Latest / Conservation Stories / The Cost of Convenience: Farming, Water, and the Future of West Texas

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The Cost of Convenience: Farming, Water, and the Future of West Texas · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. Sims. And I'm welcoming you back to another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Area Research association, or sarah, as we like to say, because it's less of a mouthful. And I have with me today Darren Hudson from Texas Tech. Darren, I'm excited to have you here because we. We actually have had a conversation before with. On. With an economist, you know, the. The guy that sits behind the spreadsheet and stuff, you know, and so I'm really, really like to follow up in just some more impactful, maybe applied. You know, how is this, the situation we're in, really going to impact not just a farmer who's listening, but somebody who is a consumer in Lubbock for them to understand the impact. And so we've already been having good conversations, so I'm gonna. I want us to, like, rewind. And would you just give your. Give a little introduction to yourself, to listeners so they'll know, like, who you are, where you're from.
• 1:09
  Speaker B: Yeah. Well, my name is Darren Hudson. I am an agricultural economist. I guess the. I've got about 10 titles. One of them is Combat Endowed Chair for Agricultural Competitiveness. So in the Department of Ag and Applied Economics. I'm also the associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives at Davis College, so I'll leave all the others off. But I grew up in White Deer, Texas, so up in the Panhandle. Long before they grew cotton up there. Now they have cotton, but it's a mix. Grew up in the Panhandle. My wife's from the Panhandle. She's from Pampa and so. Or the Pampa area. She went to school in Pampa and went to West Texas. It was West Texas State then. Yes, they offered. I was. Last year they offered me to pay 75 bucks and they changed it to West Texas A and M. And I said if I had wanted to go to Texas A and M, I would have gone to Texas A and M. Oh, that's funny. And then went to grad school here at Tech and then spent about 12 years at Mississippi State University and then came back here. So.
• 2:19
  Speaker A: Awesome.
• 2:19
  Speaker B: Been here since 2008. Yeah.
• 2:22
  Speaker A: Wow. Well, White Deer is the home of the Scarab. This the Scarab, Right. Yeah. Yep. I've been there and seen. That's a. A what? Nice. It's a manure mixer and flinger.
• 2:33
  Speaker B: Yes. Mirror mixer. That's a good description for it. Politically correct description for it. Yes. Yeah. I actually. Urbanza. Marvin Urbanzik was. It created that. And I went to school with his kids.
• 2:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, I know. Mark is who. I know. And I met his dad took me for riding his Tesla.
• 2:51
  Speaker B: Oh yeah.
• 2:53
  Speaker A: It was a lot of fun.
• 2:54
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I just wrote him a fully, fully self driving Tesla the other day. Oh, wow. It was a. It was an interesting experience. Little, you know, I'm not sure I trust it yet, but.
• 3:05
  Speaker A: Wow. Yeah. No, this was, this was not that kind.
• 3:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:09
  Speaker A: No, no, but I was the first time I'd ridden in one. It was.
• 3:12
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 3:12
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. But they're really great people, so. Man, that's a great. That's a great place. And you're right, it's now place where we're growing cotton. It is before.
• 3:20
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Speaker A: Still have water there.
• 3:23
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. In fact, for a while anyway. Yeah. The Carson county gin sits right at the corner right there. Right there by their house.
• 3:31
  Speaker A: And isn't the biggest gin in Texas up in the panhandle? Not there.
• 3:35
  Speaker B: Yeah. Adobe walls. Yes, that's the biggest.
• 3:38
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 3:41
  Speaker B: Not quite sure why they built it that big, but you know, it does service a large area and.
• 3:45
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: You know, transportation with the bales and everything has changed so much.
• 3:49
  Speaker A: It has, yeah.
• 3:51
  Speaker B: You know, that's, that's definitely impacted the gin structure around Texas. Everywhere.
• 3:56
  Speaker A: Everywhere. Right. Yeah. Because for people that don't know, we used to have to haul modules or trailers first and then a module which was a compressed rectangular large. Like the size of a semi trailer.
• 4:10
  Speaker B: About the semi trailer.
• 4:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so there's a lot of money to haul that. Now they're just more simple hay bale. Large round hay bale style.
• 4:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the nice thing is people there, I mean, you couldn't put those modules on an interstate highway. So the module trucks had to travel, you know, back roads. Now they just load those just like they do hay bales on a semi and you can, you know, know go 80 miles an hour down the highway. So it certainly changes the transportation cost a lot.
