Life for farmers could get a little easier with a new computer-based program developed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Two years ago, Derrel Martin, a professor of irrigation and water resources engineering in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at UNL, and Ray Supalla, a professor of agricultural economics, completed a project intended to help farmers analyze their land and crop resources and maximize water allocations.
The program, called Water Optimizer, uses a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and a combination of default settings with information input from the user.
"What it does is for a given amount of water available, it looks at different management opportunities, which crops to use for the maximum net turnaround," Martin said. "Our goal was to allow farmers to maximize their irrigation water usage."
The user enters information regarding soil type, average yearly rainfall, crop type, size of the field and the amount of water available. The program then gives a summary of which crops would be the most productive for the given situation. Using the data provided, farmers can decide which crops to rotate and which crops will be the best for their fields.
Unfortunately, the program does not factor in many business decisions.
"It's most useful in comparing alternatives," Martin said. "What we don't do is a lot of the niche markets in the default because the economy of that market may not be able to withstand a drastic market change."
Martin also said that the program didn't take into account some of the costs farmers can't avoid, such as payments for insurance, equipment or land.
So far the Water Optimizer has been a fairly successful tool, especially in the Republican River Valley.
"There have been several thousand downloads, so it seems to be going very well," Supalla said. "We've been doing some educational programs and done some programs discussing how to utilize the water better to see what can be done."
Downloading the Water Optimizer is free and available at the UNL extension Web site, http://real.unl.edu/h20/, which is largely how Martin and Supalla promote the program.
A CD/DVD package also is available for $7, but it is only an optional informational product.
Martin said they have been doing smaller group workshops and even some one-on-one education with how to use the Water Optimizer.
"Some farmers aren't interested in computers at all, so we are trying to make alternatives," Martin said. "We are also working on developing some generalized results that people can use. (We're) thinking of putting out paper-based summaries of these comparisons."
Even though the Water Optimizer has been fairly successful thus far, the developers aren't finished with tweaking and improving it.
"We're working on improving it and making it more generally applicable to a general area," Supalla said. "We're trying to add other types of sophistication to make it increasingly useful."
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