Drought vs Irrigation in Nebraska

A few weeks ago, I wrote a guest post on the Nebraska Farm Bureau blog about the importance of irrigation to Nebraska agriculture and how farmers are continually becoming more efficient with the use of groundwater. And even though it was pretty dry when I wrote about it, I didn't know yet that we were on the brink of the worst drought in at least two decades.

But the picture below really illustrates how important irrigation is to us. These two fields border each other, one completely dryland and the other completely irrigated. The field on top was being shredded today, and the stalks made it look like it was late October. The field on bottom looks fantastic, and should easily yield better than 200 bushels per acre.

Without the abundance of water provided by the Ogallala Aquifer and Nebraska's other irrigation sources, our mowers would be used a lot more than our combines this year. And with the drought tightening its grip across the rest of the Corn Belt (see CNN's coverage at Brian Scott's farm in Indiana), being able to irrigate our crops becomes a lot more important for the entire supply chain. 

Irrigating is a grind, but I'll take the stress of irrigation over the stress of watching crops burn up any day of the week.