Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

consequences for the whole country--and worse now

from the November 28, 1994 edition
Farmers' Use of Water Is High Plains Dilemma
http://www.csmonitor.com/1994/1128/28091.html
Ann Scott Tyson, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Bazine, Kan.—

Dry-land wheat farmer Melford DeWald gazes from his backyard across parched
fields and stone fence posts to Highway 96, the flat, dusty road leading so
many people out of this sleepy western Kansas town.

``The future of Bazine?'' says Mr. DeWald, shoving his hands in the pockets
of his worn blue overalls and looking down at his boots. ``It's a dying
town.''

About 100 miles to the southwest, agribusinessman Steve Irsik smiles as he
plucks a hardy green sprout of winter wheat from one of his thousands of
acres of irrigated fields outside Garden City, Kan.

``I think we're going to see tremendous growth here in western Kansas,''
Mr. Irsik says, striding across the moist, furrowed soil toward his shiny
pickup. ``I'm very optimistic.''

Depending on whether you stand in bankrupt Bazine or booming Garden City,
western Kansas and the rest of the High Plains seem either to be withering
into dust-blown desolation or flourishing with king-sized, corporate
agriculture.

At the root of the starkly contrasting landscape is a vital resource:
underground water. With surface water gone from much of the semiarid
region, farmers on the High Plains rely heavily on ground water for
irrigation, using about 30 percent of all irrigation water pumped in the
United States.

Virtually all of that water comes from the Ogallala Aquifer, the main
deposit of ground water on the High Plains. With minimal replenishment,
however, what is pumped from the ancient Ogallala is essentially lost. The
prosperity of the High Plains grain belt depends on the Ogallala Aquifer.
But wasteful irrigation techniques are depleting it.

Rapid depletion of the Ogallala has lowered the water table by more than
100 feet in some areas, raised pumping costs, and forced many farmers in
recent years to abandon irrigation and revert to dry-land farming.

``Ground water depletion is a critical issue in the High Plains,'' wrote
Kansas State University geographers David Kromm and Stephen White in a 1990
study for the Ford Foundation. ``Take away the water and the whole economy
would falter.''

At stake are the livelihoods of millions of Americans, a significant sector
of the US economy, and the survival of thousands of farming communities on
the High Plains - a region stretching south from the Dakotas to Texas and
bordered by the Rocky Mountains. Covering only 6 percent of the nation's
land, the region produces more than 15 percent of the value of US wheat,
corn, sorghum, and cotton, and 38 percent of the value of livestock.
Kansas, for example, is the nation's top wheat grower and a leading
producer of cattle.

``It is time to recognize the dilemma we are facing,'' warned a report
issued last year by the Kansas Agriculture Ogallala Task Force. ``The
philosophy that assures the availability of water and encourages
development no longer exists. The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted, and
everyone will be affected.''

Yet because the Ogallala water is unevenly distributed, the impact of its
decline varies dramatically from one community to another.

In prosperous Finney County, Irsik's lush crops and optimism are watered by
one of the thickest parts of the aquifer. (Finney County and other parts of
southwest Kansas sit over more Ogallala water than anywhere except
Nebraska.) In neighboring Ness County, by contrast, DeWald has lost
harvests and hope amid dry, thirsty fields.

In Finney County, 58 percent of the cultivated land is irrigated, compared
with only 6.5 percent in Ness County. The value of an average farm is
$802,000 in Finney County, but only $335,000 in Ness County, according to
the recently published 1992 Kansas agriculture census.

Scientists see end of irrigation

As farmers continue to draw upon the Ogallala, however, scientists predict
that oases like Finney County will eventually dry up. Whether this year or
decades from now, they say the ground water will drop to the point where
highly productive, irrigated agriculture is no longer feasible across the
High Plains.

Heading west from Wichita on Highway 50, one can imagine the trepidation of
19th-century settlers as they drove their wagons from the central Kansas
lowlands onto the desolate, wind-swept tableland of the High Plains.

Trees almost disappear from the vast horizon. Yucca, cacti, and short
prairie grasses grow along the road. The nights grow crisper, the days
hotter, and the climate more fickle, with sudden cloudbursts amid long dry
spells. The population is sparse, and people rarely come into view. Houses
sit marooned in oceans of pasture and fields.

Ever since the late 1800s, when pioneers first attempted to colonize what
they called the ``Great American Desert,'' doubts have persisted about the
long-term viability of farming the region. Over the decades, as settlers
struggled against droughts, dust storms, and clouds of crop-eating
grasshoppers here, some of the most dramatic booms and busts in American
history were played out.

