Kansas farmers are running out of water.

When I returned this fall to sit down with farmers, ranchers, dairymen and other rural Kansas leaders I asked what, if anything, is being done to stabilize the state. Rather than talk solutions, however, a different theme quickly emerged: In conversation after conversation, the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer was top of mind. Kansas’s most important natural resource is running dry, imperiling the state’s economy and the approach to farming that helps drive it.A 2013 study published by The National Academy of Sciences found that the Ogallala has already been drained of 30 percent of its water. Citing that study, among others, the nonprofit Kansas Leadership Center issued a report: “Running out of water. Running out of time.” It described an “irreversible depletion” of the Ogallala’s reserves. While the report’s list of the 150 largest users of Ogallala water users includes some municipalities, it is dominated by agricultural and food processing users, which means that, while western Kansas farmers are largely to blame for the Ogallala’s decline, they also are the most at risk from its demise.Kansas agriculture, then, faces an existential choice: It can cut back water use voluntarily now and face a decline in farm productivity, or it can continue to ignore the problem and face far more dire consequences as the water runs out. Water is a state issue, so all he can do is suggest conservation options. Nebraska, for instance, has instituted maximum water withdrawals for its farmers. Colorado is offering to buy back water rights, a way to pay farmers to dry farm. But Kansas hasn’t tried anything as sweeping, or as binding. “