“Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.”
When discussing water quality concerns and conservation practices on his farm Pat Janssen said it’s taken a lot of time to convince fellow farmers they should be doing the same thing on their operations.
Western Kansas farmer Tom White said, “if only” when describing what he wished he would have known 40 years ago when his family was starting to drill irrigation wells on their sandhill land in Kearny County.
Gina Gigot said when her and her late husband decided to start conserving more water on their operation, she didn’t tell her brother Mark about installing lower flow nozzles on the sprinkler.
Each of these farmers are facing varying degrees of water loss in their operations and have been finding ways to remedy the loss of water to their fields for a number of years. Janssen, White and Gigot were panelists on the Water Quantity Producer Panel at the recent Sustaining Water in the Ark River Basin meeting in Dodge City, Kansas.
Janssen’s farm is headquartered south of Kinsley, Kansas, and extends to near the Oklahoma state line. He got involved with the water technology farm program about seven years ago. He wanted to prove that through proper equipment set up, maintenance, application and monitoring, as well as a super-focused irrigation schedule he could make some changes in the amount of water he was running through the irrigation system.
“I think this year we still were able to pump one and a half inches less on the tech farm field than we did on the other one, and it was in the drought conditions we experienced this year and identical production,” he said.
White’s family farms and ranches near Deerfield, Kansas, and has used the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program to transition out of irrigation. While Gigot, who is with Circle Land Cattle in Garden City, Kansas, started using a Water Conservation Area. A WCA is a designated area with an approved management plan developed by a water right owner or group of water right owners with the consent of the chief engineer to reduce water withdrawals while maintaining economic value via water right flexibility.
“We started working on the WCA because we knew we had to change something within the organization and what we were doing,” she said. “We changed our entire farm—everything is either ensiled, baled or pasture.”
Gigot said there’s been many successes and failures, but they’ve changed about everything that they’ve been able to on the farm.
“We just finished our first WCA, which we saved over 22% off of our allocated water and actually took in 2,300-acre feet,” she said. “We just renewed as a 10-year WCA. Lot of blood sweat and tears goes into it, but we’ve made it work and I think it saved our farm.”
When asked what their biggest concerns with groundwater use in their areas were, all their answers varied.
For Janssen it was all about balance. Farming near the Quivira Wildlife Refuge, he had to find a balance with the wildlife needs and irrigation pumping needs.
“In terms of our aquifer in total, we’re very close to being in balance but the problem would be at a seasonal fluctuation in the water level,” he said. “When irrigators are running, we drop water levels in that creek by about three feet at which point they don’t get adequate flows into the refuge. That is our biggest hurdle at this point.”
In his area they’re in the process of working through some remedies and in the middle of an environmental assessment. There’s a proposal on the table to actually augment streamflow with groundwater and try to improve conditions in Quivira.
“And also to be able to get them water in the window that they want because there the majority of the water they use is for shorebird habitat, as well as production food plots,” he said. “They’re effectively farming and calling for water the exact same time. So we’ve got to workout something to kind of mediate. That’s the biggest struggle we’ve got at this time in our area.
For White, it’s dire.
“I think our biggest concern is simply we transition away from irrigation and try to maintain increased profitability,” he said. “Without that water, we just got to survive I guess.”
For Gigot, it’s not disappointing they’ve had to change the way they farm, but the fact that WCA has been a tool in her area since 2015 and not many have taken advantage of it.
“They’re an extremely flexible program that is generated to fit your organization,” she said. “What works for me is not going to work north of town or even 20 miles from me. You’re able to set up what you need flexibility and then it’s also a volunteer program, which if it doesn’t work for you—you can get out.”
Janssen shares in the disappointment of neighbors not taking advantage of the tools out there.
Gigot has heard over and over in her years irrigating, that it’s “use it or lose it.” That hasn’t happened since 2012. She’s often heard—“I guess we’re just gonna pump it until they tell us not to.”
That sort of attitude needs to change, she thinks.The program is flexible enough to help the Gigots save what they need to and she’s also able to bank a certain percentage of water saved for the following year and “keep it flowing for year after year.”
When asked about the tools and practices that have helped the most when it came to conserving water on their farms, Janssen said they nozzle them down to 700 gallons per minute on a single pump at peak water use—matching the needs of the corn growing on the circle.
Janssen has moisture probes on every pivot and checks them a couple times a week on his phone to observe trends and make sure everything is working as it should. Last year during the end of June, first part of July there was supposed to be a big rain. It didn’t rain, but it happened to cool off and he was able to shut some pivots down.
Gigot said for her operation, they’ve slowly been converting everything over to electric from natural gas, but a little thing called money has slowed them down, even with all the infrastructure already in place. She is still able to shut off systems with her phone and turn them back on when needed.
Looking ahead, Gigot said if farmers don’t get something done when it comes to the water situation, it won’t be pretty.
Between the dairy industry and beef industry in southwest Kansas, Gigot said most all the corn is imported to feed those animals.
White was asked if he could go back 30 or 40 years when it comes to farming, what would he change. Hindsight is always 20-20 he said and remembers what the well driller once told them.
“He asked how long will it last and the well driller said it will never run out,” he said. “We used to pump 1,200 to 1,400 gallons a minute. We’ve wasted enough water to grow a second crop but, at the time, I think we were doing the best we knew how.”
Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].
