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 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.
Mark your calendars: our upcoming competition kick-off will be on March 28, 2025
Most teams are made up of producers, but others compete as well: commodity group representatives, seed dealers, state and federal agency staff, students, and more.
2023 and 2024 TAPS Reports: Click covers to read
2023 photos: Pre-season probe install (March 28), TAPS competition kickoff (April 6), corn planting (May 2), corn emergence (week of May 15), Corn at ~V6 stage (June 21), first FarmFlight drone flight (June 28), corn at V8 stage (July 11), CSU-TAPS July 21 field day. Credit: Tim Martin, Paramveer Singh, Paul Nielsen, Ashley Patterson, Amy Kremen, Jason Menon
CSU-TAPS Competition Updates
CSU-TAPS participants made their corn variety, seeding rate, and crop insurance selections in April and May, and chose a soil moisture probe. The 2024 TAPS field was planted in early May and harvested in November.
Irrigation season opened June 12, 2024. 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, which will be implemented side by side on 3 random plots at the Ag Research, Development and Education (ARDEC) South research farm, northeast of Fort Collins (see field layout, right). Team decisions for sidedress N were implemented the week of July 8.
Participants also made marketing decisions from April to November.
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.
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 skill
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 Univ. of Nebraska team supported by producers, water managers, and others. The first TAPS competition was held in 2017 in North Platte, NE.
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, 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.
