NRD: Crops can do well with limited irrigation

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BY ART HOVEY / Lincoln Journal Star

YORK — The corn crop is in, research results are out, and, once again, the message from the Upper Big Blue Natural Resources District is that farmers in Southeast Nebraska can produce impressive yields with less irrigation water.

In fact, the final report released by the most heavily irrigated of the state’s 23 NRDs shows that a test plot on York’s southern outskirts produced 225 bushels per acre with 10.8 inches of irrigation water.

That’s slightly better than an adjoining plot did with 14.8 inches and much less than many farmers apply between planting time and harvest.

Dan Leininger, the NRD’s water conservationist, confirmed that the research acres that got less water — almost all of it in July — managed to produce about a bushel more per acre.

“I was really amazed,” he said, “even though we caught a couple of little rains in August.”

In years when rainfall patterns are more generous, there might not be much attention paid to a 24-acre parcel where water conservation is the top priority in raising corn.

But that hasn’t been the case recently.

And farmer interest grows rapidly when drought grips crop-growing areas, when agricultural use of water across Nebraska is under increasing scrutiny by the state and adjoining states and when high energy prices and low corn prices are pinching profits.

In an Upper Big Blue area that includes York, Seward and Aurora, drought and heavy irrigation pumping have been dropping water levels toward historic lows.

If readings from test wells in the spring drop another 4 inches, owners of some 12,000 wells will have to start filing reports on their irrigated acres. Not much further down lurks allocation and a limit on how much water each farmer can use each year.

York-area corn producer Jerry Stahr doesn’t have to be reminded about the need for remedies to shrinking water supplies.

“I like the work they’re doing,” Stahr said of NRD efforts. “It is very important and I have no qualms about it. You can never stop learning. And I think the more we get educated, the better off we’ll be.”

Based on two years of results, Leininger sees a definite basis for cutting water use without doing major damage to yields.

“We’re trying to reach the guys that water just kind of on the calendar,” he said. “Like the third week of June, they start up. And depending on the rain, they go to the end of August.”

That’s the tendency even though the most crucial time for irrigation, based on NRD research yields in 2004 and 2005, is in July, when tassels emerge and corn ears form. Except for July, said Leininger, “it’s amazing to me how much stress (corn) can take early and late.”

“I think when the overwatering is done is early and late.”

Another way to calculate the significance of results from the test plot: At an estimated savings of $24 per acre in watering costs, a farmer with 500 acres of corn could save $12,000 per year.

Through soil testing and allowances made for residual nitrogen in irrigation water, the NRD research project also shaved an estimated $11,590 off fertilizer costs for 500 acres.

Put the savings for water and fertilizer together and it adds up to almost $23,600.

Stahr can believe those sorts of figures when overall irrigation costs run as high as $70 an acre. And the current price of corn doesn’t offer much relief.

“Dollar-fifty corn doesn’t pencil out,” he said.

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or at ahovey@alltel.net.