Notes

Dr. Matt Yost is an associate professor, associate department head, and agroclimate extension specialist at Utah State University. He obtained his PhD in applied Plant Science at the University of Minnesota, after which he spent several years doing post-doctoral research in Minnesota and Missouri. His research and extension efforts focus on water optimization in agriculture, soil health, precision agriculture, and adaptive nutrient management. Matt is also currently serving as director of USU crops and presiding Chair of the agronomic production systems section of the American Society of Agronomy.

Links to learn more about Dr. Matt Yost

• Dr. Matt Yost on Google Scholar
• Dr. Matt Yost on ResearchGate
• Dr. Matt Yost at Utah State University
• Dr. Matt Yost on LinkedIn

Subscribe

• https://metergroup.com/en/podcast

Follow us

• • https://twitter.com/meter_env
  • https://www.linkedin.com/company/meter-group

Questions?

Our scientists have decades of experience helping researchers and growers measure the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum.

• Talk to an expert
• Request a quote

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in the podcast and on this posting are those of the individual speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions held by METER.

Transcript:

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:00
Hello everybody, and welcome to We Measure The World, a podcast produced by scientists, for scientists…

MATT YOST 0:07
I think we learned a lot. I think it showed that there is value in using soil moisture sensors and weather stations for guiding irrigation management, and that there’s savings to be had that not every year, especially in in dry years, but in wet years and and maybe average years, there’s opportunity to use 10 to 15% less water using some of these sensors to guide irrigation.

BRAD NEWBOLD 0:32
That’s just a small taste of what we have in store for you today. We Measure The World explores interesting environmental research trends, how scientists are solving research issues and what tools are helping them better understand measurements across the entire soil, plant, atmosphere, continuum. Today’s guest is Dr. Matt Yost. Matt is an associate professor, associate department head, and agro-climate extension specialist at Utah State University. He obtained his PhD in applied Plant Science at the University of Minnesota, after which he spent several years doing post doctoral research in Minnesota and Missouri. His research and extension efforts focus on water optimization in agriculture, soil health, precision agriculture and adaptive nutrient management. Matt is also currently serving as director of USU crops and presiding chair of the agronomic production systems section of the American Society of Agronomy, and today, he’s here to talk about leveraging soil moisture and weather data for precision agriculture, and how accurate data can improve farming efficiency and yields, especially in the face of changing climates. So Matt, thanks so much for being here.

MATT YOST 1:36
Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

BRAD NEWBOLD 1:39
All right, so first, we’d like to start off just with a little bit of introduction to your background. How is it that you came into the, I guess, the sciences in general, and how you found your way into agronomy?

MATT YOST 1:51
Great. So I was raised on a dairy farm in southern Idaho, near the town of Burleigh. If anyone knows where that is surprising number of people know where that is. I was raised on a dairy farm, and so from a young age, just was involved in agriculture in different ways. And to be honest with you, I did not always love it when I was young. I sometimes loathed waking up really early in the morning to to milk cows. It was not my favorite thing to do at times. But as I as I got older, went off to college. I kind of wanted to get away from the farm a little bit, and started to study electronics and engineering, and then, I don’t know, things changed. After spending a little bit of time away from the farm, I realized how much I I enjoyed it, and decided that I wanted to work in the field of agriculture. Initially, I wanted to go back and farm, run my dad’s operation and and take over the dairy farm. And so that was the initial initial plan. But as I got close to the end of my my bachelor’s degree, I had the opportunity to participate in research, and the opportunity to participate in the the tri-society meetings, the crop, soil, and agronomy society annual meetings, and just opened, opened my eyes to to the possibilities of agriculture science, and I fell in love. I realized that I really, really enjoyed research. I loved asking questions, digging deep, trying to understand how things work. I was also very interested in helping to educate other students and farmers, and so I started looking at graduate schools, and had the opportunity to go to the University of Minnesota, where I spent about five plus years doing a master’s and a PhD there, and one of my advisors worked in extension. And so I had lots of opportunities to to work hand in hand with with farmers, in on farm trials, very applied research, to help with field days and workshops and other events through extension. And it was a perfect fit for me. Just really passionate about helping, helping farmers and and conducting applied research. Then I left Minnesota. I went to Missouri for a few years, working again as a postdoc there, where I had lots of opportunities to work in different systems and on different topics, and it was very educational. And then about seven years ago, had the opportunity to come to Utah as a an agro climate extension specialist, and so that’s, that’s where I’ve served the last the last seven years, and it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun. It’s been fun to be close to home and and to get to know that agriculture in the West, and again, just work side by side with farmers to help them improve their operations.

BRAD NEWBOLD 4:59
Awesome. Yeah, and I definitely we will be getting into the details of your agro climate research. I mean, you’re working within a particular region here in the arid, semi arid Western US. What are some of the issues and concerns, the primary ones that farmers are facing in your neck of the woods?