• 4:37
  Speaker A: Right, right. But. But it changes. It shifted our economy too, because we had a gin every, gosh, 20 miles or something for when I was growing up.
• 4:45
  Speaker B: They were just everywhere.
• 4:47
  Speaker A: Everywhere. Because you just couldn't haul even before modules. I remember, you know, being in a trailer and you know, stomping cotton down, you know, and you just couldn't go very far pulling those old Rick. And of course everyone we had was like falling apart.
• 5:02
  Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. They were probably built in the 1930s. You were still using them.
• 5:07
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That tra changed a lot of things. So. Well, so we were talking some. We've Talked about a lot of things so far and trying to rerun, rewind and figure out where to start over because we've discussed a lot of things that I think are really valuable. And let's start with how farming has changed since the 90s. Maybe the, the, the innovation era, I guess, you know, might call that, that more like the genetic innovation era.
• 5:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:44
  Speaker A: You know, and the impact. I was talking to a local farmer who was saying that at the time, he was saying this is going to bring consequences we're not going to want.
• 5:51
  Speaker B: Right.
• 5:52
  Speaker A: And, and in some ways we're setting in that time period that he predicted.
• 5:56
  Speaker B: Yep.
• 5:56
  Speaker A: You know, so, and we're not talking about that. We have issues with the science of GMOs or we're not arguing whether they're healthy or not or any of those things. We're just talking about unintended consequences. And I'll be interviewing later today a farmer from Arkansas who is very eloquent on, you know, this type of situation. So this is, this is, I think, a great introduction to that. So.
• 6:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, I think that's a good name. The biotech revolution. I mean, it's been around for a while, but, but it certainly kicked in in the late 80s and early 90s, you know, by 1996, 97, you know, you had the introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans is the first iteration of that. And it did two things. One, and I was at Mississippi State when, when this happened. And one of the interesting things is talking to farmers then, you know, they just loved it. It's like, oh, this is great. And I'm like, you know, why, you know, what's the rationale? He goes, well, look, I, with Roundup Ready, you know, I could basically turn my farmhand loose. I can go deep sea fishing. Right. And that, that was a prelude to this idea that management changed significantly as a result of that technology. You know, you no longer had to plan your cultivations, plan your herbicide applications, all that sort of stuff. You just, just threw it out there. And you know, so the, the management intensity reduced quite a bit, which, you know, farmers liked initially.
• 7:40
  Speaker A: Well, and that's a nice, convenient thing. Anybody.
• 7:43
  Speaker B: Absolutely.
• 7:43
  Speaker A: I mean, people put in, you know, all kinds of structures and other businesses to make things make it happen.
• 7:49
  Speaker B: Yeah. And so then what happened was, you know, as they, as they roll forward in time and we had more transgenic crops and you know, most everything initially was just herbicide tolerance. That was, that was the big thing. And so what happened Is that a lot of those farmers, because management became so easy, they started getting rid of their plows. They started getting rid of. And then they began to forget the, the strategies that were required. And we clipped along there for quite a while that you know, this was great. You know, everything was going great, it was smooth. And then you had herbicide resistant pigweed, you know that.
• 8:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:29
  Speaker B: You know that kicked off at Palmer Amaranth, kicked off in the mid south.
• 8:34
  Speaker A: Right.
• 8:35
  Speaker B: And what happened then is that that herbicide tolerance meant that they had to start to shift. Well, initially, you know, they just came out with new chemistry and that chemistry worked for a while and then it became less effective and it becomes less
• 8:54
  Speaker A: effective because the plant literally evolves exactly to be resistant.
• 8:58
  Speaker B: It selects for the, you know, the one, you know, there's a mutation in every population in humans or whatever that's going to be resistant to something. And so they're the ones that survive and then they reproduce and then, you know, and so, you know, on pesticide tolerance we did a better job of creating buffer zones and things like that that allowed non resistant populations to reproduce. And so it kept the efficacy of those chemistries better. But we didn't on the plant side and we didn't do as good a job. And, and so what ended up happening was. Sorry about that. So when it ended up happening was the, the management had to shift back and you started to have to use new chemicals pre plant, pre emergence and then you just had to start putting steel on the ground and, and so
• 9:51
  Speaker A: meaning you had to plow.
