DYRT Powered by Vorterra · A 100-Point Standard

Score the stewardship
of every acre.

One crop-neutral number, from three measured pillars: soil health, carbon, and water stewardship. It turns regenerative practice into a measured, auditable outcome — comparable across alfalfa, cotton, produce, and turf.

Score a field ↓
φ = 1.618
The Regenerative Moment · June 2026

Built to verify regenerative outcomes.

On June 25, 2026, a federal Executive Order directed USDA to expand its Regenerative Agriculture Pilot Program, share results broadly with stakeholders, and build public-private partnerships to help producers adopt regenerative practices. The program is outcomes-based and asks growers to test soil health at the start and end of every contract. The Stewardship Score is built to be that verification layer — one crop-normalized number that turns regenerative soil-and-water work into something measurable, comparable, and bankable.

Pilot Program
Outcomes-based, whole-farm regenerative conservation — now directed to expand its reach.
Public-private partnerships
The named lane for a measurement standard built and run alongside the agency.
Verified & shared
Soil-and-water stewardship scored once and portable to USDA, lenders, and supply chains.
Interactive Score

Your field.
Its stewardship score.

Pick a crop to load its water benchmark, then enter the field's measured numbers. The Haney soil-health index and the water-efficiency components combine into one 100-point score in real time. Use the presets to walk the same alfalfa field from flood to drip.

PRESETS
Haney soil-health index 0–50 · scored to 4018
Organic carbon T/A · Microbial Carbon Capture28
Annual ΔSOC Mg CO₂e/ha/yr · stock change0.8
Net crop water need ac-ft/ac · ETc − rain5.5
Applied water ac-ft/ac · metered10
Yield vs. regional norm yield guard100%
Irrigation water EC dS/m · salinity0.6
Water SAR sodicity2.0
Toggle to see the difference
Water upgrade — model your gain
Switch on to project the applied-water reduction from Vorterra inline vortex irrigation. It moves the measured input, not the scoring rules — so the score rises the honest way.
Applied-water reduction yield held20%
Yield uplift crop-per-drop12%
Both levers anchored to Vorterra field results — Dr. Ali’s trial (yield held at reduced volumes) and the Gem-Pack record (+10–15% yield). Set all values from a field’s own metered results for a real projection.
Stewardship Score
0 / 100
—
—
Soil health0 /40
Carbon sequestration0 /20
Water stewardship0 /40
0 /24
Applied-water
0 /8
Water productivity
0 /8
Water suitability
0 /20
Carbon (MCC + ΔSOC)
Projected with Vorterra +0
0 → 0 / 100
—

Applied-water benchmark band

Application efficiency · —

Where this field's applied water sits between a poor-flood anchor and the crop's evapotranspiration floor. Moving rightward — less water for the same crop — raises the score, until the yield guard says you've crossed from efficiency into deficit.

Poor · over-applied Good Best achievable / ET floor This field

Biggest lever

—

If raised to best achievable

—

Recommendation Engine

Your path to a higher score.

Every field is different, so the levers are too. From this field’s numbers, here’s where the points actually are — ranked, with the practices that move each one. Nothing here is a bonus: every point traces back to moving a measured input.

Now 0 → 0 +0 achievable

Methodology & Assumptions

How the score is built.

The method is the framework. Every number above is reproducible from the field's measurements and the rules below — no judgment calls, no proprietary black box. This is what makes a score portable across crops, defensible to a regulator or a lender, and fit to verify regenerative-agriculture outcomes under the federal pilot.

