About Our Model

Why We Built It

When faced with limited water, farmers often ask the same questions:

• Should I irrigate all my acres lightly, or fewer acres heavily?
• Should I plant more cotton and less corn this year?
• What happens to my bottom line if rainfall is low?
• Is it better to let some acres go fallow?

These aren’t just academic questions — they are the difference between profit and loss. But the calculations behind them are complex: every crop has its own water needs, yield curves, and market prices. What’s worse, these factors change every season. Without a tool, farmers often rely on intuition, past experience, or trial and error.

Our model takes that uncertainty and turns it into clarity.

How It Works (Simplified)

At its core, the model is an optimizer — a program that takes in information about your farm, simulates different planting scenarios, and identifies the mix of crops that produces the best financial outcome under your constraints.

Here’s what happens behind the scenes:

You Provide the Inputs

• Field size (acres)
• Available groundwater (gallons per minute)
• Expected rainfall during the growing season
• Pre-season soil moisture
• Market prices for corn and cotton
• Your crop choices (irrigated corn, irrigated cotton, dryland cotton, or fallow)

These inputs represent the real-world conditions and decisions a farmer faces before planting.

The Model Estimates Water Supply

Using the inputs, the program calculates how much water is available per acre during the season. It distinguishes between irrigation (groundwater) and natural precipitation, so dryland and irrigated crops are treated differently.

Crop Response Curves

Every crop responds differently to water. For example:

• Corn yields rise significantly with more water, but it’s also costly to irrigate.
• Cotton is more water-efficient but has lower per-acre yields.
• Dryland cotton can survive on rainfall alone but produces modest returns.

The model encodes these relationships through formulas (based on min/max yields, water requirements, and expenses).

Simulating Allocations

The program tries out every possible way to split your acres among the chosen crops. For each allocation, it calculates:

• Expected yield per acre
• Total production (bushels or pounds)
• Gross revenue (based on market prices)
• Expenses (seed, fertilizer, irrigation costs)
• Net return (profit)

Finding the Optimum

After simulating all combinations, the model identifies the allocation that maximizes net return while respecting your water limitations. This is the “optimized” solution.

Showing the Comparison

The platform then shows you two views:

• Unoptimized: A baseline where acres are split evenly or traditionally.
• Optimized: The allocation that maximizes profit and efficiency.

Charts and numbers make it easy to compare: “If I plant this way, here’s what I earn; if I optimize, here’s the difference.”

Why This Matters

The model isn’t a crystal ball — farming will always involve uncertainty. But it gives farmers something invaluable: a way to see the trade-offs clearly.

• If rainfall is below average, how will that affect yield?
• If corn prices jump, does it make sense to shift acres from cotton?
• If groundwater is limited, how do you stretch it to cover as many profitable acres as possible?

By putting these answers at farmers’ fingertips, the model reduces guesswork, supports smarter planning, and helps protect both profits and water resources.

A Tool for Resilience

We view this platform as more than a calculator — it’s part of a bigger vision for the High Plains. Every optimized acre planted means:

• More revenue per drop of water.
• Longer life for the Ogallala Aquifer.
• Stronger rural economies.

Our hope is that by equipping farmers with tools like this, we can help the High Plains adapt to the realities of water scarcity without sacrificing its agricultural heritage.