Pain in the Grain

Sure we see out-of-season fruits and vegetables with foreign labels on them, meat-lovers are no strangers to beef from Argentina or even lamb from New Zealand and tons of the shrimp we eat come from shrimp farms in Thailand, but grain, that mainstay of American agriculture, may soon become an import of necessity. For all the poo-pooing of man-made global warming as a giant manipulative governmental hoax, the United States is absolutely shuddering under the impact of steadily rising temperatures and rapidly dwindling water supplies. Those who oppose environmental regulation cite either the unaffordable costs to correct this trend in a down economy, believe environmental regulation is anti-business at a time where need to incentivize job creation with vastly less government regulation, think that whatever is happening is nature not man or that we really shouldn’t worry about it because after the Great Flood God promised mankind never to impose such massive global disaster ever and again and will “fix” the problem in His own way.

It doesn’t take much in the way of climate change to alter the capacity of the land to grow designated crops. UCLA Professor Jared Diamond, in his very popular book Guns, Germs and Steel tells us that the reason civilization moved along an east-west ribbon around the globe was because when people moved from nomadic hunter-gathering to stationary agriculture, the crops they planted only prospered in the same latitude, failing when attempts were made to plant those same crops 500 miles farther north or south. If you look at a map of the Middle East, where civilization began and moved directly east or west, you can easily see the pattern of the early stages of the growth of civilization. If indeed global warming effects more than the equivalent of 500 miles of climatic difference, then we should in fact be witnessing the nascent stages of regional crop failures and a general notion that old land will no longer be suited for the crops that have been traditionally grown there.

We even have to look beyond the impact of the number of increasingly-intense hurricanes in the Atlantic and the Gulf, rising oceans claiming low-lying lands, the acceleration of heat and storms generally such as the one that has recently broiled the east from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. after an intense destructive wind-rain swath and record-breaking temperatures, or even the wild fires in the southwest that have devastated vast tracts of woodland in Arizona, California, Texas, New Mexico and most recently Colorado. We need to look directly at the land that grows our feed grain, constitutes one of America’s most vital exports and provides the very bread and corn we put on our tables.

Let’s start with Texas, where the ground is so dry that once fertile farms are drying out and cracking like a barren moonscape from drought. “[In late May,] a panel of specialists [met] at the 2012 Texas Water Summit hosted by the University of Texas at Austin’s Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science... [Their survey found that as of] October 2011, eighty-eight percent of the state was rated as experiencing exceptional drought, putting heavy stress on many of Texas’ water systems. Ron Ellis, a representative of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) Water Availability Division, said that over fifteen first-time water rights priority calls were made leading to the suspension and curtailment of over 12,000 water rights in the state. Water systems with less than 180 days of water supply remaining were designated as High Priority Public water systems, and the TCEQ was compelled to provide a series of seven emergency planning workshops around the state... And there was less water for farming and ranching. The increasing trend of water reallocation from agricultural uses to municipal and industrial users over the last decade has considerably decreased water supplies available for agriculture, the panel said. This comes as demand increases particularly due to rice crop irrigation needs.” A StateImpact report from NPR.com, May 25^th. That drought is anything but over, and water resources in Texas are stretched to the limit.

North Texas supplies rainwater to replenish the Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground source of water in the United States (which extends from South Dakota), 174,000 square miles that feeds 27% of the irrigated land in the United States. Texas’ drought has resulted in the largest decline in that water table in 25 years. Combined with the used of electric and turbine-powered pumping that began in large scale in the 1930s, the Aquifer is losing water faster than it can be replaced. “The [United States Geological Survey] estimated that total water storage was about 2,925,000,000 acre feet (3,608 km³) in 2005. This is a decline of about 253,000,000 acre feet (312 km³) (or 9%) since substantial ground-water irrigation development began, in the 1950s... At some places, the water table was measured to drop more than five feet (1.5 m) per year at the time of maximum extraction. In extreme cases, the deepening of wells was required to reach the steadily falling water table. The water table has been drained (dewatered) in some places, such as the Texas Panhandle. Using treated, recycled sources of water in agriculture is one approach to safeguarding the future of the aquifer. Another method of reducing the amount of water use is changing to crops that require less water, such as sunflowers.” Wikipedia. Is it “if” or “when” that water source will run dry?

But it’s not just the grain-land under and around the Ogallala Aquifer that is suffering. “Across a wide stretch of the Midwest, sweltering temperatures and a lack of rain are threatening what had been expected to be the nation’s largest corn crop in generations… Already, some farmers in Illinois and Missouri have given up on parched and stunted fields, mowing them over. National experts say parts of five corn-growing states, including Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, are experiencing severe or extreme drought conditions. And in at least nine states, conditions in one-fifth to one-half of cornfields have been deemed poor or very poor, federal authorities reported [in early July], a notable shift from the high expectations of just a month ago.” New York Times, July 4^th.

Are our expectations real that while we may have depleted much of our petroleum reserves and extracted the majority of our mineral wealth, we sure have ample food supplies and will be able to feed ourselves and fuel our exports for some time to come? Can we really afford to continue to ignore the warning signs?

I’m Peter Dekom, and while this is a global problem that only global solutions can solve, shouldn’t we at least accelerate our own efforts to save ourselves by implementing vastly more time-sensitive and tangible goals?