<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/5/1620236440594.png" alt=" Center pivot irrigation sprinklers water a wheat field in Finney County. David Condos / Kansas News Service" />
 <figcaption> Center pivot irrigation sprinklers water a wheat field in Finney County. David Condos / Kansas News Service</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>“Instead of bragging about bushels per acre, they’re talking about how many bushels per inch of water that they got.”</h2>By DAVID CONDOS <a href="https://www.hppr.org/post/farmers-trying-save-ogallala-aquifer-face-tension-peers-their-profits-are-improving">Kansas News Service</a>HAYS — A few years ago, Stuart Beckman drove
 65 miles with a neighbor to attend a wedding in Saint Francis in the 
northwest corner of Kansas.The two farmers weren’t particularly welcome.&nbsp;“They found out where we were from,” Beckman said, “and they just about ran us out of there.”Not surprisingly for this part of the High Plains, the trouble started over water.“We’re
 these dumb (farmers) that are thinking we can get by with an acre-foot 
of water and that's crazy,” Beckman said, recalling the reception he and
 his neighbor got in Saint Francis. “‘You guys ought to go back home.’”Beckman farms two counties away. And there, folks had formed the state’s first <a href="https://agriculture.ks.gov/divisions-programs/dwr/managing-kansas-water-resources/local-enhanced-management-areas/sheridan-county-6-lema">local enhanced management area</a>, or LEMA — a 99-square-mile patch of northwest Kansas prairie where farmers set <a href="https://www.hutchnews.com/news/20170921/what-is-lema">strict limits</a>
 on the amount of water they can use for irrigation. It’s that idea — 
that a farm operation would no longer have the freedom to use as much 
water as it can pump from the ground — that soured the wedding.The LEMA’s irrigation restrictions represent a last-ditch effort to save the region’s <a href="http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/pic18/">most critical</a>
 water source: the Ogallala Aquifer. And in a place where agriculture is
 king and rainfall is scarce, the path to any kind of curb on irrigation
 took <a href="http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.wat.011">more than 100 years</a>.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/5/1620236513251.png" alt=" A Hamilton County farmer uses flood irrigation in his field, 1939. Credit Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security AdministrationOffice of War Information Black-and-White Negatives" />
 <figcaption> A Hamilton County farmer uses flood irrigation in his field, 1939. Credit Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Farm Security AdministrationOffice of War Information Black-and-White Negatives</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>Clear gold</h2>High Plains homesteaders settled on land so dry it was essentially a <a href="http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.ii.032">desert</a>. Western Kansas gets about <a href="https://climate.k-state.edu/basics/">half</a> as much precipitation as the eastern side of the state. So, farmers needed a way to water their crops.&nbsp;The
 solution was beneath their feet. The Ogallala is North America’s 
largest aquifer, a layer of sand and gravel saturated with water that 
stretches more than <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-high-plains-aquifer-groundwater-levels-continue-decline">175,000 square miles</a> under eight states.&nbsp;As the region recovered from the Dust Bowl era, farmers used <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-center-pivot-irrigation-brought-dust-bowl-back-to-life-180970243/">new technologies</a>
 like pumps powered by car engines to tap into the aquifer like never 
before. At first, wells were used largely for flood irrigation, where 
water flows directly into the fields. It wasn’t very efficient — flood 
irrigation wastes about half of its supply to <a href="https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/earthkind/drought/drought-management-for-commercial-horticulture/the-way-we-irrigate-can-and-should-make-a-difference/">evaporation</a> and <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/irrigation-methods-furrow-or-flood-irrigation?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects">runoff</a> — but it worked.The
 Ogallala helped transform western Kansas from an agricultural wasteland
 into America’s breadbasket. But after generations of being tapped to 
irrigate the High Plains, parts of it are beginning to run dry.&nbsp;Roughly a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/110/37/E3477">third</a> of the water under Kansas has disappeared. In parts of southwest Kansas, <a href="http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Publications/Bulletins/ED10/04_occur.html">more than half</a> of the aquifer’s supply is already gone.&nbsp;Consider the stakes. Kansas grain harvests fuel the state’s feedlots, where <a href="https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/catl0120.pdf">2.5 million cattle</a> consume more than <a href="https://kscorn.com/livestock/">6.5 billion pounds</a> of corn a year. Those feedlots drive the meatpacking industry that sustains the largest cities in western Kansas.&nbsp;It all adds up to <a href="https://www.agriculture.ks.gov/docs/default-source/ag-marketing/ag-contribution-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=10dc92c1_4">billions</a>
 of dollars for the state’s economy. And that’s on top of the drinking 
water the aquifer provides for hundreds of thousands of Kansans from <a href="http://www.cityofgoodland.org/files/2015-CCR.pdf">Goodland</a> to <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/news/equus-beds-aquifer-water-quality-nearly-unchanged-between-2001-and-2016">Wichita</a>.“Water’s
 critical to this state,” said Rex Buchanan, director emeritus of the 
Kansas Geological Survey. “Depletion of the Ogallala is probably the 
most important natural resource issue facing Kansas.”<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/5/1620236596211.png" alt=" Rex Buchanan of the Kansas Geological Survey measures the aquifer's depth at a well in Morton County. Credit David Condos / Kansas News Service" />
 <figcaption> Rex Buchanan of the Kansas Geological Survey measures the aquifer's depth at a well in Morton County. Credit David Condos / Kansas News Service</figcaption>
 </figure><h2>Precision agriculture</h2>Irrigation technology 
