Drought: Farmers dig deeper, water tables drop, competition heats up
MinnPost.com
8-8-2012
The long-term drought that is unlocking disaster aid for 40 percent of America’s most fertile hillocks and valleys has turned central Georgia into what Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan called in July “the toughest place in the country.”
So on those rare afternoons when dark clouds stack up against the heat-seared horizon, farmer Eddie Green allows himself a smile.
“That’s what I like to see,” says Mr. Green, who farms 500 acres of mostly corn and cotton in Dooly County. “At least someone has a shot at getting some rain.”
His rain dreams are more altruistic than selfish, as he no longer depends on the rain to irrigate his crops. The epiphany came last year.
“It was the hottest, driest summer I’d ever seen,” he says, standing amid impressive rows of flowering cotton, “and I had the biggest, most profitable crop I’d ever had.”
Instead of just praying for rain, which former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue famously did during the north Georgia drought of 2007, Green has joined a growing number of Peach State farmers to consider a once-unimaginable tactic to deal with the drought: full irrigation.
Thirty years ago, 95 percent of Georgia farmland was “dry,” or nonirrigated. Since 2007, when the current dry weather pattern established itself, Georgia farmers added irrigation to half a million acres, an increase of one-third. Green himself has gone from 50 percent irrigated in 2007 to nearly 100 percent today, largely in response to the drought — and as insurance against what some fear could be a longer-term pattern of hotter weather.
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