380 Ecological Restoration and Design
Modern agriculture’s ecological footprint is drawn into particularly sharp focus
by the issue of water development. Nearly two-thirds of the freshwater from lakes,
rivers, streams and aquifers supply irrigation to about one-fifth of the agricultural
land worldwide (Vickers, 2001). While the scarcity of freshwater is predicted to
become the most important factor limiting agricultural production in the future
(MacKay, 2001, p53), the technology to use that water remains tragically ineffi-
cient. According to the Wild Farm Alliance, US irrigation systems waste 50 per
cent of the volume they use (World Resources Institute, 1998–1999). Globally, irri-
gation systems are only 40 per cent efficient (Wood et al, 2000). While these irri-
gated lands reap 35–40 per cent of the global harvest (Vickers, 2001), they impart
a heavy burden on ecosystems, overdrafting groundwater at rates exponentially
greater than the speed of natural replenishment, contaminating riparian systems
with sediment and toxic chemicals, causing soil salinization in arid climates and
dewatering entire lakes, rivers and freshwater systems. At last count, about 30 per
cent of the protected species and the species proposed for protection in the US
have been listed due to water resource development (Stein et al, 2000). Roughly a
third of freshwater fish species globally are threatened with extinction (Soulé and
Piper, 1992). The miraculous salmon runs, for example, that for millennia coursed
dramatically through nearly every river system on the West Coast, have been deci-
mated in just 150 years of settlement. The pallid sturgeon is now endangered in
inland North American rivers due to lack of spawning sites and is joined by the
Yaqui chub, the Topeka shiner and numerous others. Writing in The Farm as Nat-
ural Habitat (Jackson, 2002), Dr Laura Jackson, reports that ‘28 per cent of all
amphibians, 34 per cent of fishes, 65 per cent of crayfishes, and 73 per cent of
freshwater mussels are ranked extinct, imperiled, or rare by the Natural Heritage
Network of the Nature Conservancy’ (2002, p45). It comes as no surprise then
that clashes over water rights between farmers, environmentalists, Indian tribes
and urban dwellers have already hit the boiling point, exemplified by conflicts
such as in the Klamath Basin in southern Oregon and Northern California and the
Skagit Basin in north-western Washington. In September 2002, for example, an
estimated 30,000 salmon died on the lower Klamath River, a catastrophic die-off
that many people attribute to the diversion of water from the fishery to irrigated
farmland. This century is sure to experience only more such escalation.
The dominating role of livestock and feedlot farming on the US agricultural
landscape cannot be overestimated. More than 70 per cent of the national farm
income is animal based. Of 1.2 billion total acres in agriculture, upward of 600
million acres of private lands (including tribal lands) and at least 250 million acres
of public lands are used for grazing. Of the nearly 350 million acres of harvested
crops, the majority of the top three crops – corn, soybeans and hay – are largely
dedicated to feeding and fattening livestock. And an estimated 13 per cent of the
ocean’s fish harvests are diverted annually to cattle rations (Platt-McGinn, 1998,
p15). Midwestern prairie systems that hold the vast potential to support free-rang-
ing livestock (and native game set amid unbroken grasslands, wetlands, savannas
and forests) have been converted into an ocean of corn and soybeans. More than a