has come a long way over the past century. Where farmers used to guess 
how much water their fields needed, they can now plant <a href="https://extension.umn.edu/irrigation/soil-moisture-sensors-irrigation-scheduling">remote probes</a> in the soil to measure real-time ground moisture. They can use <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/191580774.pdf">electromagnetic sleds</a> to map the unique characteristics of each section of soil and monitor thousands of acres of <a href="https://water.unl.edu/article/agricultural-irrigation/considerations-adopting-variable-rate-irrigation">customized irrigation</a> from their phones.&nbsp;Today’s
 precision agriculture technology allows farmers to pinpoint exactly 
where water is needed and where irrigation is delivered. It’s already 
helping re-tool the giant center pivot sprinklers that shower the 
plains.&nbsp;Every incremental step toward even greater water 
efficiency in farming has the potential for a monumental impact. That’s 
because the center pivots on Kansas farms use <a href="https://agriculture.ks.gov/divisions-programs/dwr/water-appropriation/water-use-reporting">much more water</a> than the sinks and toilets in Kansas towns.&nbsp;“If
 you go and actually add up the math on how many flushes you'd have to 
save to equal what one inch of water on a pivot is,” said Weston McCary,
 who teaches precision agriculture at Northwest Kansas Technical 
College, “it’s obscene.”&nbsp;If the average farmer in Sheridan County cut water use by one inch across <a href="https://ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/ksah/ag/AgAveSize.pdf">1,610 acres</a> of irrigated cropland, it would save over 43 million gallons.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/5/1620236642237.png" alt=" The growth of irrigated land in Kansas from 1940-2010, with the aquifer's boundary outlined in black. Credit Kansas Geological Survey" />
 <figcaption> The growth of irrigated land in Kansas from 1940-2010, with the aquifer's boundary outlined in black. Credit Kansas Geological Survey</figcaption>
 </figure>But getting farmers to take that leap can be a challenge.“Throughout
 the whole history of agriculture is the mindset, ‘OK, I'm doing it this
 way, this is what I know works.’” said Shannon Kenyon, an environmental
 scientist who oversees the northwest Kansas <a href="https://www.gmd4.org/">groundwater management district</a>. “So when you start talking about change, that becomes a very scary concept.”So the district hopes to tempt farmers with <a href="https://www.gmd4.org/New/2021_PROBE_COST_SHARE.pdf">$1,000 incentives</a> for trying out new technology and with evidence that other people like them have made more money by pumping up less water.<h2>Culture shift</h2>The Sheridan County LEMA forced farmers to cut irrigation by 20%. But the <a href="http://kda-dwr-updates.org/recent-studies-provide-more-evidence-on-sheridan-6-lema-success/">results</a> showed that farmers ended up decreasing their water use by 31%.&nbsp;“It seems really encouraging,” said Jillian Deines, a Stanford researcher who led the <a href="https://github.com/jdeines/Deines_etal_LEMA_SALUS/blob/master/manuscript/Deines_etal_2021_WRR_Lema_preformatting_withSupplement.pdf">Michigan State University study</a> on the LEMA, “because it seems like the program has both increased profits and increased water savings.”The
 study found that, yes, less irrigation meant slightly smaller harvests.
 But the money farmers saved on their energy bills by pumping less water
 was four times more than the amount of money they lost due to decreased
 production.“Instead of bragging about bushels per acre,” said 
Kenyon of the northwest Kansas water district, “they’re talking about 
how many bushels per inch of water that they got.”Brett Oelke is
 one of those farmers. His 9,000 acres in Sheridan County present a 
telling case study on the program’s financial impact because he farms 
land on both sides of the LEMA’s boundary line.&nbsp;“We realized 
that, ‘Hey, we're making more money inside the LEMA,” said Oelke, who 
has since cut his water use even on parts of his farm that fall outside 
the districts’ strict limits. “I just wish we would have done it 20 
years earlier.”More importantly, Oelke has seen a dramatic 
change in how his neighbors think and talk about water. Sharing how 
much, or how little, water they’ve used on their farms has become part 
of everyday conversation.“Prior to that,” said Oelke, “nobody knew how much water they pump, ever.”Many farmers, including Oelke, have found ways to convert a majority of their property to <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/dryland-farming">dryland farming</a>,
 which uses soil moisture conservation to grow crops with no irrigation 
at all. Others have swapped hydration-heavy crops like corn for ones 
that require less water, such as cotton and sorghum.<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/5/1620236686473.png" alt="A Sheridan County farmer sits on his tractor, 1939. Credit Library of Congress" />
 <figcaption>A Sheridan County farmer sits on his tractor, 1939. Credit Library of Congress</figcaption>
 </figure>But making the shift toward a water conservation mindset hasn’t 
always been smooth. When the northwest Kansas water district moved to 
expand irrigation limits to a <a href="https://gmd4.org/LEMA.html">broader area</a>, it faced a <a href="https://agriculture.ks.gov/docs/default-source/dwr-water-appropriation-documents/friesen-memorandum-decision-101519.pdf?sfvrsn=7bfd89c1_0">lawsuit</a> from <a href="https://www.agriculture.ks.gov/docs/default-source/dwr-water-appropriation-forms/petition_for_judicial_review_gmd4lema_wexhs_20180613.pdf?sfvrsn=c3786c1_0">dozens</a> of farmers who said it infringed on their water rights. The limits held up in court and now cover parts of 10 counties.&nbsp;Beckman,
 that farmer who nearly got run out of a wedding for backing irrigation 
rules, still hears from other farmers in neighboring areas who call him 
crazy for thinking he can continue to produce good corn on the High 
Plains with less water. But he hopes they’re watching.&nbsp;“If we keep proving it to them, I don't see a problem,” said Beckman. “It's just a no-brainer.”David Condos covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can follow him on Twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/davidcondos" target="_blank">@davidcondos</a>.

Farmers trying to save Ogallala Aquifer face tension from peers