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The Editors’ Desk
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At the end of the 19th century, a former soldier named John Wesley Powell issued a report to Congress following a three-month expedition through the southwestern United States. In it, Powell explained that for the purposes of settlement, the West was different from the East. Its key constraint was water, and a massive undertaking would be necessary, dam by dam and ditch by ditch, if it were to be made more habitable.
“The redemption of all these lands,” he wrote, “will require extensive and comprehensive plans, for the execution of which aggregated capital or cooperative labor will be necessary.”
For nearly two centuries, this West—the “arid West,” which includes all of the Southwest and much of the Mountain West—has seen the development of cities, farms, and fields, with nearly every drop of every river accounted for, and, where river water isn’t available, the rampant exploitation of groundwater. Today, water throughout the region is overallocated and overused, and the West that Powell explored is even drier. A changing climate has exacerbated a prolonged drought—one that may well turn into long-term aridification. That’s not just true in the West. This week, the
World Resources Institute issued a report estimating that one-quarter of the world’s crops, including rice, wheat, and corn, are currently grown in water-stressed areas.
As with so many things, the arid West is at an inflection point. Rainfall and snowfall patterns are changing; temperatures are rising; and the region can no longer rely on old ways of thinking about water and agriculture. The following stories are focused on the people who are finding innovative solutions to these challenges, because the arid region of the U.S. is again in need of redemption, extensive plans, and a lot of cooperative labor.
Thank you for reading, and for continuing to be a Civil Eats member. Your support is invaluable. And, if you’d like to increase that support, you can make a tax-deductible donation by clicking the button below.
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~ The Civil Eats Editors
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Member Updates
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Civil Eats Salon Recap: Food Prices and the 2024 Election
Last month, our Senior Staff Reporter and Contributing Editor Lisa Held talked with economic experts David Ortega and Lindsay Owens about what, exactly, has made food prices soar, and how we can prevent it. If you weren’t able to attend (or you loved it so much you can’t wait to watch it again), you can view the recording here.
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What Book Do You Recommend?
Our hugely popular Holiday Book Gift Guide is coming out in just a few weeks, and we want to know: What new food- or farm-related book would you recommend? We encourage you to suggest food and farming books that have either just been published or will be soon (September 2024 – February 2025). Email us the title and author, plus a brief
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Civil Eats Member Spotlight
The member spotlight showcases some of the remarkable people who are making a difference in the food system. Email us if you’d like to be considered for a future spotlight. And be sure to check out this month’s profile!
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The ‘Soft Path’ of Water for Farmers in the Western US
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BY BRIAN CALVERT
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When Peter Gleick moved to California in the 1970s, the state had more than a million acres of cotton in production and little control over the use of its rapidly depleting groundwater. Today, California grows a tenth the amount of cotton and groundwater use has been brought under control. For Gleick, an author and cofounder of the water-focused
Pacific Institute, these are signs that change can happen. But there’s much more to be done, and quickly, especially in the arid western United States, where water use is extremely high—and climate change and drought are increasing pressure on a region that already uses a tremendous amount of water.
In his latest book, The Three Ages of Water, Gleick describes what he calls a “soft path” for water conservation, moving beyond the hard infrastructure and rigid policies we've relied on in the past. This means rethinking attitudes toward growth, while recognizing water as a fundamental human right and a source of broader ecological health. In the West, that also means reconsidering our approach to agriculture. Civil Eats caught up with Gleick to understand what that means and how we should think about water in the near future.
When it comes to water, agriculture, and the arid West, how should we be framing the challenges ahead?
There's a mismatch between how much water there is and what humans want to do with it. It used to be mining. Mining was the dominant user of water. But really, for our lifetime and certainly our immediate predecessors, agriculture has been the dominant user of water. So, how can we continue in the West to do the things that we want to do within the constraints of nature, the constraints of how much water is available, and the growing constraint of the realization that even the limited amount of water that's available has to serve multiple purposes?
We built a whole series of systems, both physical and institutional, that brought enormous benefits to us—hydropower, irrigated agriculture, water for cities. It was at a cost we didn't fully understand at the time—in particular, the devastation of natural ecosystems that were also very dependent on limited water.
How do we need to think about agriculture differently in the West if we’re going to have enough water in the future?
We have to fundamentally rethink agriculture, very broadly. How much agriculture do we want? What kind of crops are we going to grow? How are we going to water those crops, and how are we going to manage the institutions that give the signals to farmers about what to grow, that determine how markets develop, that subsidize good or bad things, that allocate water from one user to another? Those are all things we designed 100 years ago or more, and they no longer serve their purpose.
