The Alliance

Unique to the TAWC project is a partnership of area producers, data collection technologies, and collaborating partners that include: industries, universities, and government agencies. The project 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. Each member of the alliance has an important role in the research and development of our project sites.

The Producers

All production-related decisions are made by the over 50 producers involved in the project. The project field sites are located throughout 14 West Texas counties. These sites represent the range of agricultural practices including monoculture cropping systems; crop rotations; no-till, limited-till and conventional tillage practices; land application of manure; and fully integrated crop and livestock systems.

Data Analysis & Technology Transfer

The project sites are being intensely monitored for water use, soil moisture depletion, crop productivity, and economic return. Each site is equipped with instruments to determine total water applied from the aquifer, solar radiation, temperature, rainfall, and timing. Also being monitored are amount of irrigation events as well as soil moisture. Integrated central processing controller equipment is being utilized to record, store, and transmit all data to a single database accessible to project participants.

Risk management specialists analyze data gathered from producers' field records to calculate economic return from irrigation.