Weiner
Every October Weiner Arkansas hosts the Arkansas Rice festival which attracts farmers and rice industry workers from all around the region for fun, games and a parade. It’s also a place for farmers to compare notes on new farming techniques. But Weiner is also at the heart of Arkansas’s rice industry and it’s here that issues of aquifer depletion and irrigation projects hits home. Farmers here understand the value of water, and after a dry season in 2007 they are looking to more innovative methods to preserve what they have. Methods such as tail water recovery systems allow farmers to hold onto the water they pump a little longer, but for most, they still have to drill wells to get the water they need to irrigate. And with the water table dropping, it’s getting harder and harder to reach.
