In northwestern Kansas, Thomas County farmer Mitchell Baalman’s crop was in dire straits come October. Between a summer drought and hail damage, he was staring down a 60% loss. Typically, he and his son, Aden, 22, raise around 1.5 million bushels of corn. This year, they’re closer to 400,000.

“We’re going to be playing an insurance game,” says Baalman, 50, who manages FDK Partnership, a progressive three-generation farm in Rexford. Given the loss, he’s hoping for a disaster declaration. Either way, he’ll be alright: “It’s part of life here in northwest Kansas. We’re farmers. We’re resilient.”

It’s not the first drought he’s survived, and it won’t be the last. Decades of hardship have honed lines into his hands and hardiness into his mindset — not just from working the field. Twenty-plus years ago, Baalman trudged through many of the region’s dusty acres alongside Wayne Bossert, then-manager of Groundwater Management District 4 (GMD4), and his assistant, Ray Luhman.

They visited neighbors and stumped at the Topeka statehouse, advocating for localized irrigation rights. At the time, the state had control over management decisions. Their grassroots effort changed Kansas’ groundwater management law, bringing the first-ever Localized Enhanced Management Area (LEMA) to the GMD4 irrigation region in northwestern Kansas.

Related:Conserving Ogallala Aquifer: What Kansas farmers are doing right

Wells drying up

Baalman graduated from Fort Hays State University in 1997 with a bachelor’s in agronomy, and returned home to farm with his father, Howard, who founded GMD4 in the 1970s. Mitchell Baalman immediately saw the writing on the wall: The status quo wouldn’t last forever. 

“Our wells were declining. I had young boys. My family was young,” Baalman recalls. 

When they came of age, his children would inherit a farm that didn’t have water access. At the time, Kansas’ first-come, first-served water rights ruled the land.

“Kansas has been a prior appropriation state since 1945, for both our ground and surface water,” says Lewis Earl, chief engineer and director at the Kansas Department of Agriculture. “What that means is that whoever gets their right first, the senior right, has the ability to divert water first when there’s not enough to go around. It was built on a surface water system in the West and not so much around groundwater.”

Beyond restricting or even shutting older wells, there wasn’t a legal mechanism to adequately restrict water usage. Baalman joined the GMD4 board, following in his father’s footsteps, to enact change.

“The first 10 years I spent asking: ‘What the hell are we doing?’ We were still pumping water. Nothing changed,” he says.

The state stepped in around the turn of the century and charged management districts to define areas that were most in trouble. Six regions were pinpointed within GMD4. Kansas’ 1972 Intensive Ground Use Control Act applied, giving the state’s chief engineer authority to broadly implement corrective control measures to slow groundwater decline. Based on seniority, the newest wells would be shut off first. 

That didn’t sit right with the region’s farmers.

“We did not want the state throwing an IGUCA on us,” Baalman recalls. So the GMD4 board devised an alternative plan: They’d spread the restrictions out.

Devising a plan

A board-commissioned geological survey estimated if farmers within the 99-square-mile region reduced their pumping by 20%, they’d extend the aquifer’s lifespan by 20 years. Importantly, those working the ground in areas where the water table was still high wouldn’t have to change their irrigation practices at all. The farmers could control their own fate, with restrictions balanced out over five years for a measure of flexibility year over year.

“At the time, we averaged just a hair over 14 inches,” recalls Brett Oelke, a Hoxie row crop farmer and current president of GMD4. A 20% reduction brought that down to about 11 inches annually, with each pump allotted a different percentage based on the acreage it irrigated. And because it was averaged over five years, growers could bank or use their allotment depending on yearly needs.

On paper, it looked like a watertight plan. But there was a catch: Everyone would have to buy in to make it work.

“I started getting meetings with guys who I knew would be for this. We knew who the guys would be who would be against us,” Baalman says.

They knocked on doors, advocated to neighbors, and met in coffee shops, farm shops, the local Catholic church and the First State Bank in Hoxie. An influential domino fell when they persuaded Scott Foote, the owner of five feedlots smack dab in the middle of Sheridan County, to sign onto the plan. Others followed suit.

ECONOMIC LIFEBLOOD: “Irrigation is the lifeblood of our society here,” says Hoxie, Kan., farmer Brett Oelke. “If you drive up and down Main Street in Hoxie, 80% of business is tied back to irrigation somehow."

Slowly, the grassroots initiative gained momentum through a lot of resistance. Many pushed back against generalized restrictions.

“Irrigation is the lifeblood of our society here,” Oelke says. “If you drive up and down Main Street in Hoxie, 80% of business is tied back to irrigation somehow — whether that’s the guy that delivers fuel for the irrigation engine, the guy that rebuilds the irrigation engine when it breaks, or the banks. Eighty percent of it is somehow tied back to irrigation. There was the fear that if we cut our water back, then we would ultimately affect Main Street, Kansas.”

Amending Kansas law

There was another problem: What the farmers wanted to do wasn’t legal.

“We actually had to petition the Kansas Legislature to modify the Kansas water law to add in the LEMA statute,” Oelke says. Their advocacy worked.

In 2012, about a decade after Baalman started his campaign, the Kansas Legislature amended its water management statute to give localized irrigation control to individual water management districts. GMD4’s idea was codified into law. For the first time, townships could craft action plans based on the aquifer’s unique condition in their area, based on local needs. 

A few years into the experiment, an economic study conducted by Bill Golden, assistant professor in ag economics at Kansas State University, confirmed GMD4’s smart water management initiative. Not only were the farmers saving water, but they were also increasing profit margins. Golden found that Kansas growers were earning more inside the LEMA than outside of it. 

“After the first five years, it changed the mindset of a lot of producers. Most of the ones who were against it were the ones with big wells,” says Brent Rogers, former president of the GMD4 board and a current member. “They discovered they were wasting a lot of water. That first generation of the Sheridan 6 LEMA was an educational, eye-opening experience.”

Today, the experiment is still going strong. It’s fostered economic resilience that lets farmers like Baalman stay afloat year after year. He’ll bounce back after this year’s setback, just as he has time and again. And most importantly, the LEMA is extending the aquifer’s lifespan.

“I think we’re better off. Hell yes, we’re better off. It’s made us better people and better producers. We’re making more money inside these groundwater districts, these LEMAs, than on the outside,” Baalman says.