[Iowa Granny]

Sobering what depletion of the aquifer will mean for our agriculture.

Could you provide a ballpark figure on what percentage of Corn in Iowa, Illinois, Ohio and Indiana (the 4 major Corn growing states) is grown under irrigation?

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

I don't know how much corn is grown under irrigation. I do know that widespread water shortages could become a much bigger issue than oil shortages.

Canadian moonbats have been ringing alarm bells for decades about large-scale shipments of water to the U.S. The politics around any move toward a Continental water strategy would be messy, to say the least.

You could pipe water from Alaska of course -- but, that would take some energy. Similarly, you could get into large-scale desalination -- but that's also an energy hog. It would clearly make little sense to use energy to create water for irrigation of land -- in order to grow energy crops.

[CedarDave]

Can't help you much there, but here is one link:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/ircroppies.html

Or Google "percentage irrigation midwest" or something similar.