No More Land
We are now running out of additional land that can be planted to wheat!
During the past year, because of fear of shortage, the government first increased the wheat acreage allotment by 15 percent, and then later it increased it by another 15 percent.
But some farmers could not make even this increase because they simply did not have enough land! We actually have only a 26 percent increase in total wheat acreage.
Next year we will need even more wheat. Where will the land come from then — and in the years that follow?
Are you beginning to see why the picture is not as rosy as it might first appear?
But there is yet another major reason — equally as deceptive — as to why we may be able to produce a big crop even in the face of severe drought in many areas. That reason is irrigation.
Irrigation — the False Savior
In the thirties, when irrigation was little used, the effects of drought were felt immediately. Not so today. Today lush, green fields of irrigated wheat stand right beside fields which are powder dry four to six feet deep. The irrigated fields give a certain percentage of the ground a cover, and as long as the wind doesn't blow too hard, no one really notices the seriousness of the drought.
Yes, irrigation gives a false sense of security. It deceives people into thinking that all is well when all is decidedly not well. Irrigation as it is practiced in the wheat belt today is one of the biggest deceptions in agriculture!
But we are about to be rudely awakened out of our stupefying daydream! In just a few short years it is going to turn into a horrifying nightmare! We are going to be forced to face reality!
As an example of what is happening, take Cimarron County in the tip of the Oklahoma Panhandle. Just six to eight years ago this county had only a few wells. Now it has mushroomed to more than 450! It is impossible to get an accurate count because wells are being added continually.
But the underground reserves are fast disappearing!
Just two or three years ago, farmers there were not satisfied with wells that produced less than 1200 to 1600 gallons per minute. Now they are having to settle for wells producing only 400 to 600 gallons per minute! And that in just three short years!
No one wants to talk about what might happen during the NEXT three years!
One well driller confided to us that some new wells in this area were falling so fast that there will be no water in them in another year or two!
The Sinking Water Table
In Kansas, the graph on well drilling is going straight up. So far this year, 14,000 applications for new wells have been received! Half of these are from the 17 southwestern counties in the state.
"We are mining water rather than allowing it to be replenished," Mr. McGovern of the Kansas Geologic Survey Board told us!
Speaking of river water_ for irrigation purposes, Riley Dixon, Assistant Geologic Engineer for southwest Kansas said, "There is more river water appropriated than is available."
Yes, time — and water — are fast running out!
The Great High Plains of the Texas Panhandle is the largest area of fine soils in the U.S. But ever since 1962 — with the exception of one month — it has received below-normal seasonal moisture. Meanwhile, irrigation has leaped forward.
Speaking of the sharply falling water level, Jack Music, Director of the Great Plains Research Center near Amarillo, told us, "In this area it [the water level] is dropping three feet a year. We have only one hundred feet of gravel bed, and of course you can't pump it right out [to the bottom]."
In some parts of the High Plains, because of accelerated use, the water table has dropped as much as six to ten feet in just the past year!
Asked about the replenishment of this water, Mr. Music replied: "This is a high plains area, and there is no way in which this water can be replaced . . . It is in a continuous decline."
Not even heavy rainfall over a period of many months will make a difference. We learned that because of the nature of the soil, the most that could be replenished by rainfall in one year would be from one tenth to one half of an inch! And this is assuming that no irrigation was taking place and that all the needed moisture was being supplied by rainfall!
When this water is gone, IT IS GONE! No replenishment is possible! This chilling fact ought to make the hair stand up on your head!
Still No Control on Pumping
Yet serious as the water crisis is, at this time there are virtually no controls on it. In Texas, farmers are considered to own the water under their land and they would fiercely oppose any restriction of their right to use this water freely.
In Kansas, retired Representative Clifford Hope told us, "Kansas law gives authority to the State Board of Agriculture to deny permits when they think the situation has become such that they shouldn't permit any more wells. But that's a delicate matter. The time will come when . . . there will probably be enough public sentiment built up so that the Board of Agriculture will step in and stop the issue of permits. But it will probably come later than it should. Those things always happen that way."
They certainly do! It is simply not man's nature to face unpleasant facts until he is FORCED to do so.
