{"id":17107,"date":"2023-08-24T06:22:17","date_gmt":"2023-08-24T11:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17107"},"modified":"2023-08-24T06:54:45","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T11:54:45","slug":"climate-change-may-force-more-farmers-and-ranchers-to-consider-irrigation-at-a-steep-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=17107","title":{"rendered":"Climate change may force more farmers and ranchers to consider irrigation \u2014 at a steep cost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Texas ranch where Gilda Jackson trains and sells horses has been plagued by grasshoppers this year, a problem that only gets worse when the hatch quickens in times of heat and drought. Jackson watched this summer as the insects chewed through a 35-acre pasture she badly needs for hay; what they didn\u2019t destroy, the sun burned up.
Irrigation might have saved Jackson\u2019s hay, but she and her husband rejected the idea about 10 years ago over the cost: as much as $75,000 for a new well and all the equipment. But now \u2014 with an extended drought and\u00a0another U.S. heat wave this week\u00a0that will broil her land about an hour northwest of Dallas for days in 100-degree-plus temperatures \u2014 Jackson said she is \u201ckind of rethinking.\u201d
Many other farmers and ranchers in the U.S. might be forced to do the same in coming decades, according to recent research into the expected effects of the rising heat and more frequent weather extremes associated with climate change.
That\u2019s if they even can. Some places in the U.S. are already struggling with\u00a0groundwater depletion, such as California,\u00a0Arizona,\u00a0Nebraska and other parts of the central Plains.
\u201cThere\u2019s no surprise that in the future when it gets hotter and there\u2019s more demand for water, people are going to be using more water,\u201d said Jonathan Winter, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth College and an author on\u00a0a new study on future U.S. irrigation costs and benefits\u00a0in Communications Earth & Environment.
Winter and his team used a computer model to look at how heat and drought might affect crop production by the middle and end of this century, given multiple scenarios for the emissions of warming greenhouse gases. In places like California and Texas where \u201ceveryone is dropping their straw into the glass\u201d of groundwater, as Winter put it, current levels of irrigation won\u2019t be viable in the long term because there isn\u2019t enough water.
But use of irrigation may grow where groundwater supply isn\u2019t presently an issue.
In much of the Midwest, including the corn- and soybean-rich states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and the Dakotas, farmers might see a benefit in the next 50 years from installing irrigation infrastructure. That\u2019s an expensive investment, and whether it will pay off may depend on humans\u2019 ability to stem the worst effects of climate change. A worst-case scenario would involve one generation investing in costly irrigation equipment, only for the next to see them fail to keep crops alive through extreme heat and weather.
There are many irrigation methods for row crops, but the most common is pivot irrigation \u2014 the long strands of pipes mounted on wheels that are pulled in a circle around a water source to sprinkle water onto a field. The equipment can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus the cost of drilling a new well if needed, along with the electricity to pull up the water.
But if the system boosts yields and provides a return of $50 an acre or more, it can pay off well for a farmer, said Brady Brewer, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University.
While scientists are confident in the warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, precipitation is harder to nail down, especially in the Midwest, said Dave Gochis, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved with Winter\u2019s study.
Climate change produces more weather extremes, meaning both an increased risk of flash droughts \u2014 quick, intense periods of short-term heat and dry weather \u2014 and more heavy rain and flooding events as precipitation increases with more water in the atmosphere.
\u201cThat means we need to be more nimble and agile in how we manage water resources,\u201d Gochis said.
Brewer hasn\u2019t seen much increased interest in irrigation from Midwest farmers yet. So far, a surplus of water has been the bigger issue in many places, but if yields start showing losses in the coming years due to worsening heat and flash droughts, \u201cthat\u2019s when farmers will invest,\u201d he said.
Farmers who don\u2019t choose irrigation, for now, might cope by planning ahead.
They could choose different crops with different water needs from season to season or be compensated for fallowing fields in times of water stress. Or they might use tools like the one developed by North Carolina State researchers Sankar Arumugam, a professor, and Hemant Kumar, a Ph.D. candidate.
They recently helped create a computer modeling tool,\u00a0outlined in the journal Water Resources Research, which they hope will help farmers and water managers use a combination of seasonal forecasts and other data to find a sweet spot for balancing crop revenue and water use.
In the Southeast, where they focused their work and where water resources are plentiful, \u201cit\u2019s more of a proactive strategy\u201d for people who already have irrigation equipment, Arumugam said, \u201cso that we don\u2019t overexploit the resources that are in place.\u201d
Irrigation, used responsibly, can be part of adapting to climate change, but \u201cit\u2019s a moving target,\u201d Winter said.
He called for supporting farmers who have to make hard decisions as they adapt to climate change \u2014 for instance, training them to grow less water-intensive crops or giving them low-cost loans to improve irrigation efficiency.
But he also urged action to limit climate change\u2019s worst effects. Farmers need resources to make adjustments, but especially in the West, \u201cthere\u2019s only so much water,\u201d he said.
Upmanu Lall, director of the Columbia Water Center, said climate change isn\u2019t the only thing driving farmers\u2019 decisions. Lall, who wasn\u2019t involved in Winter\u2019s work, said crop insurance and government subsidies can push farming methods in one direction or another.
Brewer, the Purdue professor, agreed.
\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing is because we have crop insurance that reduces the farmers\u2019 risk, that\u2019s probably what\u2019s driving some of these farmers to plant soybeans or corn\u201d rather than more drought-tolerant crops such as wheat or sorghum in places like the western Plains, Brewer said.
He added that research shows if farmers have crop insurance and feel more secure in planting crops that use more water, that \u201cmay lead to higher irrigation uptake as well.\u201d
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The Texas ranch where Gilda Jackson trains and sells horses has been plagued by grasshoppers this year, a problem that only gets worse when the hatch quickens in times of heat and drought. Jackson watched this summer as the insects chewed through a 35-acre pasture she badly needs for hay; what they didn\u2019t destroy, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17110,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[4148,21914,21913],"class_list":["post-17107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ep","tag-climate-change","tag-farmers-and-ranchers","tag-irrigation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17107"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17111,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17107\/revisions\/17111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}