How Factory Farms Pump, Poison and Pollute the Earth

October 13th, 2018

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Contributing writer for Wake Up World

Up to 40 percent of drinking water worldwide comes from underground waterways that make up largely uncharted aquifer systems, some containing water that’s tens of thousands of years old. When NASA published a study of global underground water reserves, they found 37 major aquifer systems — 21 of which were at risk of being depleted.1 The problem is especially pronounced in the U.S. southwest (among other regions in Asia and the Middle East), where it’s not unusual for family wells to run dry.

Unless they can pay upward of $15,000 to $30,000 to have their wells deepened by hundreds of feet, they’re left with faucets that often sputter out sand instead of fresh water. Where is all the water going? It’s not the family’s long showers or drinking habits that are to blame. Instead, industrial agriculture, drawn to states like Arizona because of its year-round growing season and lack of strict regulations, is using up most of it. According to The New York Times:2

“Local farmers had watched over the last decade and a half as waves of industrial farms arrived, tilling so much land that dust storms began darkening the sky. These enormous corporations were descending on the valley for the same reason homesteaders had a century ago: the year-round growing season and the lax regulation.

Compared with those for rivers and lakes, few laws govern the extraction of groundwater today. Aquifers across the globe are beginning to quietly dry up under the compounded strain of increased food production and a two-decade stretch that now includes the 10 warmest years in recorded history, sending farmers plumbing deeper for deposits of water … Agriculture uses the bulk of [groundwater] … ; about 70 percent of water withdrawn from aquifers is consumed by this one industry.”

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