Impact on Agriculture of the Declining Ogallala Aquifer

The decline of the Southern portion of the Ogallala Aquifer, which is considered an exhaustible resource, is expected to have a dramatic impact on irrigated farmers and the regional economy dependent on the revenues produced from irrigated agriculture. This area underlies the southern Great Plains region from Kansas through Texas where many irrigated crops are produced annually including cotton, corn, grain sorghum, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, sunflowers, and alfalfa.

This concentration of agricultural activities overlying the aquifer will likely not be sustainable as aquifer levels continue to decline due to the amount of water extracted annually for commodity production. Irrigation activity was analyzed in a total of 91 counties including 12 in Colorado, 32 in Kansas, 45 in Texas, and 2 in New Mexico. The county-level economic, production, and hydrologic parameters were used to simulate a representative producer's choice decisions over a 60-year planning horizon. The optimal levels of land allocations, water applications, net revenue per acre, and saturated thickness were derived for each county and each year.

The results indicated that producers would respond to the declining saturated thickness and limited water supplies by reducing irrigated acreage rather than reducing the water application rate per irrigated acre. This finding is consistent with the observation that irrigators typically choose water-intensive crops over water-extensive crops even with limited water supplies.