Thanks to Irrigation, Nebraska Farmers at Least Know They’re Guaranteed a Crop

HAMPTON, Neb. — In this year of drought, LaVern Klute’s Nebraska farm is an oasis of tall, healthy, dark green corn plants.

While farm fields throughout most of the Midwest are filled with thirsty, sickly plants, much of Nebraska is an oasis, its rolling land lush with healthy crops that get precious water daily.

“Irrigation ensures that we’ll have a crop,” said Norman Klocke, a University of Nebraska professor of agricultural engineering. “We’re blessed.”

“Anybody who comes through says this looks like God’s country,” said Klute, whose corn is already more than six feet tall, compared to the three-to-four-foot corn in Illinois and Iowa. “We can irrigate all we want.”

Although it guarantees a crop, costly irrigation does not necessarily guarantee a bumper crop. Weeks of blistering 100-degree days have stressed even the well-watered Nebraska corn, and farmers fear that if the severe heat returns during the fast-approaching crucial days when pollination occurs and kernels are formed, it could reduce the harvest further.

“Irrigation has always been considered a supplement for getting increased crops,” said York County farmer Gary Eberle. “But if we don’t have enough rainfall, it becomes continuous irrigation.”

Thursday there was some relief for wide areas of the grain belt, along with a forecast from the Department of Agriculture that the wheat crop will be sizable despite the worst drought since the three Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Heavy rain fell over broad sections of Mid-America late Wednesday and Thursday, providing crops with desperately needed moisture. Temperatures also fell back from the sizzling 90- to 100-degree marks that have lingered for weeks over a large portion of the Heartland.

‘Not a Total Crop Failure’

Meanwhile, a top Agriculture Department economist, Leo Mayer, said that so far the drought “is not a total crop failure . . . . We will have wheat to sell.” Mayer, who is deputy assistant secretary for economics, said that it is still too early to predict the corn and soybean crop because much of the harvest will be determined by rainfall and temperatures in July and August.

There is less uncertainty in Nebraska. There the Agriculture Department reported that 30% of Nebraska’s current crop is in good condition, compared to Illinois, where only 19% is rated good, and Iowa, where 21% is rated good. Surprisingly, all three states have about the same percentage of crop in fair condition--between 57% and 62%--another sign that the drought has still not claimed the nation’s most important grain crop.

Nebraska produced about 10% of the nation’s corn crop last year, grain used to feed livestock, primarily beef cattle in Nebraska and neighboring Western states. Unlike Illinois and Iowa corn, virtually none of the crop produced in Nebraska is exported.

State Sits on Aquifer

Two thirds of the state sits above the vast Ogallala aquifer, a massive, deep subterranean Great Lake that provides irrigation water for the High Plains. This year the aquifer is a potential source of survival for many of the state’s farmers who use 700,000 wells to irrigate more farmland--8.3 million acres--than all the rest of the Midwest’s agricultural states combined. In all of the United States, only California has more irrigated land.

“If you’re going to have a drought, it helps if you can have it in a place where farmers can irrigate,” said Jennifer Lees, an agricultural extension agent in extreme western Nebraska.

“Irrigation is the salvation of the crop,” said Vincent Dreeszen, a University of Nebraska hydrogeologist.

But there is a price farmers will have to pay. Because of the drought, Klute, for example, turned on his irrigation pumps the first week of June, almost a full month earlier than normal. The cost of running the pumps may drive up his production costs by as much as $30 an acre this year, reducing the profit he may make from the drought-inflated corn prices.

Up to 50% Cost Increase

“The drought is increasing irrigation costs by a third to a half,” said Keith Niemann, an extension agent in heavily irrigated York County.

It is also increasing the workload this year. Klute and two sons, Dean and Mark, work from sunup to late at night each day checking the eight giant sprinkling systems that water half-mile wide circles--those big green circles that air travelers can see from plane windows. Klute and his sons irrigate other fields with pipes that flood the rows between corn plants. The gates opening onto each row must be open and closed daily.

“We’ve never had to carry a crop this far with irrigation before,” said Klute, who was one of the first to irrigate in Nebraska with wells that go back to 1948. “If the good Lord gives us an inch or two of rain, we’ll have a good crop.”

Larry Green reported from Nebraska and intern Rhonda Bergman from Chicago.