MATT YOST 5:17
First, I’ll just say that that, to be honest, when I saw my position advertised, I wasn’t sure what it meant. There are very few extension faculty that work in the area of agro climate. So it’s unique position, and the way it was written and defined was to try to help the agriculture industry deal with impacts of climate, and so I’ve kind of had to learn and form my program and role to understand what that means. It maybe took a day or two in Utah to realize that the biggest climate issue was drought and water scarcity, that the topic of water is at the forefront of most most concerns, most issues, most conversations about challenges for agriculture in in this region. So I like to think and argue sometimes that it is likely our top issue, and will be for for a long time. And Utah is not alone. So I work in Utah, but I think much of the western United States and many other parts of the country and and world are experiencing the same issues, the same challenges we have. Water scarcity in this region. There’s generally not enough for agriculture and for other uses, cities are growing very fast, and so the urban water need is increasing, and most projections indicate that we’ll have less water in the future coming from a combination of rising temperatures, which would Increase evapotranspiration, or water consumption by plants and crops, and this shift, this shift from less less snow pack to more rain. And both of those are big, are big deals for us in Utah and and many other areas. Snow is, is what we depend on for our water supply. We we capture the the snow melt and reservoirs all throughout Utah and throughout the west and so, so snow pack is really important. That’s not the only climate issue that affects farmers. There’s definitely extreme events and other shifts and weather patterns that cause a lot of issues that affect crop production, that affect diseases and pests and all kinds of things, but that’s one that I work with a lot, is water scarcity and drought, and how to help farmers, how to help them deal with that and prepare for it and be resilient, or at least more resilient, to to a shrinking water supply

BRAD NEWBOLD 7:57
in the face of that. I guess what is, I don’t want to say, A Day in the Life, but I guess a year in the life of what you do, you know, for dealing with with the end result, hopefully being able to help farmers to better manage their irrigation, optimize water use, all those kinds of things. How do you go from from beginning of an idea, you know, ideation, through that research, and then on to presenting that or hopefully sharing that to farmers and growers to help support best practices?

MATT YOST 8:23
Great question. So a day in the life, or day in the year of of my position is probably quite similar to many other people that are in in this position, or position like mine, as a scientist or a faculty at a university, I work in extension, and so much of what I do is is applied research. So it usually starts by talking with farmers or other other stakeholders. We work a lot with state agencies and people in the agriculture industry and farm organizations, and so we’re we’re constantly interacting with them and learning what the needs are, what kind of research will help them the most, constantly trying to gather those needs and those ideas, what, what people, what farmers and others really need to to improve their management as we’re doing that, then we we try to work with them to develop research projects And that that happens in a variety of ways. Sometimes we we see a grant opportunity, and we reach out to them and say, hey, what do you think about this? Would you like to collaborate and host a trial on your farm? Sometimes it’s a farmer coming to us and saying, Hey, this, this is a big issue. Can you help us? And then we go out and we start searching for opportunities to find grant funding to support that work. And so it happens in a variety of ways, but that’s the general approach. We’re really trying to understand what farmers need, and then meet meet those needs. So each year, I probably set up 30, sometimes up to 50, different sites, on farm trials across the state of Utah, sometimes a little bit into neighboring states. So we set up these trials, and we conduct experiments on these farms and collect their routine soil crop data and information, and then spend a lot of time trying to get that information into the hands of the farmers and the agriculture industry at large in our state and in the region, and so I usually the spring and the fall are all about just trying to get the work established, get things harvested. In the summer, we do a lot of field days. We take people out to the research plots, let them see the work in action. And then the winter is kind of the prime time for summarizing the data, finishing the analyzes, and then presenting that work in schools, workshops, meetings that happen over the winter, and then, I would say, kind of sprinkled throughout the whole year, we were trying to publish the information that we collect so as regular research articles, but also through a lot of other channels, extension channels. So we publish fact sheets, guides, simple, simple documents that farmers can understand and use. Do a lot with social media, trying to get the word out about what we’re finding in our research, and then a variety of other other outlets. So that’s that’s a day in the the light or a year in the life of what we do, a lot of research trials, a lot of education events and and publications.

BRAD NEWBOLD 11:31
You listed off a whole, a whole slew of ways that you communicate with local farmers and other stakeholders. Have you found any best practices or anything that has worked well for you, and being able to communicate with them, to build relationships, to then help them to maybe adopt new practices? I mean, there’s there’s the stereotype that you know, that farmers are slow to adopt new technology or new practices, or because their livelihoods are dependent upon, upon what they do, any any insights that you might be able to give others in your field?

