Farmers and Natural Gas

It is little surprise that energy costs impact farmers who use lots of heavy equipment, and it is little surprise that Ken Salazar would call as a witness a farmer from Akron, Colorado, where I have relatives, to testify on this impact. But, I was surprised by the impact of natural gas prices on farmers:

Natural-gas costs have increased 215 percent for farmers in three years, he said.

"That has raised my cost of irrigation per crop year from $50 per acre in 2003 to $158 per acre expected in 2006," he [the Akron farmer] said.

I hadn't known that irrigation equipment was often powered with natural gas. (For the record, my relatives are dryland farmers, and basically don't irrigate their crops).