a partnership was formed with two arizona farmers, w.b. odom and j.l. golightly, to apply practical energy conservation measures to their contiguous cotton farms. the odom-golightly farm complex (3500 acres) about 60 miles west of phoenix, was selected as one of the energy integrated farm system (eifs) projects. both the irrigation management system and the biomass combustion system were determined to be technically and economically feasible and were implemented on the farms under phase ii of the eifs project. the other concepts were not found to be economically viable in the phase i study. the projected savings were estimated to be 2,500,000 kwh/year with the irrigation management system and 74,000 gallons of propane per year with the biomass combustion system producing heat for drying the cotton. the project demonstrated that better irrigation management can be achieved through a continuous feedback loop providing actual soil moisture conditions to the farmer or irrigator. with the proper application of electronic data acquisition and control technology (soil moisture monitors) a system such as the one demonstrated on the odom-golightly farms is economically feasible. in many cases, an irrigation management system may potentially have paybacks as short as two years. similarly cotton gins, particularly those handling short staple cotton exclusively, can cost-effectively use biomass (gin trash) combustors for heating the air used to dry the cotton, with a payback period from less than 4 years to 6 years. (era citation 11:040840)