MATT YOST 12:03
That’s a constant thing that’s on our minds, and I’m sure it’s on the minds of many others that work with farmers, is how how to help them use and apply and adopt the information that we’re generating. I can’t say I’ve solved that. It is a struggle. I think it’s a struggle for most a few of the things that that I’ve tried to do that I think are effective and beneficial, is involving farmers in the research as much as I can. We at Utah State University, we don’t have a lot of large research farms. We do have some, and we definitely do research there. But due to that, and the fact that that I just really enjoy working with farmers, and I think it’s, it’s an effective way of of helping them use the research that we do results in us as conducting a lot of on farm trials. To me, I think it’s, it’s just a really effective way to help farmers see the work firsthand. So generally, we’ll try, we’ll try to work with farmers who are great at farming, and a lot of them really are influential. They work with a lot of other farmers in their communities, in their areas, and so people know them and watch what they do, and might use what, what they do. So that’s, that’s one way. And we, we conduct the research with the farmers. Have them involved. They see it firsthand. If, if they see that something works, a lot of them will, will use and apply the research. When they use it. Others see that, they tell others about it, and it, it starts to kind of spread and and others in the area might, might start using or adopting the research. I would say the other benefit of doing that is that it, it gives you local information, right? So I spend a lot of time traveling to different parts of Utah and talking about our research. And when I show up to some, you know, southeast Utah, which is a very different environment, different soils, different climate and and if I can talk about work that’s happened in their their backyard, you know, it means a lot to them, and I think they’re a lot more willing to use and accept that Research then if, if the majority of it happened here in the northern part of the state, where I’m, where I’m located on campus, and I think that that’s really helped improve acceptance use of our our research is having farmers involved and having it just widespread different parts of the state. I realized that it’s, it’s a challenge, right? It’s if anyone has ever conducted research on a commercial farm, you you know that it’s difficult. You know that issues arise. You know that sometimes mistakes are made and people destroy. You know may destroy plots or harvest without telling you, or all kinds of issues can arise. And so it’s, it’s definitely challenging, but for me, I think it’s been, it’s been worth the challenge to conduct research on these, these commercial farms, and I think it’s really helped improve use and acceptance of the of the research. Maybe a couple other things that I think have helped is we try to get the information out to farmers in a variety of ways, and sometimes it’s tempting to just use the traditional channels right to just publish a fact sheet through the extension service, and hope that farmers just learn about it and find it use that information. So when I came to Utah and I wrote my first couple fact sheets, I kind of watched them, and I I saw how many people were, were downloading and viewing them, and it was not very many, right? It was, it was maybe a few dozen, and it grows over time, right? I have now I watch some of them, and maybe a couple 100 people have found those and downloaded them, so they’ve at least looked at them and read them. I don’t know about you, but that’s not very many to me, and I was a little disheartened when I saw that. I thought, wow, like, this is great information isn’t like everyone wanting to see this and use it? And so we started to think about different ways to get that information out and let people know about it. And so one thing that we did is I worked with the county extension faculty. We tried to build a listserv of all of the farmers that we could around the state. So we put this email list serve together, and then we started sending out just really short emails about once a month. And in that email, it’s a one pager and it’s short, it’s like a couple small paragraphs in that email that just introduces a fact sheet or some research topic that we’ve done, and then there’s a link there, generally for them to learn more, right? Go to the full fact sheet. And we started sending those out, and notice that sometimes we get four or 500 people that would view that email and then start finding their way back to the fact sheet for the full information. We also take those and post on social media just a few small snippets, generally once or twice a week, just to try to get the information out. So currently, I do it twice a week. I have a tip Tuesday and a from the field Friday, where there’s just just a little image and a short description of some aspect of the research that we do, and then, usually with links to more more information. I will tell you, I’m not overly excited about social media sometimes, but it has been, I think, an effective way to reach farmers, to reach some of their kids, to reach some of the spouses, and to really help, help get the information out there. So that’s another couple other things that we’ve done is just these monthly electronic, short articles and weekly social media posts, just to try to keep people up to date on what’s what’s happening. We still do the regular extension publications and fact sheets guides, but I’ve just tried to get them out there more and share them in different outlets, different ways.

BRAD NEWBOLD 18:14
Well, I think we could do a whole episode just talking about communication, with communicating findings and research and all of that. So let’s jump down. Let’s get into the nitty gritty and talk about some of your more recent research projects. I know that you’re doing a lot with, like you mentioned, with agro climate research and dealing with weather data and incorporating that into farming practices, soil moisture, incorporating the weather and the soil moisture. What are some of those, those recent, interesting research projects that that you’ve got going on right now to better help farmers manage their irrigation practices?

MATT YOST 18:51
Let’s maybe start with a little background so you can understand the issues that we’re facing and some of the larger approaches to addressing those issues. So I mentioned that water was an issue, and it is in a large way. In Utah, we have at least two large concerns, and there’s there’s more, but we have the Great Salt Lake in Utah, I think most people saw the Great Salt Lake in the news about two, three years ago, it received a lot of attention that Great Salt Lake was lower than it had ever been on record in 2022, and it was causing a lot of concern and a lot of issue. And there’s, we could have a whole, whole conversation on that. But in short, the low lake levels was causing environmental concerns, human health concerns. There, there was soil on the banks of the lake that had never been exposed, and so it was kicking up and a toxic dust that would that would blow into Salt Lake City and and surrounding areas, and causing a lot of of human health concerns, and all of the ecosystems that are supported by that lake. And so, so that that’s been one big challenge is how, how do we sustain that lake? How do we ideally increase water flow to that lake over the next many, many years to sustain it, and at the same time, how do we sustain agriculture so that it still still thrives in the basin that supports that lake. So that’s one of our large challenges. The other is the Colorado River, which not only affects Utah, but affects many other states in the Western US. That river is the water supply for about 40 million people in the Western US. And it also supports millions of acres of of agriculture, of food production. Again, in 2022 the Colorado River was lower than than it had ever been on record. So we had the worst, the worst drought that we’ve that we’ve ever seen. And so the just two, two examples of water issues we have many others. Every state, I think, in the western US has probably similar issues. There’s some inland lakes, there’s some rivers, there’s other just water shortages. And so our state and others have been trying to figure out, how do we quantify water use in agriculture, how to ideally, how do we reduce it in a way that causes the least impact on food production? And a big part of that discussion has been the quantification right? It, it’s difficult to to measure water consumption by by crops. And it’s it’s complicated for for many reasons, right? So if we’re going to estimate how much water a crop consumes, we have to track where all of the water goes, right? And there’s lots of places it can go. So let’s just talk about that just for a second. So you know a farmer takes water out of a source, right? A surface body it could be a canal, a ditch, a reservoir, river, etc. So they can take it out of that, or they can get it out of the ground, right, just pumping it out of, out of the aquifer as groundwater. So the farmer takes, takes the water out of the source we, we would generally call that diversion, right? How much water is diverted from the source? And then this is where it gets complicated. It’s trying to figure out how that water is consumed. So some water goes through the plant, right? The crop takes up water, produces biomass, grain, whatever crop you have, some of the water is transpired through the crop leaves as it grows, and there’s some evaporation, right? So what the crop uses, we generally call evapotranspiration, and we’re trying to maximize that right? We’re trying to let the crop get all the water it needs and produce the optimal amount, or the maximum amount. Ideally, in that process, there’s a lot of other loss, right? Water can be lost below the root zone. Call that deep percolation, right? It just gets too deep in the soil the roots can’t access it, we call that deep percolation. Some of the water runs off the field, off the surface of the soil, before it can be consumed by the crop. Some of that water may end up back in a water body. Some may, may not. Some may be evaporated or or you consume somewhere else before it reaches the back to the source. There’s also some evaporation off of the surface of the soil and off the surface of the leaves of the plant. And so there’s, there’s these different pathways, and so all of those combined are used to do a water balance and to estimate the consumption of water. Generally, what we say is, is consumption is what the crop uses, and then other water that we can’t get back right, that leaves the system, anything that stays in the system. So if water runs off, or if water deep percolates, then we wouldn’t consider that consumed water, because it’s there stays in the system.

