What do we consume every day? What is required for life on this planet? The answer is WATER.
Like so many things, we take water for granted until we no longer have enough. Currently, there are water shortages and droughts around the world. This is nothing new; it happens all the time. Try farming in the Australian Outback. Unfortunately, it is also happening in places that traditionally did not have such worries. That is causing some people concern.
Where I live in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada, there is usually sufficient water available for crops. It is not a common practice to see a farmer irrigating fields. The majority of irrigation that does occur in the Fraser Valley is on the fruit and vegetable crops.
If, however, you drive a couple of hours further into the interior of the province large-scale irrigation equipment starts to appear. Here there are about 370,000 acres of forage being irrigated.
If you compare our irrigation practices to those used in the state of Kansas, for example, you quickly see the differences in farming practices. British Columbia is about 4.5 times the size of Kansas, yet British Columbia's 465, 000 acres under irrigation pales in comparison to Kansas's 2.2 million acres.
At one time Kansas was considered an unacceptable place to farm. They found the area to be just too dry. Then they discovered the Ogallala Aquifer about 100 years ago. This vast underground lake of sorts stretches from Texas to South Dakota. The Ogallala Aquifer is under eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico) and covers an area of about 174,000 square miles. The volume of water present is similar to that contained by Lake Huron. The aquifer allowed farmers to easily and cost-effectively supplement the natural water received in the area. The water was close to the surface and easily accessed by drilling wells. Almost all the water in the Ogallala Aquifer is used for irrigation. It permitted the farmers to grow bountiful fields of crops not native to this region. It looked like an endless supply of cheap water.
Then they started to monitor the aquifer closely. What they discovered was shocking. The aquifer was slowly drying up. Years of wasting the water had resulted in the water level receding at a rate of up to about five feet per year. Even after taking steps to improve water usage and reduce the number of acres irrigated the level still did not recover.
Like so many things, we take water for granted until we no longer have enough. Currently, there are water shortages and droughts around the world. This is nothing new; it happens all the time. Try farming in the Australian Outback. Unfortunately, it is also happening in places that traditionally did not have such worries. That is causing some people concern.
Where I live in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, Canada, there is usually sufficient water available for crops. It is not a common practice to see a farmer irrigating fields. The majority of irrigation that does occur in the Fraser Valley is on the fruit and vegetable crops.
If, however, you drive a couple of hours further into the interior of the province large-scale irrigation equipment starts to appear. Here there are about 370,000 acres of forage being irrigated.
If you compare our irrigation practices to those used in the state of Kansas, for example, you quickly see the differences in farming practices. British Columbia is about 4.5 times the size of Kansas, yet British Columbia's 465, 000 acres under irrigation pales in comparison to Kansas's 2.2 million acres.
At one time Kansas was considered an unacceptable place to farm. They found the area to be just too dry. Then they discovered the Ogallala Aquifer about 100 years ago. This vast underground lake of sorts stretches from Texas to South Dakota. The Ogallala Aquifer is under eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico) and covers an area of about 174,000 square miles. The volume of water present is similar to that contained by Lake Huron. The aquifer allowed farmers to easily and cost-effectively supplement the natural water received in the area. The water was close to the surface and easily accessed by drilling wells. Almost all the water in the Ogallala Aquifer is used for irrigation. It permitted the farmers to grow bountiful fields of crops not native to this region. It looked like an endless supply of cheap water.
Then they started to monitor the aquifer closely. What they discovered was shocking. The aquifer was slowly drying up. Years of wasting the water had resulted in the water level receding at a rate of up to about five feet per year. Even after taking steps to improve water usage and reduce the number of acres irrigated the level still did not recover.
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