Water First

Terry and Lori Dabbs cultivate a lifetime of water conservation in their farming legacy.

Water. It’s their most treasured resource, yet their greatest challenge.

For Stuttgart, Arkansas farmers Terry and Lori Dabbs, their farming legacy solely focuses on water conservation.

“Water is the most important thing to our farm,” Terry says simply.

Generations of Conservation

From a young age, Terry Dabbs knew he wanted to farm. Growing up on the farm, he followed his father and grandfather everywhere they went.

After college, Terry rented 160 acres of ground beside his dad’s operation and worked in cooperation with him and an uncle until being able to purchase machinery to farm independently.

Lori also knew agriculture would be a part of her future as much of her youth was spent tagging along beside her father and grandfather as they farmed.

After Terry and Lori married in the early 1990s and began their farming operation, they gradually built their business before Lori’s dad retired in 1998.

“When her dad decided to retire, we let go of some of the ground that we were farming so we could take over her family’s farm operation,” Terry says.

Both the Dabbs’ LTD Farms and Lori’s family operation, Hargrove Farms Inc., today focus on growing corn, soybeans and rice in a minimum till setting.

According to Lori, many of their stewardship practices are specific to the area because water quantity is a big concern, with irrigation efficiencies and water conservation a primary focus.

“One of our greatest challenges in our area is the availability and the competition for surface water,” Lori explains. “The water conservation efforts on our farm really began before my grandparents ever purchased the farm.”

Lori’s grandfather purchased the 1,500-acre Hargrove Farms in the 1940s. Located on the Arkansas Grand Prairie, the farm is home to the area’s second on-farm storage reservoir. It was built adjacent to a bayou, and water was pumped into the reservoir for irrigation purposes.

Lori says her grandfather and father put a conservation plan into place and began implementing water conservation measures considered to be before their time. The move was fortuitous because in the 1970s it became apparent that the aquifers in the area were declining, she adds. The Hargroves joined to bring in supplemental surface water from a nearby river.

When water from the alluvial aquifer disappeared in the early 1970s, the farm began using only surface water from the reservoir. Then in the 1980s, the Hargroves implemented a plan that leveled the ground to provide more efficient irrigation. The multi-year endeavor was about 65% complete when LTD Farms, owned by Terry and Lori and their son and daughter-in-law, Trent and Kristian Dabbs, took over the Hargrove operation at the time of Lori’s dad’s retirement.

With the purchase of an adjacent piece of land, conservation measures were implemented as Lori noted the property’s main water source was a deep well pulling water from the Sparta aquifer. While the land was being leveled, poultry litter was added to the ground, and nutrients were restored to the soil.

Hargrove Farms today is a family-owned corporation that maintains ownership of the land and crop shares with LTD Farms, the primary operator.

“One hundred percent of the voting stock of Hargrove Farms is owned by women,” Lori says. “As one of the operators of it today, I am proud of the foresightedness of my father and grandfather to have left us a legacy of stewardship and conservation.”

Water Comes First

When Terry and Lori took over the Hargrove Farms, they built another reservoir and continued installing an underground pipeline to expand water conservation and use efficiency. They’re quick to credit son Trent for helping them stay on the cutting edge of technology and how it might benefit their operation.

Terry says the next phase focuses on new irrigation technology involving soil sensors to help identify when to water their crops.

“Our mindset is to leave things better than we found them,” Lori says. “Always look for ways to improve and always look for ways to do things more efficiently.”

As part of the Arkansas Discovery Farms Program, water sampling stations in several locations monitor the nutrients in surface runoff at the Hargrove farm. Lori says the program is one of the most helpful tools they have in determining nutrient efficiency.

The Dabbs host tours for a variety of agricultural groups, including the Natural Resources Conservation Service, Farm Service Agency, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others to demonstrate the operation’s efficiency.

The Dabbs’ management plan includes grid sampling and variable rate fertilizer application on all acres.

“Our conservation efforts concentrate a lot on irrigation efficiencies and capturing runoff in tailwater ditches and return ditches,” Lori explains. “We currently capture 100% of the water on our farm either from rainfall or from irrigation runoff that goes back into our return ditches and tailwater ditches to use again.”

The conservation-conscious practice helps the Dabbs tackle water as their greatest challenge all at the same time.

“We actually ran out of water a couple of years ago and had to cease irrigation in August and couldn’t finish some crops out,” Terry explains. “That really got my attention when that happened. Building these extra reservoirs, learning these different practices was one of the most difficult things for me to overcome.”

Lori adds that they must be proactive in knowing their water situation going into the crop year. During the region’s rainy season—late fall, early winter—she says they do all they can to hold water on their fields for waterfowl habitat so that when the water is released from the field, it will go back into their on-farm storage reservoirs.

“Technology is available today that we know how many acre-feet of water we’re going to be using on each field, on each crop,” she says. “We pretty much know through newer methods that we have that water available in our on-farm storage to be able to enter the crop year in a good position from a water standpoint.”

The Dabbs were recently awarded two Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) contracts to level 95 acres. Lori says the leveling provides a more efficient irrigation system in labor, water use and nutrient retention to avoid losses from runoff.

“We also have flow meters on all of our pumps as well as remote sensors and controls on our phones with Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) on the pumps to be able to speed up, slow down or turn on and off as needed,” she says.

Diverse Sustainability Practices

While water is the focus of the Dabbs’ conservation efforts, they recently added cover crops to their rotation plans. About 250 acres were planted to cover crops in 2022 with plans to add up to about 35% of their soybean acreage annually.

“We’re just getting started trying to learn where we can use cover crops and where they’re going to best fit in our operation,” Lori explains. “The University of Arkansas has done a lot of testing and research with cover crops, and they came out and said it’s very difficult to use a cover crop in a rice rotation, but there are ways to use it in our corn and soybean fields.”

Terry and Lori strive to leave as much residue as possible over winter. Corn is planted following beans by only re-bedding and not working the field additional times. Other stewardship practices the Dabbs include in their management plan focus on wildlife plots, wetland protection and enhancement, in addition to pollinator and monarch habitat plots.

“From an environmental standpoint, we have native prairie grasses on about seven acres,” Lori says. “The grasses are native to this Grand Prairie region of Arkansas, and we’re incorporating those to wildlife habitat and buffer strips between our fields and our reservoir. We are always looking for ways to add environmental and conservation measures to our operation.”

Legacy for Life

The Dabbs’ agricultural heritage is as rich as the soil they farm.

For them, being named one of the American Soybean Association’s Conservation Legacy Award winners is truly a credit to the family members who came before them, the ones who first crafted a love for the land and water and conserving it.

“Our whole family has been doing these practices, so we didn’t just do this to win an award,” Terry explains. “We did this to be sustainable and survive in our industry. It’s an honor to win an award for something that you and your family worked so hard on and hopefully can continue doing.”

While Lori’s great-grandparents immigrated from Holland to the area, Terry’s family has land that has been continuously owned for more than 110 years. Seeds sowed more than a century ago today have the Dabbs well-rooted for the future as their children and grandchildren continue cultivating the family’s farming legacy.

As Lori concludes, “We are the ultimate stewards of the land, the ultimate conservationists, and without those things, there’s not a future for our farm,” Lori says. “Our whole intent is to leave the land better than we found it and to leave it in a position for our heirs to carry it on.”