MATT YOST 24:22
Long description, I apologize, but, but really, really important, because everyone is trying to figure out, how do we best estimate this consumption? Because we need to reduce it. We need water for cities. We need water for water bodies like the lake. So there’s lots of efforts in Utah and many other states to try to do that. In Utah, we call a lot of our efforts water optimization. We used to call it conservation, but now people have said we can’t really conserve water. It’s more about. Optimizing it, right? Let’s optimize where it goes and what benefit we get from that water. And so we’re trying to help the state farmers to estimate water consumption and then to learn how it changes with different management, right? So if we change the irrigation system, if we change the crop, if we change how they irrigate, if we change the crop management, how do all these things affect the consumption of water? And I’ll, I’ll tell you that it’s not always in intuitive, right, it’s, it’s really interesting. So just one quick example to give you something to think about. So so a lot of people, when they think about irrigation systems, that’s one, that’s one of the main options for trying to optimize water, at least in Utah and a lot of other places. So if you look at irrigation systems, right, if I were to ask you, what’s the least efficient irrigation system, I think most people would say, flood a surface irrigation, right? It’s a very old system we’ve used for a long time, and it’s got to be the least efficient, because you’re just dumping a large amount of water across, across the field, right, and if I were to ask, what’s, what’s the most efficient? I think most would say, yeah, it’s, it’s drip irrigation, especially subsurface. If you can bury the drip lines below the surface, you can get the highest efficiency. And when you look at consumption of water, it gets complicated, right? So in a surface system, there’s a lot of water that’s that’s applied the field, but a lot of it stays in the system, right? So there’s a lot of runoff, there’s a lot of deep percolation, but much of that water stays in the system. So if you look at the consumption of a flood irrigation system compared to a sprinkler or a drip irrigation, sometimes the consumption is is about the same, or even less than what you would see with the with the sprinkler. And so that just just a quick example. That’s where it gets it gets complicated. And it’s really all about how much water is consumed, how much goes through the crop, how much is lost, how much of that loss can be recovered. So I’m gonna bring this back to to your question. I’m getting there. So we, one thing that we’ve spent a lot of time doing is trying to estimate the water balance right, how much water is consumed with lots of different scenarios. So to do that, there’s a variety of things, methods or ways you can, you can get to that. So I would, I would say, probably the gold standard is using an Eddy Covariance or flux tower to estimate evapotranspiration, right? Evapotranspiration is the big one it’s, it’s where a lot of the water is being consumed, it’s the biggest part of consumption. You know, we spend a lot of time trying to measure it. Eddy Covariance Towers are expensive, generally, 60-$70,000 to set up a station. They have a small footprint, and they take a lot of labor to collect and get good data from. And so we’re, there’s definitely a lot of those going in as kind of a check and standard. But there’s, there’s other ways to get at evapotranspiration and to kind of estimate this, this water balance. So weather stations, like product that METER has that we use a lot of, and there’s others can often estimate, estimate evapotranspiration. And so that’s that’s one thing that we’ve been working on is using an ATMOS 41 an all in one weather station, to estimate evapotranspiration, and then compare that to other methods, like an Eddy Covariance flux tower. We’re also using soil moisture sensors a lot of the TEROS 10 or 11 or 12 to do a soil water balance. So there’s methods for just tracking how soil moisture changes each day, how much is being used by the crop, how much is still there. And you can do that over the length of the season to estimate a water balance and to get back to kind of an estimate of evapotranspiration. So that’s one just one of our projects is trying to provide some information for how, how these different methods compare, using soil moisture sensors, using weather stations, using a flux tower, also doing a lot of comparisons of those to open ET to see if there are ways to validate it and use that to help estimate consumption. And there, again, the reason that’s really important is is because a lot of a lot of the changes in agriculture can and should be based on that consumption, right? If we’re going to make changes, ideally, we would be reducing consumption with minimizing kind of the impact it has on on the crop. So that’s that’s one example, I’ve got a couple others I can tell you about, but maybe you’d like to stop there real quick or or have additional questions on that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 30:19
We can jump into what are you seeing with this, this first project, this method comparison project, yeah what are some of the results that you’re seeing? Anything that sticks out, any any surprises, anything along those lines?

