Evaluating Use of Water and Renewable Energy in Agricultural Areas: A Coupled Simulation of DSSAT and Agent-Based Modeling

As much of farmland in the middle US is located in arid and semi-arid regions, agricultural practices depend largely on irrigation. Large-scale extraction for agricultural purposes widely occurred since the 1960s because of the introduction of center pivot irrigation, each of which requires about 800 gallons per minutes or 4,360 m³/day. Groundwater supported irrigation was dependable for decades, but now many areas of the High Plains aquifer is at risk of depletion, and farming is facing difficult circumstances. On the positive side, Kansas becomes the third leading producer of wind energy in the US, and solar power has also been growing in recent year due to new technological improvements. However, opportunities to use this locally produced energy to improve prospects for the farming community face scientific and engineering challenges and, communities are not aware of many potentially promising alternatives. The Food-Energy-Water (FEW) calculator is a tool designed to introduce new alternatives to those communities and the scientists, engineers, and government entities who support them. In this study, NetLogo software provides an interactive framework for comprehensive analyses of an agent-based model (ABM). ABM is used to coordinate the many types of actors, information, and alternatives relevant to this problem. For more creative agricultural scenarios, Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) simulates crop water requirements and yields of corn, wheat, soybean, and milo based on historical weather data and then calculates farm net incomes. The resulting ABM based FEW calculator provides a more realistic and effective framework for managing the complexity between the human and natural system dynamics.