• 9:52
  Speaker B: You had to plow. And so now, you know, we've gotten to this, you know, know this strange confluence of not, you know, really not wanting to plow because of, you know, water conservation, you know, soil, soil health, that sort of thing. But you have these resistant weeds. And so, you know, now what's happening is the, you know, the over reliance on that, that technology has put us in a position, we're almost going back to the 1950s to have to, to address some of these problems and it's making management a lot harder. And so, you know, I think those unintended consequences are, you know, the things that, because it didn't, nothing is 100% effective. And so it creates these events like Palmer amaranth and other things that then complicate it beyond where it was even before.
• 10:55
  Speaker A: Right.
• 10:55
  Speaker B: So that's where we're at. And it's a challenge for farmers, right? They're coming into this, they're coming into an environment now where all inputs Are much more expensive. Crop prices are a lot lower. How do I handle all these things? And so now we've got to start looking at things like rotations and you know, you have three things that producers are less comfortable with, especially younger producers who never lived in an environment where they did that.
• 11:22
  Speaker A: Yes, right. Yeah, well. And you know, you, you grow up. My husband is, he's in his 60s, it's like 64. And so he, you know, is more relates to his, his grandparents style of farming. And I mean that's, that's what he is almost like that. Not just one generation but two back, you know, and he was very connected to that and you know what I mean? But that like if our kids were farming today, they would have no, no, no connection. And it sets a different expectation in those kids for what the job is going to be.
• 12:06
  Speaker B: Right.
• 12:06
  Speaker A: You know, and what that's going to look like for them, you know. And I think some people, I've seen some people really adapt well to that, you know what I mean? And, and then really can begin to enjoy it. If it made money.
• 12:21
  Speaker B: Yes, if it made money.
• 12:22
  Speaker A: Because now you have, you're back to where I'm working like my great grandparents did. But I'm certainly not making money like my great grandparents did because I know that my, you know, like my, my mom's dad, I mean he did well, you know, know there was a good, there was a good chunk of time in there, you know what I mean, where he did well, they were able to buy a little house on the lake and you know, that kind of stuff and you know, it's just not always the situation anymore.
• 12:50
  Speaker B: Well, you know, I think too you point to that is there is a very different level of expectations on standard of living.
• 13:01
  Speaker A: Absolutely, yes.
• 13:02
  Speaker B: Today than there was in the 50s and 50s. And so you know, if you, if you drive around the south plains, you know, and you see some of these old farmhouses that are still out there, they're small, they, you know, there's no amenities around them, things like that. And so, you know, I think a lot of kids think they're supposed to get out and have that big house.
• 13:22
  Speaker A: Well, let me just say as someone who grew up living in the country and then when I married we lived in two different places that were, I always would say, conveniently located in any direction. 75 miles to Walmart, you know. And when we made the decision to, which was very difficult because it's, it's weirdly part of your identity, you know, to move into town and you've never had neighbors. And what if they have a dog or you have a dog that barks and they don't like barking dogs or, you know, I mean, there's like so many different things that you don't think about. But after about two weeks, I was coming home from Walmart or somewhere like five minutes from my house, I called my husband. Like, there's a reason people move to town because it is very convenient.
• 14:08
  Speaker B: Very convenient. Yes. Well, yeah. And, you know, you and I talked about this earlier. I mean, I think, you know, through that 90s, 2000s era, when the management intensity sort of dropped off in farming is you had so many people relocate right here in Lubbock, you know.
• 14:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of people we were living in Brownfield during that time. We were living out in the country. But I know a lot of people, you know, it was very convenient for them to be able to move. It was, you know, and they were able to have choices, more choices for their kids, you know, and so I don't. I mean, I don't think anybody was wrong to make that decision. You know, I think everybody gets to do what they want that's best for their family.
• 14:50
  Speaker B: Right.
• 14:50
  Speaker A: You know, but it does leave unintended consequences.
• 14:54
  Speaker B: Well, you know, I have a neighbor of mine, I live in Tech Terrace, a good friend, he farms in Crests. And so, you know, he commutes back. They have a small old farmhouse that he'll stay in some during the week when it's, you know, heavy. But, yeah, it's all changed dramatically. And a lot of that was technological driven. I mean, I think that, you know, know we talk about the number of gins that are disappearing because of the round bales. All of this stuff is leading to, you know, basically a very cultural shift, you know, out on the prairie. It's just, you know, I mean, you drive around out here now and you know where everybody's house was because you see trees.
