Increasing Sustainability of Production Agriculture
Featuring Glenn Schur
Texas Alliance for Water Conservation
Box 42122, Lubbock, Texas 79409-2122
Phone: (806)742-2774 Fax: (806)742-0988
Web Address: www.depts.ttu.edu/tawc
The TAWC Project was made possible through a grant from the Texas Water Development Board.
Increasing Sustainability of Production Agriculture: Glenn Schur
The Texas High Plains is heavily
dependent on the producers who
generate a combined economic value of
crops and livestock that exceeds $5.6
billion. This value, however, relies on
un-sustainable amounts of irrigation
water from the Ogallala Aquifer. Today,
over 90 percent of water pumped from
the Ogallala is being used for irrigation
purposes which generate a great deal
of revenue and employment to the
regional economy.
According to a study* released
by the Texas Tech Department of
Agricultural
and Applied
Economics,
irrigation
increases regional
employment
by roughly 16
thousand jobs
adding $630
million per year in
regional income.
With this
amount of jobs and revenue, the
loss of irrigation in the area would
be felt economically by all that live
there. Property values, rural incomes,
agribusiness investment, and all other
businesses including retailers and
restraunts would suffer from the loss or
irrigation.
Producers realize the ever-present
dilemma of depleting water resources
and the consequences resulting from it.
They are urgently looking for ways to
be more conservative in their farming
practices in order to reduce depletion
of ground water while maintaining
agricultural production and economic
opportunities.
Glenn Schur of Plainview, Texas,
is a producer and strong advocate for
water conservation, especially that of
the Ogallala Aquifer. He realizes the
value of water and the importance
of improving water usage efficiency
while continuing to maintain farm
profitability. Schur said the decline
in his available irrigation may not
seem drastic when only looking at one
year to the next; however, if he looks
back to the years when his father first
started farming their
land, the decline of
available irrigation
water from then to
now is quiet extreme.
Schur’s father,
Martin, began
farming in Hockley
County in 1947, using
furrow and ditch
irrigation. Schur said
irrigation was just
beginning to be implemented in the
area at that time and required a great
amount of manual labor. In addition
to irrigation, the Schur family also
practiced crop diversification.
“Dad always told us the weather
and market were not good for every
crop every year,” Schur said, “and it was
best to keep your crops diversified.”
The Schur family farm continues
to produce a variety of crops including
cotton, grain sorghum, wheat, seed
crops and sunflowers. The farm also
continues to use irrigation, although
their methods have been greatly
* “The Economic Value of Irrigation in the Texas Panhandle.” Guerrero, B., A. Wright, D. Hudson, J. Johnson, S. Amosson.
TAWC Resource
Allocation Analyzer Tool
is an economic-based
decision aid that utilizes
variables (e.g. expected
commodity prices,
water availability, and
enterprise options) to
provide options to a
producer for cropping
systems that maximize
net returns per acre
while accounting for
irrigation and revenue
potential. This allows
producers to examine
agronomic planning
options in irrigated row
crop agriculture for
profitability and
sustainability.
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enhanced due to technology. These advancements
have not only made irrigation less labor intensive
and more efficient, but also allow Schur to accurately
monitor and control the amount and timing of his
water in an effort to make his farm as sustainable as
possible.
As part of his water conservation efforts, Schur
works closely with the Texas Alliance for Water
Conservation (TAWC), serving as chairman of the
project’s producer group. Established in 2005, the
TAWC uses on-farm demonstrations of cropping
and livestock systems to compare the production
practices, technologies, and systems that can maintain
individual farm profitability while improving water
use efficiency with a goal of extending the life of the
Ogallala Aquifer while maintaining the viability of
local farms and communities.
TAWC’s producer board is made up of
approximately 25 producers who operate the project’s
field sites covering more than 4,000 acres in Hale
and Floyd Counties. Each site is equipped with
instruments to determine total water applied from the
aquifer, solar radiation, temperature, rainfall, timing
and amount of irrigation events, and soil moisture.
This data is recorded, stored, and transmitted to a
single database accessible to project participants.
The project’s sites represent a wide range of
agricultural practices including monoculture cropping
systems, crop rotations, no-till and conventional
tillage practices, land application of dairy manure,
and fully integrated crop and livestock systems. These
systems are intensely monitored and compared by
expert researchers for total irrigation water use and
water use efficiency, crop and livestock productivity
and profitability, total input requirements, and
impact on natural resources including soil quality and
erosion potential and wildlife habitat. The results are
disseminated through education and outreach efforts
throughout the region. In addition, new water and
production resource management web-based tools
have been created and disseminated to the individual
farmers as they strive to increase sustainability.
“Water management is very important in our area
now and in the future,” Schur said. “The more valuable
our crops become the more important and valuable
the water under our land is. Water is vitally important
and it makes good sense to conserve it for the future of
the area and generations to come.”
Schur has one pivot monitored by the TAWC, and
eight others equipped with water meters he monitors
himself. By gathering water usage information on half
of his pivots, Schur is able to make better irrigation
decisions throughout his entire operation.
Schur is able to read all data gathered by the
TAWC water meters from his home computer and
said he checks the information most regularly in the
summer when plant stress is high and his pivots are
running most heavily.
“The TAWC project has helped me discover
the new type of technologies available for water
management and learn from them.” Schur said. “I am
more aware of the crop requirements for water at
various growth stages. I have also learned to match
water needs of a crop and the amount of crops I can
irrigate effectively, and after the drought of 2011, it has
been very important to use water the most effectively
as possible.”
