Posted on 03/07/2011 4:48:30 PM PST by camerongood210
Chiming in to support your conclusion.
My old home town in Northern Oklahoma is the county seat of a county which was almost totally dedicated to wheat farming.
The county raises about four-or-five times more wheat today than it did when I lived there. And the population of my home town is virtually unchanged from what it was when I graduated high school in 1956 -- still around 1200.
Yet, while the town was crammed with shoppers every Saturday in 1956, it is now virtually empty on Saturdays. Retail is almost non-existent because:
1. The population of the county is now half what it was in 1956.
2. All but the convenience shopping is now done at the "city" in the adjacent county, about 40 miles away.
Vastly greater agricultural productivity employing far fewer people, coupled with improvements in transportation and communication, has totally changed the nature of the rural countryside.
Happy, TX is one sad scene. There is nothing left. Looks like a town in a 3rd world country.. with thrown up shanty houses... no siding, no shingles... you can see them as you pass by on the interstate. It’s sad to see the small towns in the Panhandle and South Plains of Texas .. many of them are just falling apart...it’s hard to describe how much they have changed in 20 years....and it has nothing to do with water
You will see dairy cows and calves in places on the South Plains. Those places are called "dairies." A number of them have moved to West Texas and New Mexico over the last few years, from California. They were being taxed into oblivion there.
I have not noticed any local feed lots feeding out dairy cattle. They are not limited to buying locally; they can buy from anywhere, have the cattle brought in, and feed them out. I notice the writer did not talk with any feed lot owners to confirm that particular assertion. He did not talk with any meat packing plants either, and there are at least three in a fairly short drive of where he supposedly was. While culled dairy cows do get processed into meat, beef plants are not going to be eager to do that any more than they have to; the meat is not of the same quality as that of a beef animal and thus is less profitable.
Why not fill the aquifer back up.
All that snow melt is just flowing down the Mississippi and into the ocean..
Pump it back into the aquifer.
Too true. The sad thing is that subsidies and other protectionist measures hurt those they are intended to help, too. It’s a lose/lose situation.
The poor global warmists are worried about sea rise. We build desal planst along our coast lines.
Build Hydro Pumping Stations drilled down to the aquifier.
We generate electricity and fill the aquifier
This is a Win Win!
The National Academy of Sciences 2008 - The Implications of Biofuel Production for United States Water Supplies
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3285
Existing and planned ethanol facilities (2007) and their estimated total water use mapped
with the principal bedrock aquifers of the United States and total water use in year 2000.(Source USGS) Click to enlarge.
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/ethanol_and_water.JPG
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