A June 6 article in The New York Times reports that millions of dollars in federal subsidies to help farmers buy better irrigation systems to conserve water is having the exact opposite effect. New studies show many farmers are misusing the money and are using even more water, the newspaper reports. This is affecting aquifers.

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Aside from some scattered bright spots, the biggest boom in farmland prices in 30 years has done little to reverse the gradual decline of small towns across Iowa. The same is true in agricultural communities across the country, according to scholars who track rural economies.

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