Researchers within the TAWC project have
developed online tools that can be used free of charge
by all producers seeking to better manage their water
usage. The TAWC Solutions Irrigation Scheduling
Tool is designed to help irrigated producers make
the most out of their irrigation regime while being
conscious of their most precious input. This
program utilizes weather information collected from
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the Texas Tech Mesonet along with
specific producer input information to
automatically calculate and update the
soil water balance for a specific crop.
Providing a checkbook-style water
balance, a producer can determine
when to schedule an irrigation event by
tracking the soil water balance available
to a given crop instead of by subjective
guessing, tradition, or intuition.
The Resource Allocation Analyzer
Tool is a web-based economic decision
aid that utilizes variables (e.g. expected
commodity prices, water availability, and
enterprise options) to provide options
to a producer for cropping systems that
maximize net returns per acre while
accounting for irrigation and revenue
potential. This allows producers to
examine agronomic planning options
in irrigated row crop agriculture
for profitability and sustainability.
These tools can be found at www.
tawcsolutions.com.
In addition to using technology to
conserve water on his 1,800 acres of
farmland, Schur also uses no-till and
conservative tillage. As his father always
said, not all years are good for all crops,
and Schur still farms by those words of
wisdom, keeping his farm diversified.
Today, however, he not only uses crop
rotations to protect against down
markets, but also as a water conservation
practice, splitting his pivots so that
sections of them contain less water
dependant crops requiring less irrigation.
“We know that water is extremely
valuable to our crops,” Schur said. “But
what we want to do is determine the
economic value of it.”
Since 2005, data has been gathered,
fields have been observed and research
summaries have been formed by the
TAWC to aid producers and commodity
groups in their efforts to manage water.
TAWC Solutions
For example, from 2005 through 2011
Irrigation Scheduling
there were 38 corn field observations, 14
Tool
is designed to help
grain sorghum field observations, and 116
cotton field observations in the TAWC
irrigated producers
project. Sorghum for grain yielded the
make the most out of
highest profit per inch of irrigation
their irrigation regime
water at $31.4 per inch of supplemental
while being conscious
irrigation. Corn yielded 214 bushels per
of their most precious
acre that netted the highest profit per
input. This program
acre of $479 per acre. However, this
utilizes weather
was done by applying an average of 17.4
information
collected
inches of irrigation water. Sorghum
from the Texas Tech
applied the least amount of irrigation
Mesonet along with
water on average at 7.9 inches per acre
specific producer input
while cotton applied an average of 12.8
information to
acre inches of irrigation water generating
automatically
1,275 lbs of lint on average per acre.
calculate and update
Glenn Schur’s goal is to conserve his
the
soil water balance
land and water while maintaining farm
for a specific crop.
profitability. He has taken a proactive
approach to achieving this through his
Providing a checkbookadvanced monitoring and conservative
style water balance, a
farming efforts. By cooperating with
producer can determine
the TAWC, Schur has benefited both to
when to schedule an
and from the project. He hopes TAWC’s
irrigation event by
research and advancements will continue
tracking the soil water
in an effort to provide the information
balance available to a
and guidance producers will need for
given crop instead of
sustainable agriculture.
by subjective guessing,
“I believe the TAWC has been
tradition, or intuition.
one of the best projects put together
in many years,” Schur said. “The data
it has produced has been all real time
and actual production numbers from
producers. I would like to see the TAWC
project continued. We are just now
starting to show trends of water use,
effects of drought, changes in cropping
patterns not only from a market’s
price function, but from water use and
efficiency. Continuation of the program
would benefit us all and save research
dollars since so many components are
already in place.”
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Future Direction:
While current TAWC tools are proving to be effective for crop management and water
conservation, the increasing complexity of agricultural systems coupled with demands for
sustainability and traceability of commodities necessitate the creation of more advanced
business analytics tools. A digital dashboard on one’s mobile device or computer would
pull together time-sensitive information from the TAWC tools and other sources, thereby
enabling proactive enterprise decision-making. Financial support will be necessary to
coordinate the information sources and program the interface to make a user-friendly
analytics dashboard.
Efforts are underway to develop an advanced irrigation scheduling tool that would
provide objective recommendations to producers on when and how much to irrigate a
given crop. Using a Spectral Crop Coefficient approach that estimates daily crop water
use from remotely sensed ground cover and potential evapotranspiration, the tool
optimizes water consumption and energy inputs to maximize net return.
Plans are underway to address the need for a comprehensive business analytics dashboard
system for farm enterprises that is customized to the unique commodity mix and
management style. Core to this will be creating management functions for other
commodities, such as livestock grazing systems, which can be both economically feasible
and sustainable during normal and drought conditions conserving valuable soil and water
resources in both scenarios.
Our approach is to develop a comprehensive portfolio of commodity production function
formulas and management tools that will drive the business analytics system. Our vision
is to combine these separate information tools into a data analytic system that is easy to
read and use on mobile devices. The resulting dashboard will simplify strategic,
tactical, and operational decision-making by producers. The system will also allow
individual enterprise and system reporting including compliance and traceability reports.
The dashboard system will:
1.
Support faster and better-informed decision making on inputs and product
marketing, which ultimately improves performance, efficiency, profitability, and
sustainability of agricultural enterprises.
2.
Clarify for producers the dynamics of their own commodity systems and
enterprises including how marketplace shifts influence business performance and risk management.
3.
Reduce decision errors by producers through the increase use of data mining and trend analysis techniques of commodity markets and of their own enterprise.
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