MATT YOST 30:31
Sure, yeah, just mention quickly. So we did, we did see that that the soil moisture sensors were tracking quite well with other methods and the weather stations. So definitely needs more validation. But there was a few sites where these methods were compared to an Eddy Covariance tower, and the estimates of evapotranspiration were were in the ballpark. They were, they were similar to what we we saw with the gold standard, the Eddy Covariance tower. And so that was, in my mind, really important, because it’s just difficult to get all of these flux towers out due to cost and skilled labor to do that. And so if there’s other means of getting at that, it’s a great way to collect and estimate that information. There’s also a lot of value in using that to try to validate open ET. I think open ET is becoming a standard for a lot of people as they try to estimate consumption. It’s more accurate in some places than others, and so I think this is where sensors that are in the field or at the edge of the field, can help validate some of those, those other tools that that will be used for consumption. And maybe this would lead into the other, other project a little bit but the other, there’s kind of a dual advantage, at least a dual advantage of of having a weather station or soil moisture sensors in a field, not just for quantifying water consumption, right? They they’re also really handy tools for scheduling irrigation. We’re evaluating this at a lot of a lot of farms in Utah, and helping farmers see the benefits of using a soil moisture sensor or a weather station to guide their irrigation, and it can happen in a variety of ways. I’ll just tell you quickly what what we’re doing. So at Washington State University, Troy Peters and some others developed a program, it’s called irrigation scheduler, and kind of a daily checkbook type program where they just track daily evapotranspiration, soil type and some other factors to estimate the water need each day. And so you can use this tool, it’s free, we’ve evaluated it in research studies, we’ve helped farmers use it. Using these weather stations, and we’ve we’ve been able to plug them into their their calculator so that farmers in Utah can take existing weather stations or a new ATMOS 41 or other similar sensor that they might put on their farm, they can use that to help schedule their irrigation. They can track kind of daily ET and then see how much irrigation they might need to apply at any point in the season. We’ve also used the soil moisture sensors to develop the same type of approach where we track kind of daily soil water balance. We use water content to estimate fill capacity. We see how far they are from fill capacity. Often, we also look at water potential to help adjust the timing of that irrigation, and then help farmers use that as a tool to decide when and how much to irrigate. So that’s at least the dual benefit of having soil moisture sensors, weather stations. They can be used to guide irrigation management. They can also be used to to to evaluate water use, water consumption over a season. And one last thing I’ll mention there, so we, we did really interesting study where we had 16 farms in Utah over about a three year period. This was just a couple years ago, and we tested different approaches to scheduling irrigation, we used a TEROS 10, a suite of TEROS 10 soil moisture sensors in one of the treatments, we used weather data to guide irrigation with the irrigation scheduler program I told you about from Washington. We also evaluated a commercial product that one of the pivot manufacturers has developed uses satellite data. And then we compared that to the farmers approach, right, how they irrigate. And this was all alfalfa fields, and it was really, really interesting. We saw that in a lot of cases is we could reduce water use by about 10 to 15% using those three approaches compared to what the farmers were doing without impacting the yield of the crop. Now it didn’t happen in every field and every year, and there was some variation. One thing that I thought was interesting and makes sense is that the soil moisture sensor was the approach that most frequently reduced water use by the most. And it to me, it makes sense because it’s, it’s in the field, right? It’s a it’s the most direct measurement of water use by the crop, compared to a weather station at the edge of the field, or satellite data. So that was interesting. So I when I talk with farmers about the results of that study, I say, if you’re really trying to refine your irrigation management, really trying to stretch your water, having a soil moisture sensor in the field, getting those you know as direct of a measurement as you can is likely going to help you refine irrigation the most. I don’t know just another interesting study, another way that we’ve kind of looked at the dual use of weather sensors and soil moisture sensors.

BRAD NEWBOLD 36:15
Interesting. Just some quick thoughts as you’re talking about that my mind goes to, to that idea, or what you were talking about with the variability of the different fields. Do you have any idea what, what might have been the primary drivers of that variability? Is it, you know, is it soil type? Is it kind of, you know, the lay of the land? Is, you know, other other things like that, various other characteristics of of those fields?

