CSU-TAPS (Testing Ag Performance Solutions)
Advancing ag management skills and knowledge through competition!
CSU-TAPS is hosted at Colorado State University’s ARDEC-South research farm in Fort Collins, Colorado.
In TAPS, participants, competing as individuals or teams, make 6 management decisions throughout the growing season: selecting a corn hybrid, seeding rate, and crop insurance, irrigation and nitrogen amounts and timing, and marketing.
Each team’s decisions are implemented on randomized, replicated plots in the same field that is equipped with a variable rate irrigation system that delivers water and nitrogen as fertigation according to team decisions entered on online competition portal. Teams include producers, commodity group representatives, seed dealers, state and federal agency staff, students, and more.
Teams are provided live field data on crop, weather, and soil conditions. Their challenge? To test strategies and tools and demonstrate their skill at effective decision making for profitable and input-use efficient precision farm management.
Recruiting is complete for 2025!
Subscribe to the CSU-TAPS newsletter for updates.
2024 and 2023 TAPS Reports: Click covers to read.
2024 CSU TAPS Year in Review —Click on images for captions.
Photos by Omer Izrael, Amy Kremen, Christine Hamilton, and CSU Agricultural Water Quality Program (AWQP)
2025 CSU-TAPS Competition Updates
CSU-TAPS participants will make their corn variety, seeding rate, and crop insurance selections in April and May, and choose a soil moisture probe. Participants could begin making marketing decisions on March 28. Planting for the 2025 field is anticipated for early May.
Team costs and returns are included in a comprehensive farm budget, with values scaled to represent a crop grown on a 1,000-acre operation.
Teams are assigned three random plots on a field at the Ag Research, Development and Education (ARDEC) South research farm, northeast of Fort Collins (see field layout, right).
Irrigation season will open in June. Early on, teams could irrigate 1x/week, up to 1 inch, in increments of 0.05”. Teams will make Nitrogen (N) decisions through the summer. All decisions are implemented by CSU staff on their plots in the competition field.
We will host a Field Day in late July—watch for the date to be announced—at the ARDEC South CSU-TAPS field site.
Harvest day will be this fall, and crop marketing will end November 28. After harvest, the CSU-TAPS team will begin data analysis to determine winners.
The 2025 CSU-TAPS Banquet will be held January 10, 2026, where the winners will be announced.
CSU-TAPS Field Conditions
The weather station data to the right is located close to ARDEC S close to the TAPS field.
Click here for additional info from this station. Thanks to Eduardo Gutierrez-Rodriguez for providing access to this data.
Additional weather data:
Click here for CoAgMet weather station data based at ARDEC N, a few miles north of ARDEC S.
Click here for data from the “Fort Collins East” weather station managed by Northern Water located close to ARDEC S.
TAPS FAQ
Q: What is TAPS’s overall purpose?
To understand, value, and encourage advanced farm management skills
To gain knowledge needed to address critical water and ag sustainability challenges, in part through conducting cross-disciplinary, cutting-edge research
To support producers in testing and trusting a wide range of smart, conservation oriented ag management technologies and strategies
Q: What’s TAPS’s origin story? TAPS was developed by a phenomenal University of Nebraska team supported by producers, water managers, and others. The first TAPS competition was held in 2017 in North Platte, Nebraska.
Q: Are there other TAPS programs? Yes! CSU-TAPS is the newest installment of a growing network of active TAPS programs involving different crops (corn, sorghum, cotton, dryland wheat) in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama, and Maryland.
Q: Why doesn’t TAPS take place on my farm? TAPS levels the playing field with competitors’ decisions applied to multiple, randomized plots within the same field. These plots are managed by university staff, who gather and share field data with all competing teams (soil nutrient status, weather, remote and direct sensing of soil moisture and crop vigor, plot photos, etc.).
This format facilitates comparison of and investigation into which team’s sets of decisions turn out to be more productive, profitable, and/or input-use efficient, comparison that isn’t possible with on-farm programs and competition, given the variation in soils, weather and other factors from farm to farm.
Thanks to participants, partners & sponsors!
Many kinds of partner contributions make CSU-TAPS possible.
The Colorado Water Conservation Board and NRCS provide major support.
