Technology, knowledge improving water management

While most corn grown across the country is watered only by Mother Nature in the form of rainfall, farmers who use water to irrigate crops are finding ways to more efficiently use their water resources.

For example, by using modern tools and a water sensor network hosted by the University of Nebraska, Davenport farmer Mark Jagels’ knew his corn used only 14 hundredths of an inch of water during a cool week this past July -- only 2 hundredths per day and well below a normal July’s water use of 35 hundredths a day.

Knowing that his corn was using so little water, Jagles cut back on the number of times he irrigated the crop, saving water and the energy needed to pump it.

“The tools we have available today measure how much water is in the soil and how much water the crop is using,” said Jagels, a member of the Nebraska Corn Board. “This reduces our water use, which is important because water is a natural resource that we want to protect for future generations.”

About 85 percent of the corn grown across the country is watered only by Mother Nature, while the remaining 15 percent is both rain fed and irrigated.

Between 1990 and 2008, Nebraska's irrigated corn acres increased about 3 percent, while dryland acres increased about 48 percent. What is interesting is that during that same period, Nebraska corn production jumped from from 934 million bushels to 1.4 billion bushels!

A NASS survey comparing water use from 2003-2008 showed there was 27 percent less total water applied in 2008 than 2003. (Yet ethanol production during this time frame expanded significantly.)

"Corn producers continue to grow more corn on less land and with less water -- and ethanol producers continue to squeeze more ethanol out of a bushel of corn with less energy and less water," said Todd Sneller, administrator of the Nebraska Ethanol Board, at the recent ceremony recognizing Chief Ethanol Fuels, Inc.'s 25th Anniversary,

At the rate new technology is developing, and with more research on water efficiency, it is safe to say that Nebraska's corn crop and ethanol production will require less water to produce higher yields in the future.