agriculture

Water from the Ogallala Aquifer is withdrawn about six times faster than rain or rivers can recharge it. Now, a group of farmers in one part of northwestern Kansas has agreed to pump 20 percent less water out of the aquifer over the next five years.

They want to get involved with both the local food movement and more conventional forms of agriculture. But many of them are finding their options limited. Ranch and farmland across the plains is going for several thousand dollars an acre, keeping many aspiring farmers out of the market.

Thousands of seasonal workers come to California's Salinas Valley each year to pick crops, and many of them seem destined for a life in the fields. Now, a training program run by ALBA Organics is giving these workers the skills they need to be their own bosses.

A fraternal agriculture organization known as the Grange must bring in younger members to survive. But the new generation's interest in environmental issues and food politics is clashing with the Grange's support of industrial farms.

In the past three years, Midwestern farmers have seen flooding, then record-setting drought, and now flooding again. "As much as we think we have things cornered and we know what's going to be happening, you just don't know what will happen," a meteorologist says.

Many farmers are cheering government proposals to give thousands of seasonal farmworkers a path to legal status. But even if the bill passes, it won't solve the long-term trend of fewer migrants coming north to work on U.S. farms. Farmers will instead have to learn how to do more with less immigrant labor.

Cities are finding beneficial and lucrative ways to dispose of solid waste, while also helping farmers. But a lot of sewage still ends up in landfills or being processed at big, industrial incinerators.

Payments to farmers survived in the latest extension of the farm bill. But not all of the groups that argued for the end of the subsidies see this as a loss. They've just been given nine more months to make their case to Congress.