Teeter Makes Every Drop Count

Monty Teeter believes that water conservation begins with a simple principle: that what you have been given should not be wasted.

This principle has shaped more than five decades of Teeter’s work in irrigation, a career he connects closely to his faith and his concern for the future of farmers.

“I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, and my purpose is to provoke others to accomplish more than they thought possible,” Teeter said.

Teeter’s philosophy has followed him from his earliest years in the irrigation business to the development of Dragon-Line, a mobile drip irrigation system designed to help farmers make more efficient use of the water beneath their fields.

“I could have retired, but my purpose on Earth isn't just to be a good dealer and make money selling pivots,” Teeter said. “I believe the Lord put me here to learn about how water works and how we can save it.”

Teeter, born and raised in Ulysses, entered the irrigation business at 19 and started his own company several years later. Over the course of his career, he sold thousands of irrigation pivots and spent decades working with drip irrigation.

“I've seen what seemed like an endless supply of irrigation water dwindle and be mined for more than 60 years,” he said.

But when Teeter was growing up, water seemed almost limitless.

“Even when I was in grade school, they pumped water and there was so much of it that people thought we'd never run out,” he said. “Water ran down the bar ditches. People went swimming in the bar ditches sometimes.”

Today, Teeter sees the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer as one of the greatest threats facing agriculture in southwest Kansas.

The aquifer stretches across eight states, but the water beneath the region took millions of years to accumulate.

“For many years now, countless individuals have watched the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, which was once a vast supply of water in many areas and is now becoming less sufficient,” he said.

Teeter said the problem extends far beyond Ulysses.

“It's all of southwest Kansas. It's all of western Kansas,” he said. “We're in a disaster state here.”

People sometimes speak of having decades of water remaining, but Teeter said that figure can be misleading because water levels vary significantly from one location to another.

“You can go just 22 miles over to Johnson, and there are a lot of farms that are already out of water. They've had to quit irrigating,” he said.

Seeing water disappear from the region brought Teeter back to the principle that had guided his career from the beginning: that water must be used as efficiently as possible.

“A water hydrologist once said that if we saved 25% of our water today, our aquifer would last 35 years longer,” he said. “That's where I really got involved in trying to develop this product.”

After selling his irrigation business, Teeter invested more than $6 million into developing Dragon-Line.

A center pivot is the large irrigation structure commonly seen rotating across Kansas fields, creating the distinctive green circles visible from the air. Dragon-Line is designed to work with those existing pivots by replacing the traditional overhead spray with a mobile drip system.

“The most efficient way to water is through drip irrigation, but drip irrigation costs about $2,500 to $4,000 an acre to install,” Teeter said.

Dragon-Line is intended to offer the benefits of drip irrigation at a lower installation cost.

“Our system costs between $250 and $400 an acre to install on an existing pivot, and it can do the same thing,” Teeter said. “We can transform about 10 times more acres faster to save water than they can with subsurface drip.”

The system is designed to reduce water lost through evaporation, wind, runoff, and other inefficiencies associated with spraying water through the air.

“We advertise that Dragon-Line can save 20% to 50% of the water,” Teeter said.

“You can think of Dragon-Line as either using less water or getting more use out of the water you already have.”

This idea is particularly relevant in the conditions of southwest Kansas.

“When you're throwing water into the air on a 100-degree day with a 20-mile-per-hour wind, a small well might only be producing 200 gallons per minute,” Teeter said. “A large well might produce 600 to 800 gallons.”

On a hot, windy day, some of that water can be lost before it ever reaches the crop.

“The water was in the ground for millions of years, and we're pumping it out and potentially wasting much of it in one day,” Teeter said.

Teeter believes developing more efficient irrigation technology is only part of the solution. He also believes farmers need a reason to conserve the water they have.

“One of the things we have to overcome is the ‘use it or lose it’ mentality,” he said.

Under the existing system, Teeter said farmers can have an incentive to use their water allocation rather than leave it unused.

“Why would someone spend money on something to save water when they aren't being forced to save it?” he said. “Until people have a reason to save, they aren't going to.”

The demand for water conservation has taken Dragon-Line beyond southwest Kansas.

“Now we're getting calls from overseas,” Teeter said. “We're in more than 20 countries, and we haven't made one call to those countries. They called us because they're looking to save water.”

His work has taken him to countries including Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Australia and South Africa.

Despite the cultural differences, Teeter said the farmers he meets around the world face many of the same questions.

“One nice thing about farmers is that they're all the same. It doesn't matter whether they're in Ukraine or Kansas,” he said.

“They're asking: How can I grow a better crop? How can I use less water? How can I expand? If I use less water, I can grow more acres. How can I stay in business with less water?”

His wife, Jean Teeter, who helps manage the logistics of the company's international work, has witnessed the same concerns.

“They're all wanting the same things around the world,” she said. “They want to save water. They want to grow a crop. The population around the world is growing, and we have to figure out how to feed a hungry world.”

The Teeters' travels have also given them a different perspective on the people behind the agricultural industry.

“We're not really good tourists. We don't just go sightseeing,” Jean said. “We like to be with people who live there and spend time with them. We want to hear about their real-life experiences.”

Monty Teeter believes the future of agriculture may eventually require changes not only in how farmers irrigate, but in what they grow.

“We have to develop different crops. We need to grow something that uses less water and is economically viable,” he said.

“We have to maintain the same standard of living with less water. It's just not going to be an option anymore.”

Dragon-Line represents not just a new piece of irrigation equipment, but the principle of sustainability that has shaped his career.

“Everything we've sold, I've always tried to make the most efficient use of water,” Teeter said. “Dragon-Line is just the next step in trying to use water as efficiently as possible.”