In the 1880s, tens of thousands of people rushed to western Kansas as the
first major irrigation experiments on the Arkansas River and other
waterways promised to transform the area into an ``opulent civilization''
comparable to ancient Egypt. But a disastrous drought in the 1890s left the
Arkansas dry, causing widespread crop failures. The population of Finney
County, which had swelled 10-fold to 13,600 during the 1880s, plummeted to
2,000 in 1891.

In the 1910s and `20s, above-average rainfall in Kansas nourished
large-scale wheat farms and a growing economy that some considered the most
vibrant in the nation. The boom ended abruptly, however, when the worst
sustained agricultural disaster in US history struck the High Plains: the
1930s drought and depression known as the Dust Bowl.

A revolution in irrigation technology in the 1950s resurrected the High
Plains from the ``dirty thirties'' of the Dust Bowl. The invention of the
centipede-like center-pivot sprinkler opened up the Ogallala water for much
easier irrigation, generating higher yields and more-stable harvests. By
the 1970s, the High Plains were hailed as ``the land of underground rain.''

Thriving agribusinesses

Off Highway 50 at a juncture between Dodge City and Garden City, a dirt
road leads through a vast patchwork of irrigated fields to Steve Irsik's
sprawling, ranch-style home.

Mr. Irsik, a grain farmer and cattleman with so many thousands of acres
that he prefers not to see the number in print, has amassed a fortune in
the ``new Corn Belt.'' He channels his corn, wheat, milo, and cattle into
his family's local feedlot business, the 12th largest in the United States.

Nourished by the Ogallala, thriving agribusinesses like Irsik's have
created the basis for an economic uptick for nearby Garden City. With
plentiful grain, cattle, and feedlots, in recent years the city and
surrounding areas have emerged as the world's largest beef-packing center.

Garden City's population has surged from 14,800 in 1970 to more than 24,000
today. Immigrants from Mexico and Southeast Asia have flooded in to work in
packing plants and other agricultural industries. Finney is the
fastest-growing county in Kansas, with a population rise of 41 percent
between 1980 and 1990.

Local officials and agribusiness leaders like Irsik hope that an influx of
corporate hog and dairy farming will fuel more expansion.

``With people pressure in California and the Midwest,'' Irsik says, ``these
industries need somewhere to go, and they are looking very seriously at the
High Plains.'' He points to the sunshine and low population densities of
the High Plains as valuable assets for corporate hog, cattle, and dairy
farming.

Ultimately, however, such livestock industries depend on the huge,
inexpensive supply of feed grains produced with Ogallala water. As a
result, a chief goal of Irsik and others is to extend the life of the
Ogallala through conservation and advanced irrigation techniques, while
continuing to draw from it.

On a field of sprouting winter wheat, Irsik demonstrates a new irrigation
system, known as LEPA (low-energy precision application). Tubes connected
to center-pivot sprinklers lower the water nozzles from 10 feet to six
inches off the ground, thereby reducing evaporation, saving water, and
cutting energy costs.

Nevertheless, conservation is less a priority than a last resort for most
farmers, studies show. Farmers wait until their wells drop to the point
where rising pumping costs force them to install water-saving systems.
Consequently, the waste of Ogallala water continues.

Nearly half the farmers in Finney County, and 58 percent in southwest
Kansas, still use wasteful flood irrigation. Although the deepest Ogallala
basins may not reach critical depletion for up to 100 years, every year the
failure of wells on the thinner basin edges compel many farmers to revert
to dry-land farming, says Steven Frost, executive director of the Southwest
Kansas Ground water Management District.

Still, even Mr. Frost and other officials see no alternative to what they
call the ``planned depletion'' of the Ogallala.

``I don't see any reason to save the aquifer if saving it means devastating
the economy,'' Frost says.

Where the aquifer ends

Crossing from Finney County into adjacent Ness County, verdant fields
straddled by giant, gangly sprinklers quickly give way to overgrown
acreage, deserted farmsteads, and ghost towns. Where cultivation exists,
the crops seem sparse and uneven. Lacking the rich Ogallala underfoot, the
dry land farmers of Ness County depend on rain.

Ness City, the county seat with a population of 1,700 people, stands out
for its quiet contrast to the boom-town honky-tonk of Garden City. Here,
the main landmark is a cavernous limestone bank building, a solemn relic of
grander days.

Eleven miles to the west, Highway 96 passes through the dot on the map
called Bazine, a tiny outpost of 370 people.

In a small house set on a plot of dry brown grass, Melford DeWald sits in
an easy chair as his wife, Ruthie, cooks meatballs for a potluck at one of
Bazine's six churches.