MATT YOST 36:35
A lot, lots of things likely influenced, influence that we did one challenge in our study was it started in 2019 which was a wet for us, was a wet year. We had a wet spring, lots of rain, abnormal it’s usually dry, and then 2020, and 2021, or the latter two years of the study, and that’s when our drought started. So in 2020 it was dry, and then in 2021 even drier. 2022 was the worst of our drought. Some of that variation came from just the weather pattern. So we noticed in 19 that there’s a lot more savings to be had. The sensors, the other tools, were saying, Hey, you can back off quite a bit, because there’s moisture there. The next two years, it was not the case. Most farmers were putting on as much water as they could. Some of them were running out of water partway through the season, and so the sensors were saying, hey, like, put more water on, put more water on, and in a lot of cases, they just couldn’t because they didn’t have it. So that’s another takeaway that we’ve kind of said is, hey, in dry years, you may not see as much advantage because you can’t, you can’t get enough water on the crop sometimes. But in wetter years, the soil sensors, weather stations, might be great ways to learn where and how you can cut back. I think some of our other farmers also learned that, you know, early in the season when the soil moisture sensors were saying, hey, you need more water. Soil dry, some of them thought, I, you know, water is uncertain, I want to try to stretch the water so I’m going to put on less than what the sensors say now and then try to, you know, try to put some more later. And when they did that, in a lot of cases, it they got less production than where we had the sensors. And if they would put more water on early in the season, then they were better off, in a lot of cases, than trying to trying to stretch that water out. So the sensors, I think, were really helpful for guiding that that irrigation and the timing of that irrigation as well. The the other factor that influenced some of that variability that you asked about is it’s just how the farmers were irrigating, right? So this was just an assessment of their current practices compared to other approaches, right? If they used a sensor or or a weather station. And so the farmers management obviously varied. You know, some of them irrigated based on a schedule. Some irrigated how they’ve always irrigated. We tried not to influence how they irrigated, right? And and it was fun. It was fun, like they hopefully they would say, it’s fun. We’d put the we’d put the sensors out there in the field and we had lots of them start asking us about the data. Hey, can I see the Can I see the soil moisture data? What’s it saying? Should I put on water? How much should I put on? And so we had to kind of hold them at bay for a few years, we just said sorry, like we, we don’t want you to change your practices. Just, you know, try to do what you’re normally doing you normally would do. And then in that spot where the soil moisture sensor is, you know, we’re just going to let it tell us what to put on, and we’ll, we’ll put that on. Kind of fun, interaction with the farmers, but, but really important, right, I think this, to my knowledge, one of the, one of the first studies that really has tried to to test how these approaches to irrigation scheduling are, how they impact the crop, when you when you actually put them into practice. You know, there’s a lot of, a lot of studies on irrigation scheduling, where, you know, you just, you kind of evaluate what impact it would have in a theoretical way. But we tried to take the next step to say, Okay, if we, we actually do it right. We take a section of a pivot on a commercial farm, and we, we apply irrigation based on a soil moisture sensor. We apply it based on a weather station: How does it do? How does it perform? And I will tell you it was probably, it’s probably the hardest study I’ve ever, ever done, because we had to manage the irrigation on on these pivots. So every time a farmer went to irrigate, they’d call us and say, hey, I want to put two inches on this, this alfalfa. And so we’d have to go in and figure out, okay, how much the soil moisture sensor say we need, how much does the weather sensor say we need? And then we would go and put that into the farmers program and then implement it, right? So doing that for maybe up to 20 irrigations on 12 to 16 Fields was, was a challenge. But really, I think we learned a lot. I think it showed that there is value in using soil moisture sensors and weather stations for guiding irrigation management, and that there’s savings to be had that not every year, especially in in dry years, but in wet years and and maybe average years, I think there’s, there’s opportunity to use 10 to 15% less water, using some of these sensors to guide irrigation.

BRAD NEWBOLD 41:49
Any possibilities are of maybe incorporating also, you know, soil water potential sensors, along with those soil moisture water content sensors, just to be able to get at, you know, plant available water and and other things like that in these studies?

MATT YOST 42:03
Yes, yeah, so we’ve, we’ve done a variety of studies, and more and more, we’re combining the two, the soil moisture and and the water potential. Soil moisture is water content, really great at estimating the need of water, but not as great at estimating the timing, right? And that’s where water potential really shines, is estimating when, when there’s stress and when you need to get get irrigation on. And so variety of studies we partnered with BYU for a number of years, four or five years, working on on a potato wheat farm in southern Idaho, looking at at the combination of those, actually all three, water potential, water content, and weather station to try to guide irrigation there. We’re also doing, just started a program last year in the Colorado River Basin. We’re working with right now about 50 farmers where we’ve put water content and water potential sensors in in one of their fields, and we’re helping them learn how to use those to guide their irrigation and finding that that there’s a lot of value in in having both the water potential and the water content.

BRAD NEWBOLD 43:19
You, you’d mentioned about the irrigation scheduling and the program that that’s been developed, and I’m sure there’s plenty others out there as well, about calculating daily et and then being able to incorporate that into irrigation practices. Is there, and maybe this is kind of a future, a future state or whatever but, is there any need, or necessity, to have any kind of calculations and change of practices on a time scale that’s, that’s shorter than a day? Or is it, is it crop dependent? I guess, is one of my questions. Is it something where, where you can get into the, you know, the really detailed irrigation scheduling, where you could have, you know, say, every twelve hours, or every six hours, or something along those lines? Or is that time frame a bit, a bit too small for for the the crops that you’re looking at?

