Desertification driven by livestock grazing and industrial agriculture has turned parts of the high plains into scorched earth. Moral hazard is the flip side of self-reliance and the livestock industry knows emergency declarations will provide bailouts for those who chose risk instead of burning off dry grasses minimizing losses.
Republican welfare ranchers are the real ecoterrorists who hate subsidies unless they benefit from them but real conservatives at the Heritage Foundation have called for subsidy reform for years. Republicans Kristi Noem and Mike Rounds have taken federal handouts amounting to nearly $5 million.
Government payments create a vicious cycle of overproduction that intensifies water use. Subsidies encourage farmers to expand and buy expensive equipment to irrigate larger areas. Forty years is long enough to learn that the Ogallala Aquifer’s decline is not driven by weather or by individual farmers’ preferences. Depletion is a structural problem embedded in agricultural policies. Groundwater depletion is a policy choice made by federal, state and local officials. [excerpt, Farmers are depleting the Ogallala Aquifer because the government pays them to do it]
Photo: Kevin Woster.
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