• 15:36
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 15:37
  Speaker B: And then. But the houses are gone.
• 15:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, I think just that the time, not just like, of, hey, it's more convenient. It's better for my family for us to live here and have more choices. It's also. It creates that disconnectedness too, you know, and so that's what I think is the. You also. There was a time where you could make money.
• 16:08
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 16:09
  Speaker A: On, you know, a section of land. And there's an interview I talk about frequently. My. My husband's grandparents from 1971. It's in the Southwest collection. And they're asking, well, you're gonna get, Are you gonna get more land and get bigger? You know, and he was like, well, I just have to get more equipment and then, then I'd have to get more help. And, you know, so, no, I'm not gonna do that, you know. Well, and that's, that's fine if you, if you're, if you're willing to stay in that location, in that smaller place and you don't want to expand your living, you know what I mean? And I do see that there are, there's a certain subsection of people that want that life. They want pigs, they want chickens, they want goats. Why anybody wants goats, I don't know. But I mean, don't, you know, control? We control. There you go. There you go. Rent. Someone's gonna let them take care of them. We keep them in a fence. But, you know, there's. They, they crave that lifestyle that our grandparents didn't want us to have to live.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: Right? Yeah. Well, and, and I think it's different now than it was when our grandparents were around. You know, I think modern, there are modern conveniences that make that kind of life more enjoyable. Right? Yeah. But, you know, and I do think, and this, this, this relates back to a topic we talked about earlier is we went through a phase, and in some respects, we're kind of stuck in this phase, at least in some groups, that bigger is better. Right. And yeah, because the idea is I have to maximize the amount of stuff I produce when they're not maximizing their profit. Right. And you know, the statement that your grandparents were making, I've heard farmers here make, you know, Lloyd Arthur at Crosbyton is one of those. He says, if I get bigger, I have to do more of this stuff. And so, you know, you go to the size, you know, you've got a million dollar cotton picker. Well, go to the size of farm that makes sense for that million dollar cotton picker. Don't go to the next size, which requires the second one.
• 18:29
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 18:29
  Speaker B: Because then you have to go. You basically have to double in size in order to make that economically rational. So I think, you know, because assets are lumpy, you know, that kind of stuff where you can't just continuously smooth it out over one more acre.
• 18:44
  Speaker A: Interesting. I was in tull, the Texas Ag Leadership Program, and we went to a beautiful Amish farm. And the Amish farmers, like, ask me anything, ask me anything, you know, and that was my question is, you have 50 acres. How do you make a living on 50 acres? How do you do it? And, you know, he was like, well, I mean, of course they grow everything they eat. And I mean, you know, it's. It's. You can look at their life and go, because I have a horse and a bug head, not a million dollar. You know what I mean? And so, I mean, and they're diversified, of course, in their economics. He said, but if I. If I get 100 acres, I have to get more equipment.
• 19:29
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:29
  Speaker A: And I can't do it myself, you know. And, you know, and so, of course, you know, they're having, you know, issues where their kids being able to find another 50 acres, and so they're expanding into other areas and things like that. But it's that same, I realized, because we were asking him, like, why do you have a phone that's in your barn and not in your house? And what I thought was so wise is he said, we think very hard before we bring something into our home. And we don't think about what will happen to our kids. We think, what could this be in five generations?
• 20:10
  Speaker B: Right.
• 20:11
  Speaker A: And that reminds me of Wendell Berry, who wrote the book Unsettling of America, where he was predicting exactly where we are right now.
• 20:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, you know, technology is good, technology's bad. You know, I think. Yeah. I think the. The story is, you hear a lot of people those technology. Technology is neutral.
• 20:30
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 20:31
  Speaker B: It's what you choose to do with it. And. And so I think, you know, but the lure, like, wound up ready, the lure of I can now do other things outweighed the thinking about, what are the implications of this for.
• 20:49
  Speaker A: Well, and even more for people to understand, Even more than fishing, it's like, oh, I can go out of town and go to my sister's wedding.
• 20:56
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You're not tied to that, right?
• 20:58
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 20:58
  Speaker B: You're not tied to it, where you have to babysit this crop every day.
