Researchers unveiled a study Tuesday that not only shows farming contributes $12.2 billion a year to the High Plains economy but also establishes a model to show economic impact of crops after they’re sold.
“We felt like with the traditional model, we were missing the entire financial impact,” said Bridget Guerrero, one of the lead researchers and a program specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
“Historically, we’ve only been able to estimate the backward linkages.”
That look backward includes money spent on things like seed, fuel and custom harvesting, according to the report that used five-year averages of crop production in 41 counties from the top of the Texas Panhandle to Midland.
The look forward includes spending on categories such as flour milling, feeding beef cattle and ethanol production.
The study also shows farming funds about 103,000 jobs.
Various commodity and livestock groups and water conservation districts funded the study from Extension and Texas Tech University researchers started in 2006.
It considered farming of cotton and grains with and without irrigation.
“The water used up here generates income that’s spent in the Panhandle,” said Josh Winegarner, director of government relations at Texas Cattle Feeders Association, which contributed funding and information for the study. “Water is a driving factor in crop production. Without it, the economy would suffer, and they’re conserving water as much as they can to continue growing those crops.”
The 2010 regional water plan estimates irrigation consumes almost 90 percent of water used in the region. It also projects use will drop over time because of shortages of underground water, but also due to conservation, new crops and crops bred to use less water.
“Since my career began, we’ve become so much more efficient producing more with less,” said Mark Howard, who grows food corn and cotton in Hartley County and is a board member of the Texas Corn Producers, another contributor to the study. “There’s no one more interested in conserving water than those who depend on it for their business. Look at what it produces and the jobs it produces — 103,000 jobs, that’s half the people in Amarillo.”
Economists look forward to using the new model of economic impact to analyze proposed policy changes such as regulations on groundwater use for irrigation, according to a news release from Texas Corn Producers.