Teaching Through TAPS, UNL’s Performance Competition
Dr. Daran Rudnick shows TAPS team members from the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources their plots during the 2019 Field Day. Participants are able to visit their plots at any time throughout the season, but also have access to numerous technologies to monitor their crops.
T
he University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s (UNL) Testing Ag Performance Solutions (TAPS) program is an alternative to traditional, classroom-based extension programs. It is based around a series of farm-management competitions in which teams get to make a number of management decisions on test plots and then see how they play out in yield, input-use efficiency, and profitability. Aside from the cash prizes they stand to win, participants are able to experiment with different management tactics in a low-risk environment, use new equipment, and test marketing strategies. In this interview, TAPS Program Manager Krystle Rhoades speaks with Irrigation Leader about the history and quick growth of the TAPS competition and its usefulness as a forum for experimentation and communication.
Krystle Rhoades: I grew up in Colorado and now live in North Platte, Nebraska. I have a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Wyoming. After working for a farm management company for almost 10 years, Chuck Burr contacted me about a position with TAPS. With the program growing exponentially, they
16 | IRRIGATION LEADER | June 2020
Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about TAPS. Krystle Rhoades: TAPS was created in 2017 by a team of researchers at UNL’s West Central Research, Extension, and Education Center as a sprinkler corn farm-management competition. They wanted a way to connect producers with the extension team and to give them a way to learn in a hands-on manner, outside of the classroom setting. There were 15 teams in the first year. In 2018, they added a sprinkler sorghum competition. The program has received great support from the Nebraska Corn Board, the Nebraska Grain Sorghum Board, and the U.S. Sorghum Checkoff, as well as many other industry companies and organizations. Last year, Eco-Drip of Hastings, Nebraska, contributed a subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) system, which allowed an SDI competition to be added last year. Among the three competitions last year, we had 50 teams with a total of around 150 participants. A team can be one producer or a group of people. The team that won the SDI competition last year included a couple of irrigationleadermagazine.com
PHOTOS COURTESY OF KRYSTLE RHOADES.
Irrigation Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.
were looking for somebody to help coordinate and manage everything from the competition events to the website to the promotion of the program.
