Growing In Rural North Dakota
The hallmarks of North Dakota rural life: open space, clean air, safe communities with solid values, an appreciation for the benefits of hard work, and a sense of tradition. Much of our country wishes it could enjoy what North Dakotans have lived with for more than a century. But these resources are endangered assets, and Garrison Diversion is committed to protecting: farms, communities that come together around them and the people who have come to depend on agriculture for the opportunity to live and work in North Dakota. That means giving them the freedom to change, expand and grow.
The North Dakota farm is more than a food factory, and rural communities are more than a collection of farms taking what they can from the ground and sending it to the city. Farms are often sophisticated business enterprises employing people, researching and developing resources, and marketing products. Some of these farms have been passed down through the generations for more than a century.
At the same time, entrepreneurs explore new wealth and create new businesses. Universities dot the prairie, preparing people for every sort of work. There are more post graduate degrees in the natural sciences per capita in North Dakota than in any other state. Traditional family shops and new retail giants share space in shopping centers and on main streets. Everywhere, North Dakotans are looking for opportunities to build a strong future for their children. Future opportunities for the farmer, cattleman, food processor, business person, educator, manufacturer, and professional depend on a reliable supply of quality water. It is a common language, the single most talked about resource in growing communities. Without the promise to our children that there will be a reliable supply of water, they will be forced to put their roots down in areas other than North Dakota. These families have long been the cornerstone of rural values and heritage.
Bringing Us Together
There may have been a time when agriculture, business, industry and public services thought they could exist together without considering what impact they might have on one another. Everyone could safely look after their own backyard. But farming practices today have a greater potential for impacting the environment which, in turn, affects the way a farmer can manage his or her land and livestock.
Economic development relies heavily on the careful stewardship of all of North Dakota's resources: agricultural land, urban centers, wetlands and wildlife. In all this, water management and a reliable water supply play a critical role. Flood and drought can destroy whole communities, ruin businesses and change the delicate balance that people and nature have struck in the state. On the other hand, a carefully managed water supply can offer opportunities for farm families and rural communities to build better lives for themselves.
Garrison Diversion has worked steadily for the past 40 years in an effort to complete a water system that will assure a reliable, high quality supply for urban, rural and industrial users and, at the same time, provide future opportunities for agriculture.
A Study in Cooperation, Not Compromise
In its effort to bring a clean, reliable supply of water to North Dakota communities, Garrison Diversion has been careful to replace and repair wetlands and wildlife habitat that may have been affected by the construction of canals and pipelines. In exchange for promised irrigation projects, it has repaired, replaced or added tens of thousand of acres of wildlife habitat over the last four decades. But developing and maintaining wildlife habitat is only half of the equation. The promised water projects never materialized, but the potential that irrigation holds for building a healthier North Dakota remains as strong as ever.
The Oakes Irrigation Test Area And Agri-Processing
Another Cooperative Venture
North Dakotans have long understood that the farm is more than a place to grow raw materials. Bringing food processing to North Dakota means jobs for North Dakotans and more control for farmers over what they grow and how they market it. Turning corn into sweetener, potatoes into french fries and durum wheat into pasta means careful management from seed to store.
The irrigation test project in Oakes was designed to demonstrate that a well-managed irrigation system could produce high-value, irrigated crops without the potential for damage to nearby water supplies. On working farms owned and operated by North Dakotans, farmers are growing onions, potatoes, corn and beans using advanced methods of irrigation and sophisticated weed and pest control techniques. The geology of the Oakes area makes it possible to take very precise measurements of the impact that irrigating farmland has on rivers, lakes and groundwater. Studies include monitoring the effect of irrigation on waterways and wetlands in the area, measuring the impact of irrigation on well water and the feasibility of closed irrigation systems that reuse drainage.
Carefully measuring the effect new farming methods have on soil and water in the Oakes area will provide data that can be used all over the world to help developing agriculture grow in harmony with the environment and the global economy. Combined with local processing and aggressive marketing, these methods have opened up new opportunities for farmers here at home to expand and diversify in a changing North Dakota.
In addition to full scale farms producing onions, potatoes, corn and beans, North Dakota State University, operating with Garrison Diversion funding, studies test plots of cabbages, peppers, tomatoes, Chinese vegetables and more. Using creative growing techniques and carefully controlled irrigation, these highly profitable crops can be grown in North Dakota without government subsidies. Markets all over the world are waiting for these very products and, with continued study and cooperation on the part of farmers and developers, North Dakota will be able to supply them with both raw produce and processed food. This type of carefully managed irrigation makes more diversification possible, and that means more profitable and stable farms and a better agricultural economy for the state.
If the enormous variety of agricultural activities that happen here in the heartland have anything in common, it's water. Large scale corn sweetener plants, wheat and vegetable processing operations, french fry plants, cattle, hog, bison and other livestock operations and packing plants - these offer the greatest promise as features in a stable economy using our own resources.
Water for a reliable supply of produce, and water for agri-processing: the Garrison Diversion Project has been making every effort to provide both.
Resources for a New Age
North Dakota farms produce more durum wheat, more sunflowers, and more barley than farms in any other state. But something even more valuable comes out of North Dakota. Some of the brightest young people in the country graduate from North Dakota schools. North Dakota students rank among the highest in SAT scores and enjoy some of the lowest student teacher ratios. They grow up with a keen understanding of what it means to work hard, give of themselves, and enjoy life. Faced with all of the challenges that America will experience in the future, we cannot afford to let this most valuable of resources go undernourished. Whatever else can be done to give our children a fair chance at success in an uncertain future, the very bare necessity of clean water in their homes must certainly be a priority. Right on its heels must come the water it takes to support growing agriculture and job-creating agri-processing. The people who live in the Great Plains have seen their homes wither and disappear too often for us to ignore the simplest solution in the battle to keep such disasters from ever happening again: affordable access to Missouri River water through Garrison Diversion.
To view the Oakes Irrigation Research Site and Carrington Research Extension Center Annual Reports, visit http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/oakes/oakes.htm
Click here for more information on the operations of the Oakes Test Area.