Water Conservation Center

2024 Demonstrations Explore Sorghum Silage as an Option for Conservation?

Demonstrations at the North Plains Water Conservation Center (WCC) at Etter will focus on shedding light on that question and more during the 2024 growing season. While sorghum silage acres have increased steadily in recent years with the expanding regional forage market, the question about the effects on local water supplies still needs to be explored. The district’s demonstration leads, David Sloane, PhD. and Dr. Jourdan Bell, will be addressing this need by switching from the WCC’s usual corn and cotton rotation, to a cropping plan that moves half of the acres under pivot to sorghum forage. With one pivot featuring a corn/sorghum split cropping approach and the other cotton/sorghum, the two fields will be compared by water use, yield, and economics. Below is the layout of demonstrations planned for the 2025 growing season.

For this growing season, we plan to do the following:

• Continuing to evaluate the role of forage sorghum in a corn / cotton rotation under limited water.
• Comparing forage sorghum drilled on 7.5” rows and windrowed vs planted on 30” rows and direct harvested.
• The use of drought tolerant corn hybrids under limited water.
• The use of UpTerra treated water.

This year, we plan to test as many of the leading drought tolerant corn hybrids as we can and put them under the following conditions.

• 12” of total water (incl. rainfall and irrigation)
• 12” of irrigation
• 18” of irrigation
• 24” of irrigation (equivalent to a full allocation)

For more information about the North Plains Water Conservation Center demonstrations contact Baylee Barnes at 806-935-6401 or bbarnes@northplainsgcd.org.

History North Plains Water Conservation Center (WCC)?

What is the WCC? In 2014, the North Plains Groundwater Conservation District began focusing the North Plains Research Field at Etter, Texas, as the North Plains Water Conservation Center. The board of directors developed a plan for the operations and staffing of the Center, including articulating the mission as a demonstration field and upgrading the facilities.

The board of directors then selected Stan Spain and Crop Production Services (CPS) out of five proposals to oversee the farming and demonstration at the Center.

CPS management demonstrated a vision for the Center that matches the vision of the board, making the company an excellent corporate partner for the District. CPS spelled out a plan of demonstrating graduated irrigation regimens of 3, 4, and 5 gallons per minute pumping capacity to simulate the conditions faced by most producers in the district. To read more information on the “3-4-5 Program”, click here. Space was also set-aside for demonstration of the District’s award winning “200-12 Project”.

CPS also plans to demonstrate various plant populations as well as multiple crops and crop rotations in their demonstrations at the field including: corn, cotton, sorghum and wheat. These plans are in line with the water conservation focus that the board of directors wants for the Center, but the potential for ongoing coordination with the District in the design and implementation of demonstrations while allowing the District access to all the data is of great value to District stakeholders as well.

In addition to the agriculture conservation demonstrations to be conducted by CPS, the District maintains the Water Conservation Center as a showcase for a variety of conservation practices and innovations. Future demonstrations could include low water use landscaping, rainwater harvesting and gray water reuse.

If you are interested please contact our office at 806-935-6401 or e-mail us at info@northplainsgcd.org