Funded by the Texas Water Development Board with money secured by a bill sponsored by Sen. Robert Duncan, the project involves researchers from Texas Tech, Texas A&M University, USDA and other entities, plus a nine-member producer board. The eight-year project just completed its third year.

Rick Kellison, a producer from Lockney, TX, is project director. He says detailed records are kept on various crops, ranging from monoculture cotton to forages for livestock. At the end of each growing season, growers get an economic analysis for each field, showing the net return per acre.

“We also report to the grower how much money he’s getting per acre-inch of water,” says Kellison. “It gives him a value of what he’s selling his water for.”

The most significant finding so far, he says, is the amount of water and money that can be saved by growing forage sorghum instead of corn for silage. Most of the new dairies moved from areas where corn silage is king, so silage corn acreage has been skyrocketing. Corn uses as much as 50% more water than the fully irrigated cotton it usually replaces.

But Texas A&M research, verified in the demonstration project, shows that some newer sorghum varieties can match the yield and quality of silage corn on 40-50% less water.

“So sorghum is more profitable,” says Kellison. “We think we can make a major impact if we can get this story told both to the dairies and to the growers.”

“That’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not going to get us to a sustainable level of water use,” adds Allen, and Kellison agrees. Both worry that continued dairy expansion will negate all water conservation efforts. Kellison points out that it takes 6,000 acres of irrigated cropland to feed a single 3,000-cow dairy – about 2 billion gallons of water per year.

Attracted by the region’s low human population and inexpensive land, the dairies moved in with encouragement from municipalities wanting to bolster a sagging rural economy. Kellison says the dairymen he knows are sophisticated, knowledgeable businessmen who don’t want to cause problems.

“But I don’t know that they got all the information they might have needed before they relocated here as far as the amount of water that was available,” he says.

Allen believes the ethanol plants are a mistake, too. They’re being built largely to process corn shipped in from other states. Much of the corn consumed by regional feedlots has traditionally come from the Midwest. But high corn and fuel prices are testing the economics of shipped-in grain and encouraging local production. With three nearby markets – dairies, feedlots and ethanol plants – she fears the transition from cotton to corn will continue.

“It’s pushing the incentive in the wrong direction,” says Allen. “We’ve got to have incentives to save water.”

While agriculture’s future on the Texas plains looks cloudy, Allen sees reason for optimism in the trend back to grazing. If the dairy expansion can be curtailed and enough land can be put back into grass, it might save enough water to permit some cropping to continue indefinitely. But she foresees it being limited to the best land and the best crop genetics, using the most efficient irrigation systems.

If the region is able to solve its problems, Allen figures it’ll be the “poster child” for other areas facing similar situations.

“The issues of water, and now energy and water, go hand in hand,” she says. “And the issues are so profound out here, if we can find solutions, we’ll be the place the rest of the world looks to for answers. But we cannot continue as we are right now; it isn’t going to happen.”