MATT YOST 44:08
Yeah, just depends a lot, I guess, on on the scale and what crop you’re working with. For us, a lot of times we’re just looking at daily ET because our irrigation intervals might be 7, 10, 14 days apart. And once you turn on an irrigation system, you know they’re generally going to try to irrigate the whole field. But there are applications I think, I think there’s certain crops, or if you have certain irrigation systems that are set up to adjust and run for certain amount of hours or shift between different parts of a block, then I think there’s some application, and there’s other other methods. Right? The precision irrigation when we look at precision irrigation there’s generally two approaches. Right? You can have a static prescription or a dynamic prescription. A static would be okay maybe before the season starts, we kind of learn. We take data and we we map out what the irrigation might look like for that season, and that prescription stays the same. A dynamic one would be one that that’s changing, right? You’re changing the irrigation prescriptions zones where you might put different irrigation on constantly. We’ve done a little bit of work on that many other research groups that are that are exploring that, I think in a lot of cases, when they, when they do that, the dynamic approach to percentage integration, it, it’s usually combining lots of different data sources, right? You have to have nearly real, real time information to to change those, those prescriptions. So a lot of that is, is imagery, you know, aerial imagery, drone imagery, satellite imagery. It’s sensors, thermal sensors, visual sensors that are in the field trying to just assess the condition of the crop constantly so that those, those can be adapted and changed. So, yeah, I think there’s, there’s definitely applications. It’s going to be, you know, high value crops are going to be the first place that we get that refined in our irrigation. The forage crops are probably going to be last. The fruits vegetables is probably where we would we would see a lot of that that happened first.

BRAD NEWBOLD 44:12
Talking about, you know, satellite imagery, drones, other things like that. One of the fun questions I like to ask here and there is, if you had a blank check for your research, pet research projects, or, let’s say, you know, you get a multi million dollar grant from the USDA, or something along those lines, what what would be a an ideal research project? What would that setup look like for you? What would you want to really, really be able to get in and look at if money wasn’t an issue?

MATT YOST 46:46
Let’s see. What would I I always have a long list of things that you know you you’d like or need, maybe picking what would be at the top of that, it’s hard. I’ll just mention one thing, I guess we in Utah, many other places in the West, trying to figure out how I mentioned this earlier, how to use less water on the farm, and then maybe how to to transfer water on and off the farm. So we have a large water need. Agriculture uses a lot of the water, and so we’re really we and many others are trying to figure out, okay, how do we measure water use on the farm quickly, inexpensively, accurately, and then, if the farm is using less, and, say, wants to lease that water, sell some of that water to someone else, right to a lake, to a city, to a river. How do we make those transactions? How do we measure reduced water use and make sure that it’s accurate? So one, one thing that we’re working on, and we’d love to do, is just to have a farm at a farm scale, or at a couple fields, and the corresponding irrigation system is just to track water consumption, right? So if we had all the latest and greatest arrays of sensors and technology to just really track, okay, in this field, we’ve consumed this much water, and now we’ve made a change, right? The farmer has done this or this or this, to to use less water, and track how much less water was used, and then track, okay, when that water left the farm. Did it, did it get back into the system? Did it make it to the place it was supposed to make it where that water was purchased? And, and then taking that kind of system and making that data available right real time, freely available, so that we could have kind of this, I think there’s a program out there called farm of the future that’s kind of what we what we’re along those lines, but kind of a field, or a farm where it’s just, we can look at the water use. We can see it in real time. We can see what happens when changes are made, and how that affects water use. And the reason that would be near the top of my list is because I think it’s just so it’s so important. We have to learn how to use less water. We have to learn how to transfer water at times. Otherwise, I think where we’re headed is just getting rid of some agriculture and using that water other places, right? Sacrificing our our food security for for water needs. So I’m, I’m just, I don’t know, passionate about trying to preserve agriculture, preserve food production, and do it in the most water efficient way that we can, so that farms thrive, cities thrive, water bodies thrive. That’s one thing I think I’d do.

BRAD NEWBOLD 47:12
Are there any, I guess, new technologies or other things you’d like to see that you’d like to incorporate into into future research projects?

MATT YOST 49:53
We’re always kind of looking at new products that come onto the market and. Evaluating how they work and and what value they provide. One technology might be just, just a fast way, and there’s some tools out there, but coming up with a fast, inexpensive way to estimate soil moisture across, across the crop field. Soil moisture sensors are excellent, but they’re only one spot in a field, and they’re expensive, right? So to really capture what soil moisture looks like across the field, so that you could vary irrigation, you could estimate water use across the field. So you know, either an inexpensive, accurate soil moisture sensor that you could just put everywhere are in lots of places, in a field, or better imagery, remote imagery, that could estimate soil moisture on a crop field, I think would be a great thing. I would also I’ve installed hundreds of soil moisture sensors, and I’ve also repaired hundreds of wires on soil moisture sensors. And so one technology I’d love to see is, is a good wireless soil moisture sensor. And I know there’s some out there. I know there’s been lots of challenges with wireless ones, but wires give us a lot of a lot of headache. So if we could get away from wires, I I would love that.

BRAD NEWBOLD 51:20
Now we always get yeah, fun stories of this or that happening to somebody’s sensor or data logger or other things like that, yeah. I guess, along those lines, where do you see, and this might be my, my last question of of the time here, where do you see your research going here, in the next, you know 5-10 plus years? I mean, if you could put put on that hat to see into the future, what are you hoping to to move towards within your research? Or is there anything that you foresee coming along in the next 5-10, years that that you’d like to be involved in?

