Groundwater Depletion Threatens Great Plains Farming

In the heart of the country, Great Plains farmers and ranchers produce a quarter of all US crops and 40% of our beef, but they rely on a resource that has been slowly drying up, water. Stephanie Sy reports from Kansas for our ongoing series on climate change and water, Tipping Point.

So, this is a small glimpse of what the Dust Bowl type situation was.

Brant Peterson farms grain in dry Southwestern Kansas where erratic winds can whip dust into the sky at a moment’s notice. It’s difficult land to farm, but Peterson is committed.

My wife and I are both fifth generation farmers raising the sixth generation. We’ve been through a lot of droughts. I won’t say that it’s any worse than anybody else had, but I just do know that what I’ve had to deal with has been tough.

Farms like Peterson’s are a vital part of the global food system. Much of the grain he grows heads to the massive cattle feedlots that surround him in Western Kansas, powering the state’s multi-billion dollar beef industry. Nearly a quarter of all the steaks on our dinner plates come from Kansas.

We are completely dependent on agriculture. It is the lifeblood of our communities.

Katie Durham runs the Groundwater Management District in West Central Kansas.

You just drive around town and anything from our banks to the implement dealers, anything that you see in town is all tightly related to agriculture.

And the agricultural industry here relies on one increasingly scarce resource.

Without groundwater, we would really cease to exist.

Nearly all the groundwater in Western Kansas is tapped from the Ogallala Aquifer, a massive reservoir that runs under parts of eight states from South Dakota to Texas. But as the darker color on this map shows, parts of the aquifer, especially in Texas, Oklahoma and Western Kansas, are in deep decline. That’s a problem because the economy here relies on water-intensive crops, namely corn.

We don’t have the streams. It’s raining right now a little bit, and that’s kind of a little bit unusual, but what we do have is the Ogallala Aquifer underneath our feet.

Brownie Wilson of the Kansas Geological Survey regularly measures the water levels at wells like this one throughout Kansas. He’s seen some wells drop more than 100 feet since 2001.

What we’re doing now is not sustainable. We track, every year the water levels are dropping. I’ve seen more places where the aquifer just physically cannot support that pumping demands anymore.

Differentiation between the different layers of the aquifer [inaudible 00:02:40].

The depletion isn’t uniform. Durham describes the aquifer’s topography as an egg carton.

You have these pits and valleys and it’s very, very dynamic and that’s why we call it saturated thickness. And so, some areas are going to have more saturated thickness than others. Likewise, some areas are going to have more decline.

Unfortunately, Peterson is in one of those areas in Southwest Kansas, seeing the state’s steepest declines in groundwater.

I’ve abandoned over half the wells on my farm. They’re not feasible to pump anymore. Now, if I wanted to be a water baron, yeah, I could pump all year long and make something happen out of it, but I can’t sleep at night doing that.

Because you know how that ends?

I know where it ends.

Does that end with the end of livelihoods?

Yeah, but what worries me more is the communities and the people. That’s what you see suffering. You see the communities drying up with the water.

The overdraft of the Ogallala Aquifer is the result of a whole series of factors.

Climate scientist Peter Gleick co-founded The Pacific Institute, a global water think tank based in California.

In part, it’s because farmers have brought a tremendous amount of land into production, and that requires a lot of water. In part, it’s because climate change is reducing the amount of water going to recharge those aquifers.

According to Gleick, rising temperatures mean crops require more water to grow, even while more intense heat causes rainfall to evaporate before it can reach the ground. There’s also a long-established link between climate change and drought, like the one Kansas experienced in 2022, causing record low precipitation in seven western communities.

A lot of what we’re seeing in the Ogallala Aquifer, the depletion of groundwater, we also see, for example, in the Central Valley of California, where every year we see massive overdraft of groundwater. And in southern part of the San Joaquin Valley in California, we’re going to see a lot of land come out of production. We have to bring groundwater back into balance or there’s going to be serious disruptions of our food system.

While past generations of farmers saw heavy water use as key to success, attitudes are changing.

The green zone is the optimal range where the moisture ought to be for this crop.

Steve Compton grows wheat and other grains on thousands of acres in Scott County, Kansas, using a tablet to carefully manage his sprinklers.

In years past, when it would rain, everybody would just leave their systems on and let them run. And now, everybody’s so conscious of that, when we can get supplemental rain, there’s no reason to keep them running. I like the way those spin around and alternate those drops around.

Compton, who became a quadriplegic after a car accident, has always relied on technology to run the farm with his father, Ted.

We can look at that thing on the internet and we know instantly what the level of moisture is within that ground out there. So, we know after a rain, whether we can turn off for a while and conserve some water.

Even though none of the wells on his farm have run dry, Compton, along with all the other farmers in his county and three neighboring counties, have committed to cutting their water use by up to 25%.

(06:07)
Katie Durham worked with farmers to pass local agreements to manage and implement water use reductions in her district following success with them in Northwestern Kansas.

People really saw this as an opportunity to take local control. I probably sat with a few hundred people, just having conversations about what this meant, how it would affect them, and I think really the big question was what is going to happen if we don’t do something?

For Compton, it’s about being a good steward of the land and resources.

The farmer loves the land and he loves what he does, and we’re going to do whatever we can to maintain that type of life and to be able to pass that on.

Back down in Southwest Kansas, which has seen the steepest declines, no restrictions are in place to control over-pumping.

Everybody has a right to drive themselves into bankruptcy, but somebody’s got to stop. Somebody’s got to back off. And so, that’s what I did, and I’ve sought other technologies to help me be more efficient. The challenge is the fun part. The sadness of, yeah, we’re losing the water. That’s what stinks.

He’s invested in a new irrigation system that uses water more efficiently, and he’s begun to replace thirsty corn crops with fields of sorghum, a resilient grain that can be used to feed cattle and people. Overall, Peterson has reduced his water use by 15%, and for him, that means his sons may have a shot at carrying on the family business.

Conserving the water is a big part of them having the opportunity to be successful here, to have a sound economy around them to support the operation, and that would be fantastic.

Whether or not the voluntary conservation efforts of farmers will be enough to preserve the way of life here, remains as uncertain as any given day’s weather in Western Kansas. For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Stephanie Sy.