An innovative program designed to advance training on irrigation water management, energy conservation, water conservation and quality and economics of irrigated agriculture is expanding.
Clint Evans, state conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Colorado, recently announced a new partnership agreement that will support and expand access to the Master Irrigator and Testing Ag Performance Solutions programs.
The NRCS has committed $2.91 million for the first year of the five-year agreement and projects to scale the capacity of agricultural irrigators to steward limited water resources. The Lindsay Corporation, Syngenta, Colorado Corn and Colorado Master Irrigator have provided matching contributions for the project’s first year.
This multistate project will involve collaboration of partners in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas and will be hosted through Colorado State University. It will be jointly led by the Irrigation Innovation Consortium based at CSU and Kansas State University through the Kansas Center for Agricultural Resources and the Environment.
MI is an annual, four-day interactive program that equips irrigators with knowledge and network connections to achieve conservation-oriented goals. The TAPS program combines a research framework with an engaging contest that supports producers in testing a wide range of sensors and other decision-support platforms. In TAPS, farmer-led teams compete head-to-head to see whose agronomic and marketing decisions end up being the most profitable and most input-use efficient at the conclusion of the growing season.
Updating and optimizing the performance of aging irrigation systems and integrating advanced irrigation management tools have a real potential to boost water conservation in agricultural systems. These approaches — combined with agronomic strategies, such as maintaining crop residues in fields to retain moisture and capture blowing snow and planting crop rotations that demand less water — can slow or stall aquifer declines, but they must pencil out.
“NRCS aims to sustain the momentum generated by TAPS and MI programs,” said Colorado-NRCS State Conservationist Clint Evans. “By boosting exchange among peers and expanding access to a wide range of public and private sector expertise and incentives, these programs are helping address a critical agricultural support gap.”
According to USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Irrigation and Water Management Survey, only a very modest percentage of irrigators are using precision methods and tools to target and time irrigation and other input applications in amounts, locations and at depths that correspond to shifting crop needs and growing conditions.
“Changing irrigation practices and systems can require significant investment – of money, labor, and patience, along with a fair amount of risk tolerance,” said IIC Executive Director Tim Martin. “We are grateful for NRCS’s support of TAPS and MI programs, which will support learning and exchange and will encourage adoption from local to multistate scales.”
Funding for this technical agreement was provided through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In concert with IRA goals of supporting climate mitigation and resilience in agriculture through conservation-related investment, a core activity of this project will use TAPS data and lifecycle analysis to benchmark greenhouse gas emissions associated with irrigated agricultural management.
“Our multistate team will combine field-level data with models to study how irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer application timing and amounts affect nitrous oxide emissions,” said Susan Metzger, director of KCARE and the Kansas Water Resources Institute. “Master Irrigator programs are ideal for sharing this kind of new knowledge.”
The team also will link cropping and livestock systems communities to open up new avenues to reward water resources stewardship, based on mutual interests in mitigating agricultural production risk and slowing or reversing water quantity and quality decline trends.
“Though irrigation is used on less than one-fifth of farmland in the U.S., it has an outsized influence in supporting over approximately half of the total value of the nation’s crop sales,” Evans said. “Supporting advanced irrigation management is critically important for communities, ecosystems and supply chains depending on sustainable use of our nation’s limited freshwater resources.”
Over a six-year project period launched in 2018, the IIC network has conducted over 40 collaborative research projects focused on advancing irrigation management tools and strategies and encouraging their adoption. In addition to matching funds from many public and private partners, the IIC’s primary sponsor is the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.
Kansas State University established KCARE to coordinate and enhance the research, extension and teaching activities that focus on environmental issues relating to agriculture. KCARE supports research spanning multiple departments and disciplines: soil science, smoke management, cropping systems, water quality and irrigation, fertilizer research and climate studies.
Contact: Amy Kremen, Irrigation Innovation Consortium Associate Director amy.kremen@colostate.edu
