dpb wrote
Rod Speed wrote
dpb wrote

There's plenty of ground to give up the corners... There are lateral
systems on smaller tracts back east and out in some of the mountain
valleys for hay, etc., and they're pretty common in the desert SW for
their specialty crops, too.

Our feed lots are much further out.
https://www.aussiefarms.org.au/facil...a-beef-feedlot

Actually Heifer Source isn't feedlot but a dairy calf-rearing facility
producing milkers.

There is a massive feedlot there too.

May look like it, but that's not its function...dairy calves have to eat,
too...

They aint dairy cows. No dairys anywhere near
there, those are all down in Victoria hundreds
of miles away and mostly fading away now.

The closest larger feedlots are about 10-15 mi N; there are others
scattered all around...Seaboard has a large hog packing facility in
Guymon, OK, about 45 mi SW so towards that direction there are zillions of
pigs besides.

Yeah, big pig operation here too and the chicken operation
is the biggest in the entire southern hemisphere.

Number of goodly-sized dairies as well altho the Heifer Source folks are
out of Minnesota and ship most of them back that direction...
they're here for the calves owing to the cheaper feed costs than
locally...
it seems to work for them, they've been 10+ years now. I don't know their
current inventory; they're permit is for up to 27,000; being close by we
see the filings whenever they file for any changes to their permits.

Lots of cotton too.

Getting to be more altho towards the northern end of the degree-days
boundary but since takes less water is making inroads...plus some newer
varieties better adapted.

Sunflowers, canola, some potatoes (under contract to MickeyD's), grain
sorghum (milo) besides the wheat and corn...

Plenty of all those here, and vast amount of non irrigated too.

Yeah, our operation is all dryland; the SE corner of the County was closed
for new irrigation 20+ yr ago; the rest of the county not too long after.
OK, unfortunately, still doesn't have any reasonable water usage/rights on
the books as KS.

Out of curiosity, what's your average annual rainfall?

400mm

We're about 18";

Bit higher than ours, but not by much.

it goes up noticeably every 30 mi east and down heading west until E CO
and NM are in 10" range.

Doesnt vary that quickly here.

The Rocky Mtns create the "rain shield" from the westerlies

There's nothing for thousands of miles here.

and we're too far N and W from the Gulf of Mexico for moisture transport
to reliably get to us...

Ours mostly comes from the far NW coast
of australia, thousands of miles away.