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Started in 1951, Brookover Feed Yard on the High Plains of Finney County, Kansas, helped pioneer both irrigated agriculture and the beef cattle feedlot industry in the US Midwest. It now operates three feedlots with a total capacity of 100,000 cattle and 3,000 acres of irrigated farmland, like the center-pivot crop circles adjacent to the feedyard in this photograph. Corn, cattle, and cities require tremendous amounts of water in an area that averages only 18 inches a year in rainfall, so Kansans get 70 to 80 percent of their water from the High Plains Aquifer System, which includes the Ogallala Aquifer. Farmers in western Kansas once thought the aquifer was inexhaustible, but the massive expansion of irrigated agriculture in the area—which pulls out an average of 2.5 billion gallons per day during the growing season—has shrunk the aquifer in Finney County from 100 feet thick to 30 feet. In some areas of the state, the aquifer is already exhausted. Other aquifers may have only a few decades of water left.

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Started in 1951, Brookover Feed Yard on the High Plains of Finney County, Kansas, helped pioneer both irrigated agriculture and the beef cattle feedlot industry in the US Midwest. It now operates three feedlots with a total capacity of 100,000 cattle and 3,000 acres of irrigated farmland, like the center-pivot crop circles adjacent to the feedyard in this photograph. Corn, cattle, and cities require tremendous amounts of water in an area that averages only 18 inches a year in rainfall, so Kansans get 70 to 80 percent of their water from the High Plains Aquifer System, which includes the Ogallala Aquifer. Farmers in western Kansas once thought the aquifer was inexhaustible, but the massive expansion of irrigated agriculture in the area—which pulls out an average of 2.5 billion gallons per day during the growing season—has shrunk the aquifer in Finney County from 100 feet thick to 30 feet. In some areas of the state, the aquifer is already exhausted. Other aquifers may have only a few decades of water left.

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