01 · THE ANCHOR
Normalize to the crop's evapotranspiration
A crop's consumptive water use (ETc) is a physical floor: apply less than ETc minus effective rainfall and yield falls. That makes it the only defensible “best achievable” anchor — and it's what lets a score mean the same thing across crops. A 42 on alfalfa and a 42 on chile peppers are equivalent because each is measured against its own crop's need.
CARBON PILLAR · 20 POINTS
Carbon sequestration
A distinct pillar, so stored carbon is not treated as a side-effect of the Haney index. Two 10-point sub-scores from Regen Ag Lab: Microbial Carbon Capture organic carbon (T/A), and the measured change in soil-organic-carbon stock between baseline and follow-up depths, converted to CO₂e. Negative ΔSOC earns nothing — only real, measured sequestration counts, never a one-time snapshot.
02 · 24 POINTS
Applied-water efficiency
The field's need is first widened for any leaching its water chemistry forces, then scored on the application efficiency it actually achieved.
LR = ECw / (5·ECe − ECw) → need_adj = need / (1 − LR)
AE = need_adj / applied · AWE = clamp((AE−0.45)/0.50, 0,1)^1.35 × 30
0.45 is a poorly-run flood (below it scores zero); 0.95 is well-managed subsurface drip. The exponent makes the top points progressively harder to earn, so a high score reflects genuine performance rather than a gentle curve — full marks demand near-perfect application. The remaining 20 of the water half come from productivity and suitability.
02·5 · 8 POINTS
Water productivity (crop-per-drop)
Applying little water is only half of efficiency; the other half is how much crop each acre-foot produces. Yield above the regional norm earns up to 10 points on a demanding, convex scale — roughly 118% of norm for full marks — so points here are genuinely earned. A field that holds or lifts yield on the same water scores higher. This is the lever Vorterra’s commercial record moves — Gem-Pack’s +10–15% yield is crop-per-drop, not volume — and it lets the standard reward more output per drop, not just less input.
03 · THE GUARDRAIL
The yield guard — against gaming
A pure “less water = more points” rule would reward deficit irrigation that destroys yield. So when yield falls below ~85% of the regional norm, applied-water points are scaled down in proportion. Water “saved” below the yield floor is a loss, not efficiency. This single rule is what makes the score about stewardship rather than starvation — and it's the first thing a serious reviewer checks for.
04 · 10 POINTS
Irrigation-water suitability
From the irrigation-water test: deductions for salinity (EC), sodicity (SAR — the driver of soil-structure collapse), and a flag for elevated bicarbonate, boron or chloride. Poor water both degrades soil over time and forces over-application, so it appears twice — once as its own points, and once as the fairness adjustment that widens the benchmark in card 02, so a grower isn't penalized for a water source they didn't choose.
05 · INDEPENDENCE
Why soil and water are scored separately
The headline thesis — better soil holds more water, so less needs applying — can only be proven if the two halves are measured independently and then correlated over seasons. Fold soil health into the water score and the relationship becomes true by construction and worthless as evidence. They're kept orthogonal so the link can be tested on real baselined fields, with a lag.
06 · HONEST SHAPE
Diminishing returns, not exponential
The agronomy predicts diminishing water savings per point gained, not exponential ones: the largest gains come from moving the worst performers (flood → pivot → drip), and they flatten as a field nears its ET floor — you can't beat physics. That's the stronger story for public dollars, because it shows exactly where each subsidy buys the most acre-feet. The framework is built to measure the curve, not to promise its shape.

Data provenance for a real deployment

  • Soil health — Regen Ag Lab Haney™ / Certified Score, rescaled 0–50 to 0–40.
  • Carbon — Regen Ag Lab Microbial Carbon Capture (organic C, T/A) + measured ΔSOC stock at paired depths, converted to CO₂e.
  • Water suitability — irrigation-water test: EC, SAR, bicarbonate, boron, chloride.
  • Crop need — production version pulls ETc from a local ET network (e.g. CIMIS) × crop coefficient Kc by growth stage, minus effective rainfall — not the static presets shown here.
  • Applied water — pump flow meter, or kWh ÷ pump efficiency, or irrigation-district delivery records.
  • Yield — grower records or scale tickets, expressed against a county/crop norm.
  • Scoring rules — the constants above (0.40 / 0.92 / 85%) are the standard's parameters, published and fixed, not tuned per field.

Preset crop values in this tool are defensible textbook ballparks for a hot, low-rainfall zone, shown for demonstration. For any real field, override “net crop water need” with a local figure. A score is only as trustworthy as its three measured inputs: crop need, applied water, and yield.

Field Validation

Evidence, not assertion.

The score rests on two kinds of validation: controlled field science, and the judgment of people who have run both a working farm and the state’s agriculture department. The first tests whether the number is true; the second, whether it matters.

Dr. Mohammed Ali
Principal Investigator · University of Arizona Yuma, Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering
Field research at
The University of Arizona
Randomized Controlled Trial

Validation anchor: a 93-day randomized controlled lettuce trial — planted Dec 17, 2025, harvested Mar 20, 2026 — testing Vorterra inline vortex irrigation against conventional practice, measuring marketable yield, water productivity, and soil-moisture retention at depth (15 / 30 / 45 cm) across irrigation volumes of 100 / 80 / 60% of baseline.

The trial measures yield against applied water at field scale — the exact relationship this Water Stewardship score is built on, including the yield guard — and supplies the controlled-trial methodology behind the score's validation pathway. It is the evidence engine, not a claim that the score is already proven.

93
Day trial · full lettuce cycle
3×
Irrigation volumes · 100/80/60%
3
Sensor depths · 15/30/45 cm
RCT
Vorterra vs. conventional
3-Year Commercial Deployment

Gem-Pack Berries
Strawberry Operation

Beyond the lab: three consecutive seasons of Vorterra on a working commercial strawberry operation — real acreage, real harvest, real market conditions.

10–15%
Sustained yield increase over three consecutive years of commercial strawberry production.
Commercially validated by A.G. Kawamura
Former Secretary, California Dept. of Food & Agriculture (2003–2010) · Founding Partner, GEM Pack Berries

Commercial field evidence of Vorterra’s real-world performance — the water-and-yield behavior the score is built to read — alongside Dr. Ali’s controlled trial. It attests to the technology’s record, which the standard then measures on any given field.