Corn Grows Where the Water Flows
Texas Farmer Adopts New Irrigation Technology, Management Practices
The water situation here is my biggest concern," says Greg Chavez, a 38-year-old producer from Hereford, Texas, as he drives along a field edge, intermittently stopping to check for skips and seed depth as his employees plant corn. "We're trying to conserve all we can."
Where Chavez has put down roots -- in the Texas Panhandle -- corn doesn't stand a chance unless it receives water, and normally a lot of it, through irrigation. This certainly has been true in recent years. Rain in the growing season was measured in single digits in 2011 and 2012, but has been better in 2013. It isn't unusual for farmers here to pump 25 to 30 inches of water on their fields in season, nearly all that a corn plant requires.
In exchange, corn does well here, averaging 235 to 250 bushels for Chavez in normal years, but better in 2013, averaging 275 bushels per acre, his best ever.
Chavez has renovated older center pivots to make them more efficient, and he has installed new, highly efficient ones as he converts to minimum tillage and switches to drought-tolerant varieties. He's also considering subsurface drip irrigation, which promises even higher efficiency. Even with these improvements his wells in the Ogallala Aquifer are declining.
"We've had to drill some really deep wells, 900 feet deep into the Santa Rosa Aquifer, because our Ogallala water is getting so low," he says.
TECHNOLOGY EDGE
Chavez, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was two years old when his parents, Carlos and Ana Maria Chavez, brought him here. Greg is a member of an aggressive young generation of farmers who are doing what they can to survive and thrive on the southern High Plains, where Mother Nature has not been kind. He and his dad are partners on the farm where Carlos came as a worker and brought his family along, 36 years ago.
"Greg is making real progress on new technology to give himself the edge in his business," says Mike White, district conservationist with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service in Hereford. "He's always looking to increase his bottom line through management."
About 98% of Chavez's acreage is watered by center pivots, with some field corners still row-watered. To boost irrigation efficiency, he has made center pivots even more efficient by converting to LESA, or Low Energy Spray Application. He has dropped sprinkler heads and in some cases, bubblers, to within 2 feet of the soil surface to slash evaporation from sun and wind. White says LESA can bring sprinkler efficiency up to a 94% level.
Another option for the area is LEPA, or Low Energy Precision Application. It employs hoses drug along rows in conjunction with furrow dikes. These are dams in row middles that hold water in place, where it can seep into the root zone, boosting efficiency to around 96%.
BELOW GROUND
Chavez is considering a step that even surpasses LEPA on some fields and particularly in corners of fields left dry by center-pivot circles. This is subsurface drip irrigation, which is much more expensive to install but which can deliver 98% of applied water to the root zone. In some cases there is cost-sharing available for such improvements through the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Agricultural Water Enhancement Program (AWEP).
MOBILE MONITORING
The young farmer monitors and controls his far-flung center-pivot systems with his cell phone, with a program called PivoTrac, made by PivoTrac Monitoring of Dalhart, Texas.
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"When water pressure drops, the pivot sends me a text message, and I go to see the problem immediately," he says. "And when a pivot stops, I check it out right away."
He has started minimum-till on some of his acreage to save water and has switched completely to no-till in other fields.
Here in the southern reaches of the vast Ogallala, big things are happening that have opened farmers' eyes to the water situation.
Large dairies have grown in number in the area, straining the water resource by increasing corn acreage and going to double-cropping corn for silage after wheat. Well output is sagging in many areas. Also, installing flow meters on wells has opened farmers' eyes to the large amount of water that they are pumping. Like Chavez, farmers are trying to adjust.
"I have flow meters on all my pivots to keep up with water use," Chavez says. "If gallons per minute drop, I can go see what the problem is."
"There's so much changing here," says White, the NRCS district conservationist. "Producers are switching to varieties of corn that tolerate drought and have a shorter growing season. Some are cutting corn for silage, which eliminates some watering."
SALTY WATER
Because some of the Ogallala wells have grown so weak, Chavez and other area farmers have had to drill deeper into the underlying Santa Rosa Aquifer. This is costly, and the water can be salty. Where salinity is high, farmers are combining Santa Rosa water with Ogallala water to keep it tolerable for crops.
Still, the young farmer sees a bright future for his son, Michael, and daughter, Makayla, on the southern High Plains. Chavez is so optimistic, in fact, that he has been purchasing new ground for growing corn. His latest purchase was in 2012, when he bought acreage that was emerging from Conservation Reserve Program contracts.
"Mostly, dairies have been our biggest competitors for land," Chavez says. "They have made our land prices jump."
Seizing Opportunity at 3 a.m.
Greg Chavez was born in 1975 in Casas Grandes, a village in a wide, fertile valley on the Mesa del Norte, at 4,000 feet elevation in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. By the time he was two years old, his parents, Carlos and Ana Maria, brought him to Texas in search of a better future.
"A family member helped my dad get over here and found him a job on the farm we own now," Greg says. "Dad worked here for more than 20 years and bought it when the owner retired in 1995. My mom and dad live in the same house they moved into 36 years ago, where they raised me and my two sisters, Noelia and Erica."
EARLY DAYS
But that wasn't the only farm that Carlos Chavez and his son acquired. They purchased their first 215 acres when Greg graduated from Hereford High School in 1993. (He later attended West Texas A&M, in nearby Canyon, majoring in agricultural business.)
"That first farm was owner financed, and it allowed us to establish credit," Greg explains. Today the father and son are partners in a multicrop and cattle operation of about 3,600 acres, with Greg in charge of the farming and his dad managing the cattle. And with help and advice from what Greg says is an entire community, they have continued to grow.
"Dad has always liked the cattle best," Greg says. "He was a farmer in Mexico, and he had established a good-sized herd of cows there. His parents, brothers and sisters still live there, and he goes there often."
Young Chavez thanks God daily for what he has here.
"I live in a great community," he says. "If you have a question, go to your neighbor." His best friend, Andrew Gee, "has been with me since the get-go," Chavez says. "He started farming a few years before I did and knows the ropes."
Chavez also mentions support from his wife, Syndal, "who allows me to get up at 3 a.m. and go to work on a pivot. These are long hours, although not all year around. There's a time to work and a time to play. Syndal loves watching the Texas Rangers, and we make it to Dallas for a game as often as possible."
MOTHER TOPS LIST
Then there is a long list of organizations sometimes taken for granted, but not by Chavez: NRCS, Extension Service, Farm Service Agency, Capital Farm Credit, Federal Land Bank, equipment dealers and his private bank, First Financial Bank—he has used and appreciates them all.
And for inspiration there is his mother, Ana Maria.
"My mother lost her eyesight and almost her life in a car accident 22 years ago," he says. "She has never complained one time about her situation. She always greets me with a smile. For her to have such a positive attitude makes any problems I may have seem small."
Of course there are concerns, such as operating loans that today overwhelmingly dwarf his first loan of $25,000. He's had to step up his risk management game with crop insurance, marketing and other tools with so much at stake. And the water -- always the water -- is constantly on his mind. But it doesn't drag him down.
"Ultimately it's in God's hands," says this young producer. "I'm farming. I love it. I'm having a good time. It'll be OK. I don't see my job as a job. You hear people saying they can't wait until 5 o'clock and how much they want to be on vacation. I've never known what that's like -- never."
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