Costs draining farms

Cost of natural gas continues to drive farmers away from irrigation

KANSAS – Flood irrigation pipe lies in a heap next to the emerging wheat field.

Larry Kepley is hoping someone comes by sometime wanting to purchase some of it.

He has no use for it anymore, after all. Last year, he only pumped from his water well for two days before turning it off for good.

The Ulysses-area farmer never really imagined it coming to this when he first came back to the farm in the 1970s – the day when it would cost too much to irrigate his crops, shutting down the wells his grandfather and father first drilled in the 1940s.

His grandfather was the third in Grant County to get a water right to tap into the Ogallala Aquifer and underground reservoir beneath the High Plains.

Others followed, turning the arid prairie into an oasis of sorts. But natural gas, one method used to draw water to the surface, is too costly these days. And even without irrigating, Kepley figures he could lose $35 an acre this year because of soaring energy prices.

Hutchinson News (Kansas)