So in our society of phony values, the water table plummets downward while the price of land skyrockets upward. As one County Agent stated, "It has gone hog-wild." Land that was selling for $50 an acre just a few years ago is now being watered and gobbled up by professional men — doctors, lawyers, etc. — for $400 and $500 per acre!
What will it be worth when the water is gone?
Irrigation a Stopgap Measure
Contrary to popular opinion, irrigation is not a permanent solution to drought. At best, it is a temporary stopgap measure. It may briefly — for a few short years and at heavy expense — help produce good crops.
But irrigation affords no protection at all from hail, freeze, bugs, worms and cutting winds.
On our tour we saw irrigated fields that were ruined because dust from neighboring nonirrigated fields had blown in and cut out the wheat. In other instances, dust had blown in and smothered the irrigated crops.
Getting set up for irrigation places the farmer under a tremendous financial burden. He must have a good crop just to meet production costs — to say nothing about making a return on his investment.
Irrigation in the wheat belt is a substitute for obedience to God's laws. As such, it is a curse.
God sends drought and upset weather to let us know that something is wrong — that we are sinning. But instead of acknowledging and confessing our sins and changing our ways, we ignore God's warning. We try to find a way around the penalty. But it is still there and it keeps piling up — ready to be unleashed all at once in a sudden, furious assault!
So far there has been relatively little blowing in the drought areas. But when the irrigation water gives out, and when the powder-dry land around it starts to blow — WATCH OUT!
Mankind will insist on breaking God's laws until those same laws break him.
Our "Surplus Complex"
We have gone into considerable detail to show how irrigation and increased acreage make this year's crop appear far better than it actually is. We have also shown why this false impression is soon going to backfire.
But of far greater danger is our whole national attitude toward our supply. We have an appalling "surplus complex."
We are so used to having more than enough, that we just can't imagine that it could be otherwise.
We drive by our huge storage elevators in Kansas and Oklahoma and we somehow just can't bring ourselves to believe they are empty.
But they are!
The surpluses of five years, three years and even one year ago are GONE!
The Empty Elevators
Sedgewick County Agent (Wichita) Don Ingels, whom we quoted earlier, told us, "We were down to 27 percent of our capacity a year ago; now we are down to practically nothing. Our capacity here, including the Garvey Elevator just south of town, is 92 million bushels. I expect we have about eight to ten million bushels of milo, wheat and barley stored in all our facilities."
Up in Hutchinson, Kansas, we toured the huge Farmer's Co-op Commission elevator. This imposing structure is 127 feet high, 90 feet wide and one-half-mile long! It holds 18 million bushels and is the largest elevator under one head house. It was filled to a scant 15 percent of capacity!
The other huge elevators in Hutchinson told the same story. Three, five, nine, fourteen were the usual percentages of occupancy. A call to several of the elevators in Salina produced the same low percentages. No elevator throughout the entire area had greater, than twenty percent occupancy!
Out in western Kansas, Andy Erhart, whom we quoted earlier, and who is well known and respected throughout western Kansas, told us: "I am sure there is very little wheat in this area, most of the elevators have shipped their wheat out, even in the small elevators.
This has been a development many of us have seen for years. Everybody has been griping about the surpluses . . . and here all of a sudden we find out surpluses can diminish awfully fast."
In Enid, Oklahoma we visited the huge Union Equity elevators with their modern facilities. These elevators account for 50½ million of Enid's 66million-bushel storage facilities. Once again the story was the same. The elevators were filled to only six to eight percent of capacity!
Yes, America's once-bulging wheat bins are all but empty! Our 1.6-billion bushel stockpile of the early 1960's has in five short years shrunk to a paltry 400 million bushels!
Today we find ourselves in a position where, "The composite wheat, corn and soybean reserve of the United States would not meet our needs for more than 90 days if disaster wiped out our annual production!" (By George McGovern, U.S. Senator from South Dakota, writing in Look, March 7, 1967)
But are we concerned? Are we excited about it?
NO! Years of rich material blessings have spawned a sluggish, dull, complacent attitude of mind. We have never experienced a food shortage before and we don't know how to react to it. We are in a hypnotic stupor and can't get our eyes open to reality!
On our entire tour the only people we found who were really concerned about the situation were the big elevator men. And they were concerned only because their storage business was being hurt — not because they really feared a food shortage!