The arid West is a great place to grow alfalfa. Some farmers can get three or four or five crops a year of alfalfa. It’s easy to grow. The problem is it takes a lot of water, and farmers grow it because they have available water, because of the institutions or the laws or the economics that give that water to them. And subsidies for certain kinds of things, like transportation, make it economical to grow. We’re now in a world, I believe, where the water laws and the markets that encourage farmers to do certain kinds of things are no longer appropriate.
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The challenge is, how do we redesign those things? How do we change those things? You can change it by limiting water availability to certain farmers. You can change it by changing the price of
water or subsidies for alfalfa. You can change it by regulatory changes. You can change it by economic changes. But we haven’t figured that out yet.
What are the strongest levers we have right now to move things quickly?
Changing water rights, which is a legal issue, and policy, in the broad sense: subsidies, economic strategies, assistance to farmers, information about extreme events from the climatic point of view. We can make improvements in technology to some degree, and I think that’s really important, but the really big changes will come about on the legal and institutional side.
Prior appropriation, where water rights were given out 100 years ago or more based on first come, first served, those water rights are badly monitored and enforced. They also don’t lead to efficient use of water. If you have a senior water right and there’s water scarcity, you get your water first—it doesn’t matter how efficient you are, and you have to use it or you lose it.
The prior appropriations doctrine made sense 100 years ago, but it no longer makes sense. But it’s so heavily ensconced in law and culture that changing that is probably the biggest barrier to moving agriculture in the West into the 21st century.
Where can we look to find solutions to these challenges?
I think there are solutions to every one of these problems. We’re already seeing the elements of it in what I call the “soft path” for water. The hard path is what we did in the 20th century, the hard institutions, infrastructure, and economics that brought us the benefits of the 20th century, but also the problems we see. The soft path says we have to rethink the supply of water.
We have to stop thinking that finding a new source of supply is always the solution. There are no new sources of water, in the traditional sense, but there are non-traditional new sources of water: recycled water, reclaimed water, desalinated water. Most of those are expensive, and urban. But they are new sources in the sense that they don’t require tapping another river over, tapping groundwater, or building a pipeline from the Great Lakes or from Canada. Those days are over, although some people haven’t realized that yet.
The soft path also says rethink demand, and that’s this question of efficiency and conservation. Do what we want with less water, and rethink what we really want to use our water for. What’s our demand really about? Do we really want to grow as much alfalfa in the West as we’re growing today? I think that’s a question we’re starting to ask, and we need to ask more questions like that.
And the soft path says we have to rethink our institutions, economics, management, politics, and laws. Everywhere I look there are smart farmers and smart cities doing innovative things. There are people nibbling around the edges of the water rights discussion. So, the challenge is to find the success stories. Figure out why they’re successes and implement them to scale.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Chris Ivers managing irrigation in Colorado's San Luis Valley.
(Photo credit: Jennifer Oldham)
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Colorado’s Groundwater Experiment
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BY JENNIFER OLDHAM
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On a dry, hot day in June, water manager Chris Ivers plunged his hand into San Luis Creek and extracted a tangled mat of weeds that had blocked icy snowmelt from reaching nearby farms. The free-flowing water is a welcome sight in southern Colorado, an agricultural region in the throes of a groundwater crisis.
Ivers, who helps farmers and ranchers in this arid valley use the scarce resource wisely, pointed out the full ditch and green shoots emerging nearby—a byproduct, in part, of a regional experiment in water conservation. “I’m encouraged,” he said as crows squawked overhead and mustard grass waved in a slight breeze. “I really haven’t been walking out here in a while.”
Producers in this sprawling valley, cradled between the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains, have just seven years to replenish overtapped groundwater to levels required by law or face state-mandated well shutdowns. Aquifer storage plunged in 2002 on the heels of a severe drought and hasn't markedly recovered, and much of the region is currently under a federal disaster declaration. Following the 2002 drought, farmers
voluntarily created seven governing bodies, called water subdistricts, in the hopes of replenishing two aquifers that make growing food viable here in North America's largest high-altitude desert.
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Farmers in this sprawling valley have just seven years to replenish overtapped groundwater to levels required by law or face state-mandated well
shutdowns.
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Fields in the San Luis Valley yield two billion pounds of potatoes a year, making the region the nation’s second-biggest spud producer. But the valley’s irrigation outlook is dire: Water withdrawn by wells exceeds the amount of snowmelt refilling aquifers, and there are more claims to water rights
than there is water in streams. The expanse is among the most densely irrigated regions on Earth. To reach that seven-year target, farmers and residents will have to further curtail water use by retiring wells, fallowing fields, and switching to less water-intensive crops; otherwise, the state engineer may intervene and order well curtailments.
