An international team of scientists, including experts from the University of Birmingham, has extended and improved methods used to calculate peak oil production to assess grain production in three US states, Nebraska, Texas and Kansas. They related the levels of water extraction from the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest underwater reservoirs in the High Plains, over the past five decades, to the amounts of grain harvested in each state and used this model to predict future trends. Their results are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We were inspired by insightful analyses of US crude oil production. They predicted a peak in crude oil production a decade in advance,” says Assaad Mrad, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University and lead author of the study.
The scientists found that in Texas and Kansas, even taking into account advances in technology and improved irrigation methods, production levels peaked around 2016 before starting to decline. By 2050, if no yield-boosting technologies are introduced, grain production in Texas could be reduced by as much as 40 per cent.
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