From a distance, Jon Altenhofen’s duties at hand — chipping away with a hoe at parched soil on an unseasonably warm day, taking over where his machinery left off to put the final details into his dirt before corn is planted and irrigating will be needed. The ground Altenhofen is working isn’t that of his own, but that of a research farm — located a few miles to the northeast of Greeley, where he and other researchers push crops to their limits, seeing just how little water on which the plants can survive and yet still produce quality yields.

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