As Texas’s inhabitants booms and the state grows hotter and drier, it’s extra vital than ever to grasp: Who’s losing our water?
The rains don’t come like they used to, and Glenn Schur can’t depend on the as soon as bountiful water beneath the clay loam soil of the South Plains—the biggest cotton-producing space on the planet. Up to now, his pumps pulled up as a lot as he wanted to irrigate his crops. However latest years have introduced drier climate to Schur’s 2,500 acres close to Plainview, a city of 20,000 between Lubbock and Amarillo. The Ogallala Aquifer yields much less and fewer. “My granddad dug the well. My dad pumped the well,” mentioned the 65-year-old farmer. “And I’m going to be the generation that capped the well.”
The Ogallala, which stretches throughout parts of eight states, from South Dakota to Texas, was first tapped on a big scale by farmers within the forties. Oil area drilling strategies allowed them to entry the huge underground reservoir, remodeling what had been as soon as wealthy native grasslands grazed by bison right into a grid of well-watered commodity crops.
Agricultural practices have grown extra water-efficient within the intervening a long time, however the aquifer continues to drop, foot by foot. Geological components severely restrict the trickle of rainfall into the Ogallala beneath Texas; some parts would take hundreds of years to refill. Federal crop subsidies hasten the decline, says Matthew Sanderson, a professor of geography and sociology at Kansas State College. Worth helps encourage farmers to spend money on irrigation programs and develop their acreage. A 2020 article coauthored by Sanderson declared that this technique ends in a “vicious cycle of overproduction that intensifies water use.”
Glenn Schur in a cornfield on his farm, on July 1, 2024.{Photograph} by Jeff Wilson
Federally sponsored insurance coverage additionally performs a task. In a Could report, Anne Schechinger, an analyst with the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.–primarily based nonprofit, discovered that crop insurance coverage payouts to farmers hammered by drought elevated greater than 600 p.c between 2001 and 2022. Taxpayers forked over $10 billion to Texas farmers, largely for failed cotton crops, throughout that interval—$3 billion greater than in every other state.
In some counties, the U.S. Division of Agriculture received’t insure sure crops except they’re irrigated, as a result of the company considers the danger of failure too excessive in any other case. “There are a lot of things in the program,” Schechinger mentioned, “that stop or discourage farmers from trying something new or doing something different that maybe uses less water or is more resilient to drought.”
No overarching authority manages the Ogallala all through Texas. As a substitute, a patchwork of native groundwater districts is hard-pressed to disclaim farmers their state-sanctioned proper to attract as a lot as they like from below their land. Leaders of those districts take it as a provided that the aquifer will ultimately be pumped to its dregs and hope solely to increase its life. Some spots should still have viable wells a century from now—in others, the water is mainly gone or quickly will probably be.
The Texas Water Improvement Board estimates that half the water in a thirteen-county area centered on Lubbock, the place groundwater is already depleted, will probably be obtainable by 2040. Hale County, the place Plainview is the seat, is predicted to make use of as much as two thirds of its groundwater by then—one of many steepest declines within the South Plains. “They always said in the sixties and seventies that we’re eventually going to run out of water,” Schur mentioned. “Everybody just kind of kicked the can down the road. And now, in the 2020s, it’s become a reality.”
The aquifer’s inexorable decline is forcing a metamorphosis. Farmers are more and more switching to working livestock or to dryland farming—relying solely on rainfall—a dicey proposition. Rain-fed agriculture within the semiarid area doesn’t yield as a lot earnings per acre. Within the Texas Excessive Plains, the regional financial influence of changing all irrigated acres to dryland farming could be an annual internet lack of greater than $1.6 billion of gross output, greater than $616 million of worth added, and almost 7,300 jobs.
An aerial view of a drip irrigation system on Schur’s farm.{Photograph} by Jeff Wilson
Schur’s wells now not produce sufficient to irrigate a full cotton crop, so he’s diversifying what he grows. Half his acres are nonetheless in cotton, however 1 / 4 of the crop is solely rain-fed, a share he’s growing every year. The remainder of his land lies fallow or is planted with much less water-intensive crops, reminiscent of sorghum and wheat. He additionally runs 100 head of cattle and grows fifteen acres of greens that his household sells at a farm-to-market retailer they personal in Plainview.
In neighboring Swisher County, when Barry Evans began farming, in 1992, greater than 80 p.c of his land was irrigated. At present it’s 10 p.c, and he hopes it is going to be zero subsequent 12 months. Evans is an evangelist for strategies that maximize each drop from the sky. From the start, he opted to not until his land, which disrupts the soil’s moisture-holding properties. As a substitute he rotates cotton and grain sorghum, and after the harvest, he leaves the plant stubble, which helps retain water. Not a lot of his neighbors have adopted his lead. “I’m the crazy guy in the county,” he mentioned, laughing.
Dryland farming requires Evans to topic himself to the vagaries of Mom Nature. In some years, together with the hellish 2011 and 2021, he fails to supply something marketable. Rising much less with much less could also be a troublesome gross sales pitch, however Evans says it’s one born of necessity. “With irrigation, this is such a good place to farm,” he mentioned. “Without irrigation, we’re not very productive at all, so a farmer has to change his mindset.”
For twenty years, a Texas Tech College challenge has tracked knowledge from 45 farmers, together with Schur and Evans, to determine how they’ll scale back pressure on the aquifer whereas nonetheless being profitable. Many contributors use soil-moisture probes to assist information selections on when and the place to water. One system, developed by an Israeli start-up, can take real-time measurements as an irrigation machine’s thousand-foot-long arm sweeps throughout a area and rapidly generates suggestions for the farmer. A man in a feed-store hat could begin his day with a cup of espresso and an iPhone loaded with AI-generated intelligence on the situation of his grain sorghum.
An irrigation system on a cotton farm close to Plainview. {Photograph} by Jeff Wilson Schur evaluating his cotton crop. {Photograph} by Jeff Wilson
However know-how alone received’t save the Ogallala, says Brent Auvermann, the director of Texas A&M AgriLife Analysis in Amarillo. Effectivity positive aspects in irrigation haven’t led to an total lower in pumping. As a substitute, farmers have a tendency to make use of their water “savings” to develop manufacturing throughout extra acres. That could be a rational response in a risky enterprise with slim revenue margins, nevertheless it doesn’t resolve the underlying drawback. “A widget cannot save water,” Auvermann mentioned. “Only a human decision-maker can save water.”
In Kansas, he factors out, farmers have experimented with voluntary associations, collectively agreeing to chop their water utilization. One group lowered their irrigation by about 23 p.c, slowing the aquifer’s decline from two ft per 12 months to simply half a foot. In japanese New Mexico, a nonprofit pays farmers to not pump, partly to maintain the faucets flowing in cities depending on the Ogallala for consuming water.
Such aggressive conservation measures don’t appear to be on the horizon in Texas. In the meantime, more-extreme warmth and erratic rainfall will doubtless solely enhance farmers’ reliance on irrigation. A 2019 research by researchers on the College of Nebraska and Clemson College, in South Carolina, discovered that the speed of groundwater depletion within the Ogallala might enhance by as a lot as 50 p.c by 2050.
Schur isn’t satisfied that the climate modifications he’s seen are due to local weather change, however he is aware of they’re occurring. “We’re gonna adapt to the change somehow, some way,” he mentioned. “It may not be in the fashion that we like, but we’ll adapt.”
This text initially appeared within the August 2024 difficulty of Texas Month-to-month with the headline “Stop Irrigating Thirsty Crops.” Subscribe at this time.
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