Sources and assumptions

Budget sources

Budget year 2026. Starter register: plantplan-register-2026-11-07-w6. Transferred District 1 forage starters are used where no District 2 budget is published; farmer prices and yields replace the starter.

County crops: USDA NASS Quick Stats

County lists use USDA NASS Quick Stats bulk crops file dated 2026-11-06, fetched 2026-11-07. Evidence window: 1996 to 2025. Ranking period: 2016 to 2025. County totals determine product order; published irrigated and non-irrigated evidence determines practice membership. Records do not prove a crop is suitable for your field. Missing records do not prove it was never grown.

Captions use ac for acres. The latest published year is shown even when USDA withholds its acres. The caption says 10-year average only when every year from 2016 to 2025 is published numerically. Otherwise it gives the average over the stated number of published years since 2016, including shared forage categories. Missing years, withheld (D) and less-than-half-an-acre (Z) entries are never treated as zero. Census-only series may have just two observations. Withheld-only or older-only series sort after known recent averages. Older latest observations keep their actual year.

One annual series per product and practice: planted acres where published for that product, otherwise harvested acres; Survey is preferred to Census in overlapping years. Corn and sorghum grain and silage use harvested acres because their planted totals do not distinguish uses. Cotton means upland. Wheat uses all classes, falling back to winter wheat; planted wheat includes uses other than grain and is a crop-footprint ranking, not grain-harvest acreage. Classes, totals and practice splits are never added together.

INFERENCE: wheat and triticale green chop use shared non-alfalfa haylage when species-specific silage or haylage is absent. Wheat and triticale hay use small-grain hay, or recent non-alfalfa hay when that older category is no longer published. Sorghum-sudan uses the specific hay class where present, then other tame hay or recent non-alfalfa hay. These broad categories do not establish the individual species or intended use. Captions name the shared category; repeated proxy acres must never be added together. Unspecified triticale harvest does not prove triticale forage. The local crop menu says inferred for these options.

Peanuts, sunflower, soybeans, alfalfa hay, oats, barley, rye, sesame, guar and unspecified-use triticale are listed as grown here with no starter when there is evidence. Custom crop accepts your figures. Other crops grown elsewhere keeps unsupported starter choices available; saved selections are retained with a note.

USDA NASS bulk crops snapshot, November 6, 2026. The offline importer retains source-row line numbers, commodity, class, use, practice, year and value for audit. Changing the importer window and regenerating the fixture updates the list and its help.

Rainfall method: CDFA / UC Extension

We keep the CDFA / UC Extension monthly effective-rainfall method from the September 2022 grower workbook, printed pages 39–40. Monthly effective rain is max(0, min(P, 0.6P − 0.4)) up to 3 inches, and max(0, min(P, 0.8P − 1.0)) above 3 inches. P is monthly rainfall in inches.

INFERENCE: annual rain follows the county station’s NOAA 1991–2020 normal monthly pattern. Effective rain adjusts irrigation and pumping expense from each depth’s source reference. All cases use the same rain adjustment from typical need. The quiet wettest/driest captions show calendar-year county precipitation, not growing-season rain, to two decimal inches. Their records come from NOAA NCEI Climate at a Glance, fetched November 6, 2026. NOAA county annual series span 1895–2025; the mean uses 1991–2020. Dry and wet cases default to observed nearest-rank 10th and 90th percentile years and are editable. Every field uses the farm county series and monthly station pattern. Where county history is absent, scaled station normals are labelled. Saved dry and wet depth entries are reference-only.

This is not NRCS NEH 623. Effective-rain percentages depend on the method; runoff, soil storage and crop water response are unverified. We retain the existing approximation because the controls reconcile and NEH 623 would need crop ET and soil inputs this tool does not collect. The independent review’s illustrative comparison differed by up to 0.71 gross inch, about $7.11/ac at $10/ac-inch; it is not a farm calibration.

CDFA / UC Extension grower workbook, 2022. NOAA station and source-reference details remain with each input. Sources checked November 5, 2026; no new fetch in this update.

Crop calendars and separate water supplies

INFERENCE: summer starters use May–September. Wheat grain and green chop use October–June; boot-stage cereal hay uses October–May. Bushland 2023–24 trial notes supply boot-stage irrigation and rain totals, not monthly demand. June green chop is an editable overlap assumption, not a verified boot-harvest date.

Baseline irrigation is split evenly across selected crop months because no verified monthly demand pattern is bundled. Each season receives only its months. Effective rain uses those same months; each season’s need is floored at zero. This is a seasonal planning balance, not a daily irrigation schedule.

Group only fields a supply can actually serve. Separate supplies cannot cover each other’s shortage. Several connected wells may use one measured combined flow; do not enter the same well twice. Pivot pressure, pipe capacity, valve schedules and simultaneous peak demand are not checked.

