By Amy Kremen and Ashley Patterson
The April 6 launch of a new Colorado State University-Testing Ag Performance Solutions program attracted an enthusiastic group of 60 people, welcomed by Dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences James Pritchett.
CSU-TAPS is a unique crop production contest. Top prizes in TAPS reward and recognize profitable and input use-efficient crop production management skills above achieving the biggest yields.
The CSU-based Irrigation Innovation Consortium (IIC) is supporting the project as part of its research mission to promote the adoption of advanced and precision irrigation management tools and strategies. IIC is working with staff at the Agricultural Research, Development and Education Center South research farm, where the competition is being hosted.
In all, 19 teams — including producers from the Front Range and northeastern Colorado and one team from Nebraska — will compete in CSU-TAPS throughout the 2023 growing season.
The recent kickoff event provided an opportunity to go over and discuss competition rules and goals. This year’s participants have been assigned three random plots located on the same field at ARDEC. This approach distinguishes TAPS from other farming competitions that take place on-farm, where differences in soils, equipment and weather from one farm to another make evaluating management effectiveness almost impossible.
What is TAPS?
Overall, TAPS provides producers a risk-free, immersive learning opportunity to demonstrate their skills at managing water and nitrogen use remotely and scientifically and learn how their management compares to that of their peers. They can also test out different management strategies before trying them on their own operations. Factoring in farm budget information and crop insurance choices elevates and clarifies the connection of sound field and financial management and decision making.
A website portal provides participants real-time information about their plots from direct and remote sensing technologies and is also set up to capture their management decisions throughout the growing season.
In early May, CSU-TAPS and ARDEC staff will plant competitors’ corn hybrid choices at seeding rates that they have selected. Starting in June, participants will be able to control in-season irrigation and nitrogen applications. For a simulated component of the contest, participants are also required to buy crop insurance and market their corn as if managing a 1,000-acre farm.
Meanwhile, the field layout pulls in a vast amount of robust research data. Separately from leading the CSU-TAPS program, IIC is currently supporting research involving TAPS data stretching back to 2017. A team of 30 High Plains region scientists is analyzing this data to evaluate the importance of hybrid choice, water and nitrogen applications and timing, and technology use for production outcomes, including how input-use efficient management affects greenhouse gas emissions.
“TAPS represents a highly integrated approach to research and extension, targeting highly relevant management questions and challenges of mutual interest to producers, researchers, technology providers, state and federal agency staff, and many others,” said IIC Executive Director Tim Martin.
Core funding support for CSU-TAPS is being provided through a Water Plan grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board. CWCB funds were used to update the irrigation system utilized for the competition and are supporting program staff to manage the competition and related research.
Leveraging support and sharing expertise
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a founding member of the IIC and close collaborative partner, is supporting the CSU-based team by sharing expertise, contacts and templates developed since they launched the initial TAPS program in 2017 at their North Platte facility. The program has grown from that initial sprinkler-irrigated corn competition to involve annual competitions for sorghum, dryland wheat, popcorn and cotton production hosted at different university research farms in Nebraska, Oklahoma, Florida and now, Colorado.
A core theory shared by the multi-state TAPS network is that combining more data-driven field crop management with marketing skills can help address key agricultural sustainability issues, such as slowing or preventing water quantity and quality declines and improving farm resilience without adversely affecting producers’ bottom lines.
Like the other TAPS programs, CSU-TAPS is bringing together and leveraging support and expertise from a wide range of industry partners, state and federal agency representatives, and faculty from Soil and Crop Sciences and other departments at CSU, in addition to colleagues based at other universities. As one example, Sterling, Colorado-based CSU Regional Extension Specialist Brent Young — who focuses on agricultural and business management — recently provided CSU-TAPS participants with two webinars, one centered on crop insurance and a newly re-designed farming cost of production budgeting tool, and another on corn marketing and corn price outlooks for 2023 with Steve Koontz from CSU’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
Additional information about the competition will be available through the program newsletter and via IIC’s social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn). The CSU-TAPS team plans to organize an August field day celebration at ARDEC that will be open to the public. Competition winners will be announced at a celebratory banquet in January 2024.