ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The beef cattle sector is the single largest sector in the Kansas agriculture industry, with cattle and calves generating nearly $10 billion in cash receipts each year, accounting for 46 percent agricultural cash receipts.
Declines in the Ogallala Aquifer, threaten the livelihoods of Kansans and food secuity worldwide, and the Kansas livestock industry depends on critical plans to stabilize the aquifer. Sustaining food security is also a national security imperative.
Recently, Kansas State University’s Kansas Water Institute (KWI) hosted a partnership with the Kansas Livestock Association (KLA) and Aimpoint Research to address water conservation from each point of the value chain.
Aimpoint, a global strategic intelligence firm specioalizing in agri-food, shared a presentation about food security as national security.
Representatives from K-State and the KLA joined Aimpoint to deliver a report about aquifer and Kansas livestock sustainability that can serve as a future framework, and a panel discussion about this framework featured experts from the livestock industry, including feedyard representatives, irrigartors, supply chain stakeholders and industry policymakers.
KWI Director Susan Metzger said work has been done in the past seven months with feedlots in Wastern Kansas to look at building a framework for conserving and extending the useable lifetime of the aquifer and having feedlot-focused conversations.
“(Aug. 20) was the opportunity to report on what we’ve learned about barriers, obstacles and opportunities to do just that – extend the life of the aquifer and the beef industry in Western Kansas,” she said of the day’s discussions.
Metzger said the aquifer ins not consistently one thing throughout Western Kansas.
“There are portions of the aquifer that still have deep resources of water available, and projections could say anything from 100 to 200 years of useable lifetime,” she said. “There are some areas even in Southwest Kansas where we’ve already reached a point where they’re no longer able to sustain a typical yielding irrigation well and everything in between.”
Metzger said this means the Ogallala is diverse in its levels. However, she said the approach of conversations such as the one on Aug. 20 in Manhattan is one with a message of how all of agriculture, including the beef industry, and all Western Kansas communities are dependent on conserving and extending the aquifer’s supply to as long as 200 to 300 years into the future.
Metzger said the Ogallala Aquifer underlies parts of eight states in the central Great Plains and provides 30 percent of irrigation for U.S. agriculture. She added only about 2 percent of water in Kansas is used for stockwater use, while about 85 to 90 percent of the aquifer’s reported use goes to irrigation. With the beef and dairy industry using such a small percentage of water, Metzger found it interesting to have the two industries as part of the Aug. 20 discussion.
“We know they’re very dependent on sustainable feed and forage production to support the livestock, and we need to find ways where we can have conversations about the future of the Ogallala across the supply chain where you connect people who are providing the irrigated feed and forage and using up to 90 percent of the water with the folks who are really dependent on their success – the beef industry, which uses less than 2 percent,” she said.
Metzger said much has been done in the past 30 years with irrigation management to help conserve the aquifer’s resources, and changes in beef and dairy nutrition have made water usage in Western Kansas more efficient in that time.
“Some estimates say we’ve actually reduced the amount of water it takes to raise a pound of unboned beef by up to 40 percent in the past 30 years,” she said. “There’s still more to do, and our producers in Western Kansas are very inovative in their adoption of technology such as reusing lagoon water, operations from an irrigation standpoint, changing their crop varieties, changing their irrigation technology.”
Throughout Western Kansas, Metzger said many producers are adopting policy options such as local enhanced management and water conservation areas to help limit their own water use.
“A lot of things are in place, but really, our conversations are showing us still more is needed, more opportunities for building local solutions to continue having profitable agriculture over the Ogallala,” she said.
Metzger said a helpful part of the water conservation effort is the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS), who has been having conversations with feedlots over the past seven months.
“Because we have such great data in Kansas, every one of our water users with water rights is required to report their water use every year,” she said. “We go out, and we measure wells in the non-pumping season so we know how the aquifer is behaving.”
With this data, Metzger said KGS has created an analysis with an approach that allows them to look at focused regions.
“With these conversations, you could draw a 10-mile circle around a feedlot, and you could know how the annual pumping is impacting the aquifer in that region,” she said.
With this information, Metzger said water budgets can be created for the future, and producers can actually know what certain amounts of water reduction could mean for the Ogallala.
“The powerful part of that is you could really take a focused look around the feedyards, and for many of the feedyards, it might take a 10 to 15 percent reduction in water use in that 10-mile circle to reach a point of stability where the aquifer is no longer declining,” she said.
As for looking at food security as national security, Metzger said these two presentations were coupled together for a few reasons. She added Aimpoint helped facilitate the conversations that took place in Manhattan, and she said the food security discussion had a unique approach to it.
“It’s really powerful for these conversations because we know the future of beef in Kansas is really important to our Kansas economy, to the livelihoods of our Kansas communities,” she said. “Coupling it with this presentation about American food power really made it bigger than just our economic security in Kansas.”
Metzger said all of this is tied to the importance of making sure a safe and reliable food supply in Kansas and the Midwest continues to be provided.
“It’s very much tied to our ability to protect national security,” she said. “That was the intent of coupling those two presentations together – to really think about food security as national security.”
Overall, Metzger said she felt good about the conversations that took place last month.
“Mostly from my perspective, what I appreciated about the event was the diversity of the people who were in the room,” she said. “To me, that paints what we hope to be a good outcome of this process.”
Metzger said she liked that the discussions included people from acroos the supply chain.
“We had faculty and staff not only from K-State but other colleges and disciplines,” she said. “We had producers and farmers. We had industry partners such as Western Kansas irrigation and Indigo Ag. We had ag organizations in the room. We had several agencies like USDA. We had state agencies like the water office and Department of Agriculture. We had local organizations like the Groundwater Management District. We had state legislators and congressional staffers and non-profit organizations like the Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited.”
That diversity was what Metzger said she felt was both the best part and best outcome of the event.
“It was a packed house of more than 125 people there and very engaged in the discussion and the findings,” she said.
