Friendly competition to encourage learning and adoption of water-efficient technologies
Ted Tietjen, Grant, NE
TAPS participant and Project coordinator, Nebraska Water Balance Alliance
Testing Ag Performance solutions (taps.unl.edu): A competition in which the management decisions (corn variety, water and nutrient applications) of fifteen farmer teams were implemented on a research station field using variable rate irrigation. Through the competition, participating producers get to test out a wide range of technologies and figure out avenues to maximize return on investment, while reducing water and input use.
"Everyone's striving to improve water management on their operations, but the job's never going to be 'done' and you can never stop learning. Competitions like TAPS attract the interest of producers because by testing out new technologies without incurring risk, they can identify if there's a margin to be had or gained by investing in new technology.
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- Ted Tietjen