Excerpt
Many farmers are waterbusting their land, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to develop and maintain irrigation capacity. This investment proceeds even though farm prices stagger under commodity surpluses and sagging demand. The nation, with sizable acreage reduction programs in 25 of the last 30 years, has spent more than $50 billion on these and related programs during this period to reduce production (3, arid data from Leroy Rude, Economic Research Service). The expand ed irrigation produces more program crops, while acreage reduction programs in these regions and elsewhere attempt to curb production. The result is a sizable slippage in the intended effects of commodity programs.
Waterbusting also seriously depletes water resources. Groundwater mining for irrigation reduces the nation's water supply by 21 billion gallons a day, about a fourth of total groundwater withdrawals. Large supplies are consumed and not replenished. Groundwater levels in central Arizona, an important cotton-producing area, are falling 7 to 10 feet a year (10). Some irrigated areas in the Texas High Plains are reverting to dryland agriculture because pumping water from greater depths has become too expensive.
Waterbusting is not the only issue spotlighting the consistency problems among federal commodity …
Footnotes
Melvin L. Cotner, 6617 Goldsboro Road, Falls Church, Virginia 22042, is an agricultural economist and served as deputy administrator of the US. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service prior to his retirement in 1986.
- Copyright 1987 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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