March 2006 :: Feature Story

Scientists, farmers and others have set out to see whether Southern High Plains growers can pump less irrigation water and still maintain their profit levels. Cotton alone carried them far in the past. Good prices, revenue-enhancing federal programs, and tradition have steered producers toward this crop as a monoculture for decades.

But recent years have mostly been unkind to farmers in this giant cotton patch—the world’s biggest at more than three million acres. Fuel and fertilizer prices have shot through the roof, complicating the usual onslaught of hailstorms, high winds, and drought. And the current Farm Bill is under attack. The next one, due in 2007, won’t likely be as friendly.

Water is getting scarce here, where the Ogallala Aquifer is dropping fast. Floyd and Hale counties, where this project is taking place, have seen their water tables drop an average of .88 foot and 1.78 feet per year, respectively, in the last decade. The average drop for the entire area covered by the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District #1 is .99 foot per year.

That’s nearly a foot over more than 10,000 square miles, local experts point out. And it shows in the pumping, even though farmers are irrigating much more efficiently now than in the past.

“Forty years ago our wells were pumping 700 to 800 gallons and even up to 1,000 gallons per minute,” says Eddie Teeter of Lockney, Texas. “Now we’re pumping 500 to 600 gallons per minute.”

Agriculture is the nation’s biggest single water user. Here on the South Plains, about 95% of all the water pumped is used for irrigation. Estimates say it takes more than a hundred gallons of water to grow a pound of cotton lint. Some say much more. So farmers are selling their water at rummage-sale prices. And with an ultra-slow recharge, once it’s pumped out of the aquifer here, only a tiny part of it ever finds its way back in.

Fueled by $6.2 million Texas Water Development Board funding secured by Texas State Senator Robert Duncan, researchers at Texas Tech and other agencies are partnering with farmers to find the real costs and returns and water used by different crop and livestock systems. The project is scheduled to last eight years.

A research and demonstration project initiated by Vivien Allen at New Deal, TX, got this new offensive off the ground. Allen is a professor of plant and soil science at Texas Tech. In the early 2000s, her research showed about 90% more cash profit and about 23% less irrigation water used for diversified systems over cotton alone when Concerned with the water, local farmers direct this $6.2 million project. cotton yields were about 940 lbs/acre. When cotton yields reached about 1200 lbs/acre, profit from the cotton monoculture was greater, but water use remained about 23% lower for the integrated system.

“We’re faced with declining water, increased energy cost, and changing farm bills,” Allen says. “We’re trying to find what is and isn’t working on the High Plains. It’s a test of how people are changing in a shifting economy.” Allen has been joined in this new, expanded project by an army of researchers from Texas Tech and several other institutions and agencies. They include the water district, USDA-NRCS and ARS, Cooperative Extension, and Texas A&M. Their study and- demonstration area covers 4,328 acres on 26 farms between Plainview and Floydada. The project includes a diverse set of crops and livestock.

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There couldn’t have been such a project without direction and participation from producers. “The thing that’s really unique is the cooperation among entities, starting with producers,” says Rick Kellison, a farmer and also Texas Tech’s director of this project. “This is totally producer-driven. A board of nine men from Floyd and Hale counties made all the site selections. Sites were chosen to represent 26 different systems from monoculture crops to fully integrated crop and livestock systems. They meet on a regular basis to give us direction.”

“We’re not asking people to do anything different than they’ve been doing,” says Teeter, who is head of the producer board. “We’re just telling a producer to do what he wants, and we’ll monitor the inputs and returns.”

Each site is unique, whether it has water available or not, crops alone, multiple crops, or integration of crops and livestock.

“Our goal is to put exact numbers on all inputs and determine what we’re selling our water for,” Kellison says. “When we learn, it’s going to give us a different perspective. It doesn’t matter what commodity we’re taking to town, whether it’s a bale of cotton or a steer. In essence we’re selling our water. We want to reduce total water use, enhance system profitability, and see if it’s transferable to others.”

Workers and their instruments keep track of crop varieties, planting dates, plant populations, yield, total water applied whether rainfall or irrigation, all mechanical operations, fertilizer, dates applied—everything possible.

In livestock, they’re tracking the kind of operation; carrying capacities; calving percentages and weaning weights in cow/calf enterprises; gains in stockers; and types of forages used.

For all sites, soil moisture, soil erosion, fertility, water use efficiency, and water infiltration based on tillage types are measured—every aspect that might eventually lead to water savings.

Each site has a full array of instruments placed by the water district to monitor water use, rainfall, and soil moisture. These values will be related to yields.

All this information is being made available to producers who partner in the project. Technical help is available to try new technologies if they want it.

Records of input and production costs and returns will be put in economic terms. Extension’s FARM Assistance program is detailing records of production costs, returns, and financial performance of technologies used.

This data will eventually help farmers decide on alternatives to what they’re doing, all the way from trying new crops to using new irrigation technologies and tillage types.

“It’s a new way to approach demonstration and generation of new information,” says Allen. “It’s simply saying that what we’ve been doing isn’t cost effective anymore. Now we have 26 different ways to combine the pieces to help find ways to make it work.”

Karl Wolfshohl