Pump hours are limited by calendar dates for each supply: May through September of the plan year and October through April ending in that year. Calendar limits are ceilings, not suggested run times. Allow for downtime. The historical 2,000-hour starter came from April through August; review it for this model’s May through September window.

Crop water need and pump costs

Crop water inches mean pumped water the crop needs, not rainfall or water supply. More farm rain reduces that need. INFERENCE: gross crop needs retain the root-zone equivalent at the original system efficiency; a farmer’s replacement depth retains the efficiency at entry. Improving efficiency reduces gross pumping need. Net root-zone depths convert once.

Base crop costs can already contain a pumping allowance. We remove that allowance at its original rate, then charge water actually pumped at your current rate. Changing today’s pump price does not change the old allowance. If your base cost excludes pumping, set Water in base cost to zero.

Sorghum-sudan hay: illustrative District 1 transfer

CONFIRMED: the bundled 2026 District 1 SudangrassSprinkler and SudangrassDryland sheets have variable totals of $338.55/acre and $136.19/acre. These are grazing budgets, not hay budgets. Hay harvest and haul are absent; enter a cost before using a completed hay return.

INFERENCE: the retained planning need is 12.6 gross inches. The sprinkler sheet includes $45/acre of energy. Its budget-equivalent rate is $45 ÷ 12.6 = $3.57/gross acre-inch; this is not a measured pump quote. Included and required water now both use 12.6 inches before rain adjustment. The energy allowance is removed once and allocated pumping charged once.

AgriLife District 1 budgets. Yield and price remain separately flagged illustrative transfers. Existing saved farmer entries remain intact.

Entered yields and pumping allocation

INFERENCE: One persistent yield choice applies at every rain. Your starting rain and entered water form the comparison baseline. Supported estimates reproduce your entered yield there; farmer rain scenarios use only your entries. Other crops hold starting yields. Pumping is capped within each well and month and shared in proportion to need; pumping cost uses allocated water. Sales and quantity-linked costs follow the selected yield. Incurred crop and land costs remain. This is not proof that yields can be reached.

Available irrigation after reservations is allocated in proportion to each crop’s need within its source and season. The default choice holds entered yields. The optional water-limited estimate changes calculation copies of supported crops only; cottonseed, billing and harvest costs follow that chosen yield. Farmer entries are never rewritten. Unsupported crops retain entered yields and say no estimate.

Details show the cost of pumping the full need at the same entered yields. A missing water input leaves the headline unresolved. Crop breakdown figures use the same pumping allocation as the headline and add to it after entered rent. Conditional FSA payments stay separate from crop returns.

Optional crop response

FAO Irrigation and Drainage Paper 33 (1979), whole-season yield response factors; relation reviewed in FAO Paper 66 (2012). Generic crop transfer; not calibrated for this farm.. Relative yield = max(0, 1 − Ky × net deficit / full water supply). Ky is 1.25 for corn grain, 0.85 for cotton lint, 0.9 for grain sorghum and 1.0 for winter wheat grain. No grain factor is transferred to forage.

INFERENCE: seasonal full water supply is net irrigation need plus effective rain and soil water already credited to that need. Soil water defaults to zero, not a field measurement. Your entered yield is kept at your starting rain with your entered farm water. Estimated yield = typed yield × f(case rain) / f(starting rain), where f = max(0, min(1, 1 − Ky × net deficit / seasonal need)). The ceiling is full-water yield: typed yield / f(starting rain). A zero or unavailable starting response keeps the entered yield, with a reason. Crops without a model keep the starting yield. Your own dry and wet yields take priority, using straight lines within their rain range; beyond that range the result needs a yield unless you explicitly chose to hold the endpoint. Software dry and wet yield percentages do not set yields. This is not a local calibration, a growth-stage model or a feasibility certificate.

Water only; heat and rain-timing losses are not in this estimate. The seasonal water balance cannot see heat at pollination, storm timing, runoff from individual storms, crop growth stages, or peak pump capacity. Annual rain is distributed using the county monthly pattern; equal annual totals can produce different harvests. The yield response is a sensitivity estimate, not a harvest promise.

FAO crop yield response reference

Unverified OSU starters

The dryland sorghum-sudan hay yield and price starters and cereal-hay custom-harvest proxy remain not verified: source could not be reached (HTTP 403 in the November 5, 2026 source check). They are planning placeholders; enter your own figures.

Pumping hours are a starter

The regional 2,000-hour starter comes from TWDB LP-191, 1979, printed page 104: a Lubbock-area April–August example. Its availability in all 20 District 2 counties does not make it a county measurement. Enter your own pumping hours and avoid counting April in both model windows.

County acreage source rows

These audit rows stay on the sources page. The planting workspace loads only county menu membership and caption figures.