• 21:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:03
  Speaker B: And so, yeah, it. It changes, but it's like anything, right? I mean, this. The analogy I use to students is I said, look, I said, all of this stuff operates the same way in human psychology. And it's like if your partner, your spouse or whoever, you know, if your partner chooses or is willing to do a particular task, then you take for granted that task is going to be done and you go do something else. Now. Now, in a way that's good. Right. It's a way of expanding. But it also means that what happens if that person can't do that task or they decide they don't want to do that task anymore? Right. And so you Create unintended consequences. When any decision you make creates unintended consequences. But some of those are really far reaching. Some of them are so long in time horizon, people just don't, you know, I joke with my wife and she, you know, I go to Whataburger and get a cheeseburger and she goes, well, that's going to kill you. And I'm like, well, not today. Right. And so in my time horizon that I'm thinking about, I'm like, you know,
• 22:09
  Speaker A: it's not even on my radar.
• 22:10
  Speaker B: It's not even on my radar. And so I think that's what we went through, have gone through. And then now you're seeing this return back. As producers out there are looking, they know that water's running out, right. And they've got to try to figure out a way of how to continue to survive in a world that's going to have a lot less water for them. Right. You know, irrigation in particular.
• 22:36
  Speaker A: And I was just mentioning, I met with the Water Organization foundation yesterday and they were like, it really doesn't matter where you are. Everyone's got, everyone is. That's. This is the problem. Yeah, this is ultimately the problem. You know, when you have a drought on the Mississippi river, you're like, what is going on?
• 22:53
  Speaker B: You know, when, for years, you know, with, you know, the Water Development Board, the planning, the, you know, the prescriptions of whether or not we're going to restrict pumping and you know, all this other stuff. And I kept saying the answer is actually pretty simple, is that economics will take care of that problem. It's like, if it's no longer feasible to pump water, it makes no economic sense to pump water to grow corn. You're not going to do it. Right. And so at the end of the day, you know, the, the, the economics kind of takes care of that problem. Obviously there are some places that are like out of water, right. You know, it's gone. They're having to haul water to their houses.
• 23:34
  Speaker A: Right.
• 23:35
  Speaker B: But you know, across the whole area, you know, you're already seeing the reduction. Right. But you know, you and I were having this conversation. Part of the problem we had, I say problem, I mean, you know, it was, it was, the thinking was let's increase the water use efficiency, right? Let's get better at using this. You know, so we went from flood irrigation to center pivots and lepa and you know, all those systems now drip. And with each increment, we were definitely getting a lot more efficient at using water. Right. But that's not conservation. Right. What happened was, is we just use more water because the more efficient we were at using it, the more profitable it became per, you know, unit of water. And so, you know, producers are behaving rationally. It's like, you know, if I can pump that underground, you know, in a drip system and my yield goes up by 40%, well, I can afford to put more water in there. You know, I can make sure that that plant has all the water it possibly needs rather than thinking about where at the margin is the best to apply that water. And so, you know, I tend to tell producers that you don't sell cotton, you don't sell sorghum, you don't sell corn, you sell water. And, and so what you should be doing is looking at how do I maximize my returns, my profits per acre, inch of water.
• 25:06
  Speaker A: So, and that brings up something I mentioned too, is like water, water credits.
• 25:13
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:14
  Speaker A: And we talk about carbon and carbon credits might, might work somewhere else, but here we just. We're not going to hold a lot of carbon and sand.
• 25:23
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:23
  Speaker A: Right. And so I think it's more likely that, you know, carbon offset credits. So a data center comes in and they're using X amount of water. Well, pay a farmer somewhere else, you know, not to be using that water. You know what I mean? And so it may be it's you're using that water up north, but someone down here has turned off and now a third of their land is in. It's back in native grass.
• 25:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:52
  Speaker A: You know, and I don't know, I, I feel like if you've hit you do, you know, leave your, leave your system in place. So if we have a horrible drought.
• 26:02
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 26:03
  Speaker A: You know, then, but I don't know how I just see a brick wall that's 20 years away, you know, because I remember they were saying in the 90s you had 50 years of irrigation and now I heard someone say we have 20. I was like, well, we're going to hit that mark. Yeah, we're on task.
• 26:24
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 26:24
  Speaker A: You know, and so I see this brick wall for the land that, you know, that we own or we're inherit and for people that I love. I see what is going to happen to the economy of Lubbock because people have no clear understanding of what the businesses that will go away, you know, and you know, the restaurants that you enjoy and the places you enjoy shopping that are being like almost half of their economics are coming from people that don't live in Lubbock.
• 27:04
  Speaker B: Right.
