Being Quoted is Not Always Great

I did an interview on water issues for the "Kansas Farmer" which appeared on page 12 of the April, 2009 edition (see article). The piece began saying that I said: "..the only solution to continued depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer is a new industry that uses less water and produces more economic value than today's irrigated production agriculture."

While I actually said this (or something very close to it), the interviewer seemed to completely forget about all the qualifying comments made just prior, which included something along the lines of: traditional responses have been to reduce water use at the expense of the economy or to boost the economy at the expense of the resource. The best solution is to address both the resource and economic issues simultaneously. With this understood, the opening quote above makes more sense and would be less likely to be taken literally. Finding a new industry is NOT the only solution to groundwater depletion in the Ogallala.

I also said irrigation system efficiency improvements wouldn't necessarily reduce crop water use, and gave him 4 reasons why it might not. My next quote in the article had me proclaiming my doubts as to irrigation efficiency saving water, based only (and solely) on one of the 4 stated reasons. And to boot, the interviewer had another person responding to my proclamation which was misunderstood and clipped. It didn't help matters much when the other person's refuting of my statement was not even correct.

When a 75 minute interview results in 3 quick quotes and 3 key points, I don't see how it can be really accurate - and this one missed several key points as well. While they have a job to do, my experience has been that much of the mis-information out there on water issues is because of the press that tries to get the word out.