Kansas Department of Agriculture deputy director tells committee agriculture and water are inseparable, cites aquifer decline and irrigation demands

Kenzie Olson, deputy director of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, told the Committee on Water that agriculture and water are tightly linked and presented state data on production, exports and water use.

"We contribute approximately $88,000,000,000 each year to the state's economy," Olson said, noting agriculture employs about 13% of the state's workforce and that roughly 90% of Kansas land is in production. Citing USDA’s 2022 Farm Census and state monitoring, she said Kansas ranks highly in several commodity areas and exported about $4.6 billion in agricultural products in the referenced year.

Olson described Kansas’s water infrastructure and use: "We have roughly 10,000 miles in the state of Kansas of streams and rivers," 24 reservoirs, seven principal groundwater aquifers, and that "90% of all the water that's used in Kansas though comes is pumped from underground." She told the committee that irrigation…