• 27:04
  Speaker A: You know, and so I. That's this brick wall. I see. And I think how could we, we're going to hit this wall, how do we hit it? Going 20 miles an hour, not a hundred.
• 27:13
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good analogy. The. Yeah, I mean, and what worries me even more is you know, Lubbock has tech, Lubbock has the hospitals, Lubbock has other things that buffer it.
• 27:28
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:28
  Speaker B: But you know, still about a third of the economic output is directly related to ag. But it's the brownfields, the levellands.
• 27:35
  Speaker A: Oh absolutely.
• 27:36
  Speaker B: All of those places that are really heavily dependent. And, and it's going to change. Right. And you know, we've got to be creative. You know, I think one of the things, and you know, it's not like I'm advocating for any one particular thing.
• 27:53
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:53
  Speaker B: But I think we need to be open minded to think about this. Right. And I mean, you know, when you talk about like water credits, right. You know, one of the problems with water credits is we have right of capture.
• 28:06
  Speaker A: Right.
• 28:07
  Speaker B: You know, water in, in, in the state of Texas, which you know, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying it comes with its own set of rules and regulations and abilities. And so if farmer A decides they're going to participate, farmer B just pumps it right out from underneath them. And so you know, I know, but there are strategies, we call them like agglomeration bonuses. Right. So if you're that data center, you don't contract with one farmer, you contract with a co op that manages this, this whole area. So every farmer agrees to reduce.
• 28:45
  Speaker A: Okay, so is that happening anywhere in Texas? Because it's happening in Kansas.
• 28:48
  Speaker B: Yes, in Kansas is, that's the Lima. Lima, yeah, that's, that's a model that, that we need to try to investigate. You know there are other places that are different. You know, if you go down to the Edwards aquifer, you know, it's a, it's a flow system, not a stock system. And and so you know, you've got to be relevant or.
• 29:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, it needs to be place based.
• 29:12
  Speaker B: Place based, yeah. But I think there were some ways to make that work. And you know, it's also, you know, we, we've got to change the way we think about a lot of things. One of them, for example, soil, right. Is you know, you can throw out terms regenerative, you know, whatever those are. But, but the issue is, is that we are extracting, you know, benefits out of the soil. And so what we need to start thinking about that is an optimal extraction problem. Right. So you know, what are the inputs in, what are the inputs out? How do you create more sustainable, you know, long term? The water is the same way in the sense that, you know, for us it's a stock resource. And so, you know, one of the interesting things we know is like if I told you today, High Plains Underground Water district is going to put down, you know, next year or two years from now is going to put down a hard pumping restriction like they do in Kansas, right. What I can tell you is that more water will be pumped out of that aquifer over the next two years than probably the last 15 years combined. Because what they'll do is try to maximize the extraction. Right? And so you've got to really start thinking about this like an optimal extraction problem, like a fisheries problem, like you can overfish a fishery if you just turn everybody loose. And so what you have to do is to start thinking about how do you regulate that. But, and so co ops and you know, the problem with, you know, top down administrative fiat like here's your pumping a lot, right, Is that that is not going to affect all producers in the same way. Right. Some producers, it's going to dramatically reduce the revenues, others it's not because they don't have the pumping capacity to meet that. So we need to think about, you know, be creative, think about a way like a regional co op that says revenue is going to be shared in that instance, you know, and revenue is shared based on the reduction in the water, water pumping capacity, you know, things like that. Lots of details to think about. But I think we've got to get moving in a direction that addresses that. And one of the things that, you know, one of the missions of Davis College at Tech, which, you know, when I was writing the strategic plan, is water is our single most important thing. So everything we need do needs to focus on addressing how do we operate with less water. So whether that's a livestock system or an integrated system, cropping and livestock system or, you know, water technologies, drought tolerance to reduce the risk to producers on dry year. You know, everything needs to be pushing in that direction because that is essentially the defining problem of our time.
• 32:13
  Speaker A: Right? Right.
• 32:14
  Speaker B: You know, I love people talking about, you know, climate change and, and carbon and all, you know, that's all fine and good, but the defining problem of, for us of our time is water. And so we've got to be figuring out how do we do that.
