Dairy and water

[hurleyjd]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/draining-arizona-residents-say-corporate-mega-farms-are-drying-up-their-wells/ar-AAHr5xj?ocid=spartandhp
What happens when all of the water is gone.

Caution MSN article Castic do not read.

 

[Lucky]

Be interesting to know how much of this story is true. 100+ wells @ $500,000 each sounds likes it would bankrupt any farmer, no matter how big. The poor lady that had to move saved her entire life and can't pay off a $15,000 well?

 

[ga.prime]

The poor lady that had to move saved her entire life and can't pay off a $15,000 well?

She paid that off, the well dried up again and now is faced with spending another $35000 to go deeper.

 

[Till-Hill]

Be interesting to know how much of this story is true. 100+ wells @ $500,000 each sounds likes it would bankrupt any farmer, no matter how big. The poor lady that had to move saved her entire life and can't pay off a $15,000 well?

Riverview adds a 10,000 cow dairy every year. I have no idea and google wouldn't tell me how many cows they are milking but it's alot. Found 1 article from 2017 that a setup they built in MN cost $50 million and milks 9,500. Article also stated that 9,500 dairy uses 100 million gallons of a water each year. They are a very different dairy as they didn't start as a dairy, they seen a way to construct these farms and buy the feed and do it over and over again to make money.

I got no problem with them milking cows. Just when is enough, enough? These LLC deals if they make 1 cent a cow they made money because they already paid themself a wage. They started with 25 investors and have since bought into Wulf Limousins and offer breeding to feeding deal. Dairys buy semen from Riverview and they come buy them half blood beef calves back.

I don't think them 100 wells is going to break them......

 

[hurleyjd]

I think the truth of this story is that we are depleting the subsurface every where at a rapid rate. Even in my little neck of the woods you could did a deep which would be about 250 foot and water would rise to about thirty foot of the top of the well. The local water utility went below us and dug six wells 0n 0ne acre and was moving a 8inch stream of water to their water tower. Everyone of us in the area had to lower our pumps another sixty feet. This made them 180 feet down in the well. Will not be long until there will be no water accessible under the surface.

 

[farmerjan]

This is one of the things that I keep bringing up to people everytime I hear or read about these mega dairies that are built in the more arid areas which make it less essential for all the needed land to produce their own crops and such. They buy in all their feed, from land that is irrigated by water that is brought up from the "resevoirs" of water deep under the surface, use gallons upon gallons of water for the animals, for the cleaning and all needs on the dairies and that water does not make it back into the underground reserves in a clean pristine condition. These places are not long term sustainable because the water is going to run out. When it does, we are definitely going to see some major problems because it will eventually come back to roost.
We cannot keep depleting the water reserves underground without consequences eventually. But it doesn't seem to be of a great concern to these companies, or the governing bodies that allow them to come in. Once these water sources are gone, we are really going to be screwed... we cannot live without water.