``A lot of people have already sold their farms. When they can't make a
living, they go elsewhere,'' says Mr. DeWald, a former schoolteacher who
has struggled to till his family's 960-acre farm since 1976.

In the 1980s, a dry spell destroyed crops and left DeWald and many Bazine
farmers deeply in debt. ``If Lou Ann hadn't helped out with the payments,
we would have lost the land,'' says DeWald, referring to his grown
daughter.

Today, DeWald and other local farmers rely heavily on federal aid to stay
out of the red. In 1989, DeWald placed about one-fifth of his land in the
government's 10-year Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), designed to take
highly erodible land out of production. In return for replanting native
grasses and leaving the land fallow, DeWald receives yearly payments of
about $6,000 that keep him solvent.

Still, DeWald would take on an extra job, if he could find one, rather than
depend on aid. ``We're encouraging people not to work,'' he says. ``I don't
like it. But if I'm going to be able to live, I have to accept it.''

Bazine's fortunes have largely paralleled those of its financially strapped
farmers. In 1990 the town's only bank failed. Last year, the only grocery
store, Bob's Market, shut down. Residents must drive to Ness City to shop.
With virtually no local jobs, most of Bazine's young people leave town to
find work. As a result, the population continues to shrink and age. The big
two-story brick high school behind DeWald's home was built for hundreds of
students but now has only 40.

Bazine's plight typifies that of thousands of rural towns on the High
Plains as the farm population drops and small farms go under. Overall, the
US farm population decreased by 21 percent, to 4.6 million, between 1982
and 1992. In Kansas, the loss of people from agricultural communities was
traumatic. In 1990, 43 of the state's 105 counties registered their lowest
population since the frontier days a century ago. Ness County has lost half
its population in the last 30 years.

The shortage or absence of ground water, competition from highly mechanized
corporate agriculture, and other factors are significant causes of the
population decline, experts say. (Unlike other regions in the US, the high
Plains have so far not seen the selective rural population growth enjoyed
by some counties in the early 1990s. City dwellers, aided by modern
information technology, are mainly moving to rural areas that offer
recreation and natural beauty.)

``Agriculture is all we have, but it's not enough,'' DeWald says.

A few innovative residents, unable to survive on farming, have started
small enterprises in order to stay in Bazine.

``We want to stay in the country. We want our kids to grow up in a safe
environment,'' says Twylia Sekavec, mother of two boys. ``Our friends who
left for Kansas City, Dallas, and the West Coast are fighting traffic and
lines and paying off 40-year mortgages - the grass is not greener.''

In 1990, Mrs. Sekavec and her husband, Marvin, started a used-tire-disposal
business. They dug huge pits in 30 acres of the family farm and are filling
them with tons of quartered rubber tires. Despite local jokes about their
``black bales,'' the Sekavecs' venture has thrived, enabling the couple to
hire a dozen employees, buy two large semitrailers, and purchase a $69,000
home. ``Larger towns like Ness City have more progressive people and a
better chance,'' says Mr. Sekavec, ``but Bazine probably won't survive.''

Unwelcome reminder of the 1930s

While larger, municipal ``oases'' like Garden City may continue to thrive
for years to come, the disappearance of communities like Bazine foreshadows
the future for much of the region, some scientists and scholars say.

As the depletion of Ogallala water forces farmers to again rely on the
vagaries of rain, some scholars predict a new Dust Bowl. Dust storms are
more likely, they say, because of the environmental harm caused by
extensive irrigation, which has destroyed vegetation and protective belts
of trees and left hundreds of miles of rivers dry.

A dust storm struck western Kansas on March 14, 1989, after months of
drought. The storm reduced visibility to one block in Garden City, forced
the closing of Interstate 70 for 150 miles from the Colorado border to
Hays, Kan., and disrupted air traffic as far away as Kansas City.

For ecological and economic reasons, some scholars propose replanting the
High Plains in native grasses and repopulating it with herds of bison to
recreate the ``buffalo commons'' of the early 19th century. ``Over the next
generation the Plains will, as a result of the largest and longest-running
agricultural and environmental miscalculation in America, become totally
depopulated,'' assert Frank and Deborah Popper of Rutgers University in New
Jersey.

The Poppers' proposal has drawn sharp criticism from Kansans, who are not
giving up. ``Abandonment,'' writes geologist White, ``is a regional
development policy that looks good only if you are a buffalo.''

* Tomorrow: Looking to the prairie ecosystem for a solution to sustaining
High Plains agriculture.