• 32:28
  Speaker A: Right. Well, and, and you know, the climate is always changing and I think it's wise for us to not get stuck on semantics, but to say, you know, for whatever reason, it's changing. The reality is here's what we are living in, and so we can assume that it will cycle back around, but we don't know that it will. And so, you know, I know it was just. I read an article this morning about this new cold front that came through, and that is something. A pattern that, like, is brand new, you know, and they're like, this is, like, different than anything we've ever seen before and a little harder to predict. And it might mean then that there'll be a little more dangerous storms because of the way it's. It's basically warmer.
• 33:15
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 33:16
  Speaker A: And so it's letting that cold air kind of just steals through where it hadn't been sneaking through before.
• 33:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 33:22
  Speaker A: You know, and so whatever. Whatever's causing it, we can all agree that we should be preparing to live in the world that we're living in. You know.
• 33:33
  Speaker B: Well, we spent. I mean, you know, if you look at historical record for what we've got. Right. Is about every 30 years, we have an extended drought period. Right. So 50s, 80s, and so we're in that extended dry period now. You know, whatever's going to happen is going to happen. But the thing about it is, is that we know 30 years from now, we're probably going to be in an extended dry period. So what we need to start thinking about now is how do we address or deal with that problem? And then you have new ones come up. I mean, you know, we all know.
• 34:08
  Speaker A: I mean, or even then, when we're not in that period, how. What do we do when we're not.
• 34:14
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 34:14
  Speaker A: That will help us through the next one. You know, I don't know. I think the thing that I've. I, I know in the Lima case in Kansas. I mean, that. That's the thing I think the state has wanted us to do in Texas is you have your local districts, you guys decide and figure out how you're going to, for a better word, police yourselves.
• 34:36
  Speaker B: Exactly.
• 34:37
  Speaker A: You know, and so what I've. I mean, I've heard, like, some frustration, you know, up.
• 34:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 34:47
  Speaker A: From like, you know, legislators and. And people that are like, you're not doing anything, but you're not doing anything.
• 34:54
  Speaker B: You know, and if you look what's interesting. And this isn't to be overly critical, but you know the, The North Plains Underground Water District.
• 35:02
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: You know, Dalhart area.
• 35:04
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 35:05
  Speaker B: You started implementing pumping restrictions a lot earlier. Right. Excuse me. But the intent was. Is to allow producers to figure out how to. To transition and move towards that. And of course, we had, you know, a few years back, we had the big, you know, blow up here in. In the high plains. But part of that was because there was no groundwork prepping people for that transition. It was just, oh, we better do something. And then, you know, when it gets announced, everybody throws a fit. And, you know, it's not that there wasn't fit throwing in the North Plains underground water district, but if you go to one of their meetings now, every producer's on board, right? They're. They're. They are behind all of these things because they see what the benefits are for the long term. So, you know, it takes a coordinated effort. It takes laying the groundwork. It takes prepping people, you know, and we had done this study, little study when I was at tech back when this was happening, and I was showing the benefits of an electric meter. Right.
• 36:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:17
  Speaker B: And, you know, I was presenting this to people. We were presenting it to people and talking about, like, you know, why wouldn't you want. This is your most expensive input. Why don't you want to know how much you're putting on? Right? Because you could be putting on way too much. You could, you know, you could be underutilizing it, you know, whatever it is. But. But you don't know. And how do you manage it if you don't measure it? And of course, the response is, well, I don't want the government knowing anything. Right. But there are ways around that. Right? There are ways around that.
• 36:47
  Speaker A: But.
• 36:47
  Speaker B: So. But it takes time to lay that groundwork and get people ready to make that.
• 36:55
  Speaker A: I think it's true. You know, it's interesting because I've had a couple conversations recently about ply lakes with. With people that I had made assumptions that they understood their value. And I. Because I thought I beat this. I mean, people got to be sick of hearing me talk about ply legs, because this is beating this horse to death, you know, And. But I'm like, oh, my goodness. We have to not. We cannot stop talking about this. It is something we have to be talking about, and we can't assume that everyone's heard.
• 37:28
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 37:28
  Speaker A: That everyone knows and understands.
• 37:31
  Speaker B: Yeah. And that. And that's. And Play Lakes are a good example of, you know, there. There. There's a whole group of people out there that either see them as a nuisance or don't understand them. Right. There are some people out there that either are just, you know, mildly tolerant of. I've got to manage around this thing or they're very, you know, advocate for play legs.
