| | | Michigan counts nearly 11,000 agricultural wells, 3,800 of them installed from 2010 to 2020. Once concentrated in southwest Michigan, high-volume irrigation wells have spread north as far as Antrim County, and through central Michigan. © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
|
As Drought Grips American West, Irrigation Becomes Selling Point for Michigan
At age 60, Larry Walton was raised on his family’s 500-acre farm in St. Joseph County, along Michigan’s border with Indiana. Like other growers engaged in American agriculture, St. Joseph’s farmers count on reasonable stability in weather, soil, labor, costs, and commodity prices to reduce the inherent risks all farmers face.
Oh, and one more essential risk reducer: water. Indeed, on the Walton farm, and all across St. Joseph County, ample reserves of water assure farm prosperity. Specifically, high-capacity irrigation wells that pump at least 100,000 gallons a day – typically over 1 million gallons daily — and apply it at scheduled intervals and in precise quantities to reduce risk. Walton has five wells. There are at least 1,000 more spread across the county, irrigating 123,000 acres, or half of all county cropland. St. Joseph, according to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture farm census, is the second-most heavily irrigated county east of the Mississippi River.
But here’s the challenge in St. Joseph and throughout a state with one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water, and an expanding agriculture economy that delivers nearly $9 billion annually to 46,500 farms: is the contemporary balance between farm prosperity and sufficient water secure over time? Will there be enough water for Michigan’s thriving farm sector, and for every other use of a natural resource growing scarcer across much of the rest of the nation? |
|
| | | The Tigris River watershed is shared by Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
|
| Water Groups Lauded a Side Agreement at the Paris Climate Conference. Then It Languished.
For years, water had been an afterthought at the annual UN climate conferences, even though deficits and surpluses of water are two of the most damaging ways in which people experience a warming planet.
The breakthrough happened in 2015, at the landmark conference in Paris. Though it was not mentioned in the final agreement, water was a lively discussion topic as well as the subject of position papers and side agreements. Businesses pledged to measure and report their water risks. Consideration of water “became relatively serious,” one attendee said at the time.
One victory was the Paris Pact, an outline for managing water and adapting to climate change according to the contours of natural river drainages.
Six years later, diplomats and campaigners are preparing for another critical climate conference. When they meet in Glasgow starting on October 31, the primary goal is to strengthen commitments from the Paris meeting so that the planet has a better chance at preventing catastrophic warming.
Water advocates, for their part, are positioning themselves to maintain a spot on the agenda. As they do so, it’s instructive to review past outcomes. What became of the Paris Pact?
In context: In Climate Talks, Plans to Keep Planet from Overheating Should Not Ignore Water 'The Opportunity Is Now': Water Advocates View Upcoming UN Climate Conference as Moment of Relevance |
|
| HotSpots H2O: Years-Long Drought Pushes Brazil to the Brink Parched conditions have gripped Brazil for nearly a decade. Now, as a historic drought stretches into its third year, the country’s economy, energy systems, and environment are tearing at the seams.
In much of the country’s agricultural heartland, soil water levels are a third of what is needed to sustain healthy crops. This year alone, the drought has ravaged the coffee industry, cutting yields by one billion pounds of beans, or 25 percent. What’s more, key reservoirs are shrinking, leaving officials scrambling to make up a hydroelectric power deficit.
Scientists attribute the drought’s severity to climate change, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, and the La Niña weather pattern, a cycle caused by natural oscillations in oceanic and atmospheric temperatures which tends to desiccate Argentina and southern Brazil every few years. |
|
| What’s Up With Water- October 4, 2021
For the news you need to start the week, tune into “What’s Up With Water” fresh on Monday’s on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, and SoundCloud. Featured coverage from this week's episode of What's Up With Water looks at: In the western United States, the lasting effects of wildfires are becoming a way of life, according to Kaiser Health News. In other U.S. news, last week insurance premiums rose for homes at risk of flooding. Getting an accurate sense of flood risk is a problem worldwide. Many countries have scarce or unreliable data for which properties have flooded. This week Circle of Blue reports on the growth of irrigated agriculture in southern Michigan as farm districts in the western states are rattled by drought. |
|
| From Circle of Blue's Archives: |
|
| | | Farm fields in Illinois glow in the early morning light. Illinois is one of many states in the eastern United States where irrigated farming is expanding. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue |
|
|
The canals, reservoirs, pumps, and pivoting sprinklers that transformed the American West in the 20th century from desert and grassland into the nation’s primary fruit and vegetable producing region are spreading eastward, Circle of Blue reported in 2014.
From the Deep South, the Mississippi River Delta, and across the Midwest, the basic equipment of modern irrigated agriculture is producing more reliable harvests, more productive use of scarce water supplies, and bigger paychecks. Just as in the West, eastern farmers also say irrigation is a tool for managing risk, providing insurance against erratic rainfall and rising temperatures brought by a warming world. Between 1997, when irrigation in the West peaked, and 2012, irrigated acreage in Georgia increased 46 percent. In both Illinois and Mississippi, the increase was 49 percent. In Indiana, 71 percent; in Michigan, 45 percent. And South Carolina and Tennessee, starting from a much smaller base, grew 79 percent and 212 percent, respectively, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2012 Census of Agriculture. Technical specialists, though, warn that as irrigation equipment and practices are more widely adopted in the eastern half of the nation they have the potential to stress rivers, drain aquifers, and pollute streams with fertilizers. State water management officials also are concerned that the growing use of irrigation will heighten the competition for water in regions that never before experienced tensions over water, and where water use and management regulations anticipated that rainfall would supply most of the water needed by farmers. |
|
|
|
