CSU-TAPS technology, data translation and effective science communications
Primary Topic:
Agriculture
Other Topics:
Natural Resources
Lead Mentor:
Amy Kremen
Associate Director, Irrigation Innovation Consortium
Internship Overview:
The intern will work with the CSU-TAPS (Testing Ag Performance Solutions, https://www.irrigationinnovation.org/csu-taps) program that is funded under CSU’s NRCS-funded “Climate Smart Advances in Ag Performance” Technical Agreement, and under a multi-year Water Plan Grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB).
CSU-TAPs was developed and launched in 2022, in collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), as an interactive, real-life, growing-season length farm management competition that helps producers, researchers, tech providers, and others identify how to boost agricultural profitability and increase input use efficiency. CSU-TAPS is hosted under a sophisticated irrigation system at ARDEC S, near Fort Collins.. The program gives producers and others a hands-on, no-risk, competitive means to use several kinds of water management technologies to support in-season decisions. Awards are given to competitors with the highest input use efficiency and the most profitable approach to managing irrigation, nitrogen, and crop marketing decisions throughout the competition. We are now finishing the data analysis for our first season, 2023, where we hosted 20 teams competing from 5 different NE Colorado counties and one from Nebraska. We expect a similar cadre of participants in the 2024 season.
CSU-TAPs was developed and launched in 2022, in collaboration with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), as an interactive, real-life, growing-season length farm management competition that helps producers, researchers, tech providers, and others identify how to boost agricultural profitability and increase input use efficiency. CSU-TAPS is hosted under a sophisticated irrigation system at ARDEC S, near Fort Collins.. The program gives producers and others a hands-on, no-risk, competitive means to use several kinds of water management technologies to support in-season decisions. Awards are given to competitors with the highest input use efficiency and the most profitable approach to managing irrigation, nitrogen, and crop marketing decisions throughout the competition. We are now finishing the data analysis for our first season, 2023, where we hosted 20 teams competing from 5 different NE Colorado counties and one from Nebraska. We expect a similar cadre of participants in the 2024 season.
Goals, Scope and Objectives:
Supported by CSU-TAPS/Irrigation Innovation Consortium team, this internship will aim to produce several pieces of writing to for general-audience/ag sector audiences that are the result of conversations and data exploration with technology providers, producers, and others. The goal of this internship is for these written pieces to collectively highlight the process of using of irrigation management decision support technologies and understanding trends and data generated by these technologies, as actual producers and others participate in the TAPS contest and use them to make irrigation and nitrogen decisions as part of the contest to see who can farm in the most input use efficient manner.
Scope: the intern will be connected to multiple tech industry partners providing direct sensing (plant and soil sensors) and remote sensing (drone and ground-based cameras) technologies to support the contest. Through weekly meetings with the CSU-TAPS/IIC team and side connections with TAPS participants and technology providers, The intern will be responsible for producing 4-6 pieces of writing (1500 words or less), intended to be shared with general/ag sector audiences mainly through the CSU-TAPS newsletter, throughout the summer, each one focused on a specific technology being used in the competition.
Scope: the intern will be connected to multiple tech industry partners providing direct sensing (plant and soil sensors) and remote sensing (drone and ground-based cameras) technologies to support the contest. Through weekly meetings with the CSU-TAPS/IIC team and side connections with TAPS participants and technology providers, The intern will be responsible for producing 4-6 pieces of writing (1500 words or less), intended to be shared with general/ag sector audiences mainly through the CSU-TAPS newsletter, throughout the summer, each one focused on a specific technology being used in the competition.
With which stakeholder group(s) will the intern work?
Producers, researchers, farm management staff. This program’s active community of practice also involves organizations like Northern Water and the Colorado Water Conservation Board, seed providers, and the Colorado Corn Promotion Council (a commodity group).
What student learning outcomes do you anticipate and what are the opportunities for professional development?
The student will learn about the technical challenges and opportunities associated with using, interpreting, and trusting technology data, including the process to make data tools like this more reliable and user-friendly. Our team is also working with technology provider Arable to support calibration and validation of their Mark3 devices that help assess plant vigor. This has ramifications for making Nitrogen decisions, which in turn is important for producers’ bottom lines (Nitrogen is expensive) and potential environmental outcomes for water quality and agricultural carbon emissions, depending on the timing and amount applied. The student will have an opportunity to learn from and with a wide range of people who are either supporting the development of or engaging with this kind of technology to learn how its adoption can support more efficient, productive, profitable agriculture with reduced environmental impacts.