MATT YOST 51:55
It’s hard to predict the future. But one thing I’m really excited about is we, one of the other projects that I have is it’s a long term project. We’re now five, six years into it, and we’re trying to evaluate different approaches to optimizing water. So we’re looking at different irrigation systems, looking at different irrigation management, different crop and soil management, and trying to just learn what combinations are most ideal, which ones are most water efficient, which are most profitable, which are most feasible for farmers to use. We plan to continue that work, hopefully for the next five, maybe even 10 years, some of the first, I think long term irrigation research that I’ve that I’ve seen, and so I hope to, after we get, you know, more years of data, to just really have a good handle on what, what’s going to be the the ideal ways to to optimize water use in agriculture so which combinations of the crops that we use, how we manage the crops, how we manage the soil, how we till, what genetics we use for the crops, how we manage the irrigation, how we apply the irrigation. And just trying to come up with these, these ideal suites of practices that are going to be the most efficient at water use. So that’s one thing that we’ve spent five years working on, and hope to spend much more time working on, is really refining what works and what doesn’t. What are the most important tools that we can use to reduce our water use and still maximize our crop production. The other maybe I’ll just mention quickly, is, yeah, just trying to learn how, how are we going to quantify water use on farms? How are we going to potentially lease some of that water to meet other demands? And just identifying the tools, the information that the farmers need to make those decisions, is something that planning to keep working on.

BRAD NEWBOLD 54:01
Now, I was going to ask this earlier. You mentioned about decision making in your communications, and you’re working with with farmers. Do you see that their decisions they make based off of of what they do on their farms? Would it be fair to say the main driver is economic, that it’s the their their bottom line, that they’re trying to protect? And you know, just being able to get that, that return on investment within their farms, you know, every every year, with the the yields that they’re gaining there?

MATT YOST 54:27
I don’t claim to be a sociologist, so I tread lightly here, but yes, I think economics is a is a huge driver, but I don’t think it’s the sole driver, right? I could sit down with a variety of different farmers, and I probably go through their operation and say, you know, let’s look at all of your expenses and why you do certain things, the cost of those things versus the, you know, the value that you bring back. And my guess is on some farms. It’s not going to pencil out, right? And I think it’s a combination of, you know, they’re make a lot of them, they’re trying to make money. All of them are trying to make money that’s why they farm, they have to turn a profit or they don’t, they don’t keep farming. But I think it’s a combination of the economics, but it’s also, there’s a lot of social aspects of it, right? They, they do think some of them do things because it feels right. They were taught to do it that way. They see other people doing it that way. It works, okay? Maybe even if it’s not the most economic, it gets the job done, right? They, they have enough feed for their cows. They, you know, they make enough money to meet their needs. And so I think it’s, yeah, it’s just this. It’s a combination of a lot of these factors that go into how they choose to farm. And I, I think about it a lot like each one of us, right? Do you the decisions that we make each day, are they all based on economics? No, right? A lot of them are, you know, why, why do you eat that? Or why do you do this or that? You know, some of it’s based on us, because it’s how much it costs, or I’m trying to save money, or I’m trying to make money, right? But there’s a lot of things we do every day that don’t make economic sense, right? Right? We just do it because, for a lot of reasons, right? We feel like doing it. We were taught to do that. We see other people doing it. I think it’s just all of that comes together when people are trying to farm and make decisions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 56:33
You’ve talked about different practices. You know, just throughout our discussion here, some of the best practices or things that you’ve mentioned that might be useful for various farmers. You’ve talked about getting sensors in the ground to be able to track Water Water optimization. You’ve talked about tracking things daily to be able to see how things are going, to know how much water to put on or or not. You’ve talked about the, you know, annual variability and being being able to be flexible in your management practices, any other, any other kind of, I guess, general tips or or best practices that that you would suggest to any farmers or any other agronomists or others who extension specialists and others who might be out there listening to this,

MATT YOST 57:18
be patient. I guess it’s, it’s taken us a little bit to really be comfortable using using some of these, these technologies, learning how they work, how to fit them into operations, how to make them, them useful. I guess that’d be my general advice. Be patient. It can be easy to stick a sensor in and forget about it. It can be you can stick it in and have problems with it. You know, every sensor, I shouldn’t say every, but most sensors are going to going to have some type of challenge at some point, right? Something breaks, something doesn’t work. Wire gets cut, something gets hit, things happen. And so I see a lot of people give up quickly, right? It just didn’t work this year, so I’m taking it out or not going to use it. So I would give give them a good try, right? Try it for a few seasons. Try it in a few fields. See what value you can get from soil moisture data or weather data. We’ve seen a lot of value a lot of farmers we’ve worked with have seen a lot of value enough that they they invest. Some of them invest in a lot more sensors on their own, more than what we we provide and test with them. I think they’re great tools you just have to give them a little time, have to to work through the issues, learn how to use them, give them a good, good chance. And I think, I think in a lot of cases, you’ll find that they’ll provide value more than than what the cost is.

BRAD NEWBOLD 58:45
Any any final thoughts before we wrap things up here?

MATT YOST 58:48
Just great, great to be with, with you today. Hopefully you picked up a few tidbits of things that might help help you and in your work and your operations, if you farm and always, always happy to chat and to share ideas or experience. So please, please reach out if anyone wants to continue the discussion or has questions.

BRAD NEWBOLD 59:10
Okay, well, our time is up for today. Thank you again, Matt. We really appreciate you being here and having this discussion with us. It’s been a very interesting conversation, so thank you again!

MATT YOST 59:21
You’re welcome. Thank you.

BRAD NEWBOLD 59:23
And if you in the audience, have any questions about this topic or want to hear more, feel free to contact us at metergroup.com or reach out to us on Twitter @meter_env and you can also view the full transcript from today in the podcast description. That’s all for now, stay safe and we’ll catch you next time on We Measure the World.