Running Out

November 15, 2021
Anthropologist Bessire (Behold the Black Caiman) combines ethnography and memoir in this deeply personal look at the depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, which lies partially in his “ancestral homelands in southwest Kansas.” Many of the farmers and ranchers Bessire speaks with are acutely aware of the dropping water levels in their local wells, but have not changed their unsustainable farming practices, assuming that authorities would step in before it was too late. However, Bessire writes, some of the officials tasked with overseeing the aquifer have stakes in agribusiness and prioritize their own short-term profit over the long-term stability of the aquifer. Bessire links the destruction of the High Plains aquifer system, the historical slaughter of the region’s buffalo herds, and genocidal campaigns against Indigenous tribes to a depletionist mindset, in which “dignity and rights artificially appear as if they were zero-sum games.” Along the way, troubling details emerge about Bessire’s great-grandfather RW, who pioneered groundwater-draining irrigation practices and set a legacy of toxic masculinity that affected Bessire, his father, and his grandmother Fern, a leader of the county historical society, whose notes and research on the history of the region form the beating heart of the book. This is a devastating portrait of how shortsighted decisions lead to devastating losses.

Starred review from March 1, 2021
The author returns to his ancestral home in western Kansas to discover that the Dust Bowl of the 1930s is returning. Bessire, a professor of anthropology at the University of Oklahoma, reminds readers that the High Plains supported only marginal dry farming until after World War II, when the newly discovered Ogallala Aquifer, which extends from South Dakota to Texas, produced an irrigation bonanza that now supports one-sixth of the world's grain production. Like fish, forests, and buffalo, it seemed inexhaustible--until it wasn't. Massive withdrawal is shrinking the Ogallala, and many wells are running dry. Because it might hamper economic growth, conservation is often dismissed as unfeasible. Farmers and ranchers receive strict water quotas, but the amount guarantees withdrawals vastly exceed what is needed to replenish. Polls show that the majority of farmers want to save the aquifer and hope the government will take necessary action. One barrier is the "midlevel bureaucracy." Only landowners vote on water policy, so wealthy, anti-conservation "water miners" dominate local boards. As a result, "regional water governance is a form of pay-to-play democracy reserved for the already privileged." Traveling the country with his father, Bessire relearned the land's unedifying distant history (Native genocide) and recent history: takeover by large agribusinesses with towns dominated by slaughterhouses, hog barns, feedlots, and dairies employing low-paid migrant labor. The author vividly describes dry riverbeds, abandoned fields, and, most poignantly, working farmers and ranchers, few of whom are prospering. Most work under contract to industrial agribusinesses. Bessire chronicles his interviews with a few villains and a few idealists but mostly with hardworking, good-humored, often cynical men (and a few women) doing their best in an environment often beyond their control. The author eschews the traditional how-to-fix-it conclusion. Readers may perk up when he describes impressive technical advances in saving water only to learn that they're mostly devoted to extending the life of depleted wells. Less a polemic than a moving, melancholy, environment-focused memoir.

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