reclaiming 98.7 % of a 160-acre quarter—essentially everything a quarter section can grow.

·       In one multi-season cup-test field study, data shows > 85 % CU and ≈ 6,000 gallons of water saved in a single irrigation cycle—water that stays in the aquifer or in the bank account.

Limitations of Speed-Vector Pulsing (EnCompass™)

·       Per-nozzle solenoids mean dozens to hundreds of electronic parts

·       Valley publishes acreage gain but no cup-test uniformity data or precision percentage, leaving growers guessing.

·       The longest Valley Precision Corner configuration tops out at ≈ 287 ft, capping coverage at ~89.5% of a quarter—good, but fully 10 percentage points behind ESAC™.

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Pros & Cons at-a-Glance

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How the Algorithms Differ (Patent View)

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With ESAC™, the irrigation recipe is baked into a lookup table: if the steerable tower GPS says the corner is in Section 37, Zone B, the controller opens Valve 7 for 78% of base flow. With EnCompass™, every nozzle’s flow is recalculated on the fly—clever, but since this is hardware-heavy and sensitive to GPS dropouts, we steered clear and determined there was a better way.

ROI Focus - Uniformity drives yield

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Corn example (South-Central Nebraska)

Peer-reviewed work sets the baseline:

• Agricultural Water Management (Vol. 98, 2010) logged a 3-to-17 percent grain-yield bump when Christiansen uniformity (CU) improved five to 12 points.
• An ASABE Plains study pegged profit gains at about 4 percent for every five-point CU boost.

Averaged together, those papers support the field rule of thumb: roughly 0.8 percent more yield for every one CU point.

Field note: A 2024 cup-test on ESAC™ in South Central Nebraska measured 96% CU. That’s a single-site result; CU will vary with spacing, nozzle wear, and water quality. Still, it’s the best published number for a swing-arm corner. Valley publishes no CU for EnCompass™, so the conventional 80% CU often cited for older swing-arm methods is the fairest comparison.

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Corn dollars, South-Central Nebraska

• Extra acres – 15 ac × 240 bu × $5 = $18,000
• Uniformity bump – 32.2 ac × (240 bu × 12.8 %) × $5 ≈ $5,000

Total annual ESAC™ advantage: ≈ $23,000.

And if Valley’s real-world CU slips below 80 percent, ESAC’s advantage only grows.

(Numbers exclude NRCS EQIP cost-share—available only to systems at ≥ 85 % CU, which ESAC™ meets.)

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Maintenance & Reliability

·       Valve Count: ESAC™ zone stack = 6–12 solenoids; EnCompass™ can exceed 100 solenoids.

·       Service Hours: Less hardware on ESAC™ means fewer failure points and simpler winterization.

·       Re-Mapping: ESAC™ only needs re-nozzling if the grower later adds a tower or changes corner geometry—rare events.

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Funding & Compliance

In some cases, the NRCS EQIP program reimburses hardware cost when a system achieves ≥ 85% CU.ESAC™ meets the threshold out of the gate and well above it; Valley publishes no CU figure, making eligibility uncertain.

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Key Takeaway

Not every farm has the same constraints, and no single corner upgrade fits every pivot. The matrix below distills dozens of pages of specs and field data into a two-column cheat sheet: common grower scenarios on the left, the system that best meets each need on the right.

The key takeaway is simple—choose ESAC™ when maximum acres, high uniformity, or NRCS EQIP money are on the table. ESAC™ wins on acres, CU, hardware simplicity, and payback speed; EnCompass™ trades those advantages for changing boundaries convenience.

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Ready to Reclaim Every Corner Acre?

Contact your local Reinke dealer to learn how you can maximize your fields' potential and turn unused or underused corners into bottom-line profit.

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Reference List

Reinke Manufacturing Company, Inc. (2021, July). ESAC swing arm normalization: Field-verified water-use efficiency[Poster presentation]. American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers Annual International Meeting, Virtual. https://elibrary.asabe.org/abstract.asp?aid=54363

Reinke Manufacturing Company, Inc. (2025). Navigator® RTK GPS guidance system [Product page]. Retrieved July 14, 2025, from https://www.reinke.com/navigatortrade-gps.html

Valmont Industries, Inc. (2023). Max irrigated land—Corners [Product brochure GL1022-0420]. Valley Irrigation. Retrieved July 14, 2025, from https://www.valleyirrigation.com

Yuan, B., Xue, J., & Li, Q. (2010). Effect of irrigation uniformity on crop yield and profitability. Agricultural Water Management, 98(6), 1027-1036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2010.02.007

Zoldoske, D. F., & Solomon, K. H. (1997). Crop yield as affected by uniformity of sprinkler irrigation systems. Applied Engineering in Agriculture, 13(1), 41-45. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223107291

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