• 37:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:56
  Speaker B: But, you know, educating people to tell them this is. It's important for water recharge, it's important for filtration, it's important for wildlife habitat. It's important, you know, all of these things so that, you know, when you get to the point where you need to do something, if you need to do something, there are, you know, they're prepared, they go, okay, I understand why we have to do X and Right, right. So, yeah, you just got to keep beating that horse and people get sick of it. But, you know, at the same time, it's. It's important because not everybody hears it. And is a good friend of mine who's a special forces officer, he says, you know, we're all primates, so we learn by pain and repetition. So every time, yeah, you know, people. And it's kind of like, you know, in. When we design our curriculum in ag eco, I say, okay, Here are the 10 things we want students to know when they graduate. Just 10. Right. And they need to see that at least five times over their college career, because it won't sink in until they've seen it five times. And from different contexts, different perspectives. But the same principle you talk about trade offs, opportunity costs. This sort of. You've got to keep saying it because they won't internalize it until they've heard it enough times and seen it. Right. Seeing what. The context of that problem.
• 39:22
  Speaker A: Right, right.
• 39:23
  Speaker B: You know, and it's kind of like if you don't talk about playa lakes, but you got to talk about them from multiple perspectives, you know, sort of the environmental perspective, the wildlife perspective, you know, but even it's a filtration point. Right. You know, so I now see, seen,
• 39:40
  Speaker A: I have seen oil and gas waste in a playa.
• 39:44
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. You're like, oh, my God. Yeah. No, but, you know, it was, it was like a lot of times where if you went back to the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. Right. Farmers had buffer strips everywhere.
• 39:58
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 39:59
  Speaker B: They didn't know why they had them. It was probably just a convenient place to walk, you know.
• 40:03
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 40:03
  Speaker B: But they had them there. And then we discovered those buffer strips are hugely important because it keeps the field runoff from then going into streams, lakes and rivers. It captures it, filters it, but it's also a great place for biodiversity, for winter overpopulation of bugs, just all of these things. And so, you know, now we sort of accept them, especially in the Midwest, that buffer strips are. That's an Expected part of your management system.
• 40:31
  Speaker A: Right.
• 40:32
  Speaker B: So I think the same thing has to happen with water. You know, it's, it's the same reason why it's key I keep anytime I report stuff at meetings like oh, you know, here was trial A, trial B, trial C. And here was the average yield, here was the, you know, the whatever and out there on the side I said here was the revenue per acre inch of water.
• 40:53
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 40:54
  Speaker B: Because I want you as a producer to immediately go back to that point.
• 40:59
  Speaker A: Yes, well and one of the. When we looked at we pulled up the. Because you there's apply estimators so people can go click on their apply and see how much of recharge would be estimated per year if, if it was working functioning, you know. And I had one friend of mine that's farmer said that sells. Yes, that sells.
• 41:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:19
  Speaker A: You know, and you know, but it's a matter of you know, making sure that people understand what the percentage first of all that there are fastest form of recharge. Okay. So I'm not, we're not saying that next year it's going to be fixed. Yeah but they're the fastest form and 80 something percent of them don't work.
• 41:38
  Speaker B: Right.
• 41:39
  Speaker A: I mean that's a low hanging fruit, you know.
• 41:42
  Speaker B: And not only that is it you're selling them. It's not just recharge. The aquifer, it's recharged immediately underneath you.
• 41:48
  Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
• 41:50
  Speaker B: So that's the fastest way to get water back into that water table to you. Yes.
• 41:55
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, and I mean I think sometimes it depends on you know, how, how, how deep. You know, it's. Everybody's different. Right. All those are different. But I mean I've seen a farm in, in Lamb county where the guy recharged his playa and his quarter, his well remained stable and three quarters around him all dropped.
• 42:17
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 42:18
  Speaker A: You know, and I'm like that is telling, you know what I mean? Like that's worth doing.
• 42:22
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 42:23
  Speaker A: You know, but I, I'd love to have you back because I think we've only just begun.
• 42:28
  Speaker B: Yeah, there's lots of scratching the surface. You can go for days, we could go for days.
• 42:33
  Speaker A: But I think this is, I mean it's really interesting and I'd love to talk about like solutions, you know and, and how can we, what are things that we can do and you know making. I mean farmers are very aware. Let's talk about things that you know, consumers can be aware of too. You know, people that live in Lubbock. And so I appreciate you being here. Thanks. Thank you so much. It's been great. It was a great episode. And, friends, thank you again for joining us for another episode of Conservation Stories. We will see you again next time.