That puts Ivers, a program manager for two subdistricts with the Rio Grande Water Conservation District, at the center of difficult decisions about how to use, and conserve, the valley's shrinking water supplies. He is also implementing an innovative project designed to add water back into the aquifer. If successful, the experiment could provide a roadmap for hundreds of farming and ranching communities nationwide whose groundwater stores are dwindling at unprecedented rates.
An ‘All Hands’ Crisis
At Peachwood Farms, a flat, 1,897-acre expanse at the heart of the valley’s groundwater conservation trial, Ivers stood amid fallowed fields bordered by circles of barley and areas being revegetated with native seeds. This patchwork of land marks the personal sacrifices that are keeping the region’s agricultural industry—its largest employer—alive.
“If you ask somebody who works in water like me, this looks great,” Ivers said, as pronghorn observed him from a distance and a golden eagle circled overhead. The goal, he added, is to significantly curtail water use on the property in order “to help make farming in the rest of this region more sustainable.”
In 2022, the nonprofit Colorado Open Lands forged what’s known as a groundwater conservation easement with Peachwood Farms’ owner. The agreement retired pumping on seven of 12 crop circles over the next decade and halved water use from the remaining five, in exchange for an undisclosed cash payment to the farm and state and federal tax credits. The easement saved 560 million gallons a year and made the aquifer in this
part of the valley whole. The unconventional deal ensured that the property’s neighbors, like David Frees, will not face well shutdowns, and is an example of the kind of complex solutions needed to keep farms going in the current climate.
“The Peachwood easement allowed us to drop groundwater pumping [in the subdistrict] by 10 percent,” Frees said in a recent interview. “Without it, we might have had to curtail everyone’s water use by 10 percent.”
Instead, the easement allowed the subdistrict’s farmers to continue their operations much as they have in the past, said Frees, who runs 60 head of cattle and is president of one of the valley’s seven water subdistricts. “As the aquifer fills up, we will have more stream flow extend to other parts of the valley.”
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“The Peachwood easement allowed us to drop groundwater pumping by 10 percent. Without it, we might have had to curtail everyone’s water use by 10 percent.”
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Groundwater depletion is by no means unique to this corner of Colorado. Across the U.S., groundwater stores are in the red and dropping fast. Aquifers that farmers rely on for irrigation in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nebraska, and elsewhere have fallen by dozens of feet since 2002, satellite imagery
shows.
Amid this national crisis, the attempts by the farmers in the San Luis Valley to moderate their own use caught the eye of U.S. Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colorado). In 2023, Bennet introduced a bill in the Senate that would increase nationwide funding for groundwater conservation easements akin to the one on Peachwood Farms. Bennet is currently working with fellow senators to include either funding for such programs or a pilot groundwater easement project in the 2024 Farm Bill, said Rosy Brummette Weber, a policy advisor to Bennet.
The Peachwood Farms groundwater conservation agreement has also prompted water managers in overdrafted basins from California to Kansas to approach Colorado Open Lands for information on how to use similar arrangements to preserve water for their growers.
The stakes are high and mounting: The nation’s aquifers are dwindling due to rising temperatures, drought, and overuse. Many are not replenishable. Disappearing groundwater threatens the livelihood of crucial agricultural regions like the San Luis Valley, which in turn diminishes the national food system, making the U.S. more reliant on imports. The breadth of the problem prompted President Biden's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology to issue a warning in December, calling the crisis “an all-hands-on-deck moment for groundwater sustainability.”
The refusal of some growers nationwide to curb groundwater pumping became evident in May, when Idaho's water agency ordered limitations on the use of wells serving a half million acres of agricultural land, an action described as “the largest curtailment” in state history.
In southwestern Colorado’s high desert, producers already till fewer acres, tax themselves to fund fallowing programs, and plant less water-intensive crops. Taxpayers are also footing the bill for a $30 million program approved by the state legislature, in which the Rio Grande Water Conservation District uses funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to pay farmers for retiring their wells.
Yet even after growers here cut pumping by a third, in 2022, water in one of two aquifers fell to its lowest level on record, after extreme heat led to diminished snowpack. Throughout the West, the snowpack of the mountains acts as water bank, with snowmelt filling creeks and streams throughout the summer that help irrigate fields and recharge the aquifer. (The San Luis Valley floor receives only seven inches of rain per year.)
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“The aquifer has not recovered, and we have spent tens of millions of dollars on programs to reduce groundwater withdrawals. [The region is] in a fight against Mother Nature.”
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To ensure its aquifers remain sustainable amid an uncertain climate future, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District must permanently withdraw up to 60,000 acres of land from irrigation, about 10 percent of the valley’s arable land. After two decades of effort, the aquifers are only a third of the way
charged, and frustration with the pace of recovery is high among water managers, producers, and residents.
“The aquifer has not recovered, and we have spent tens of millions of dollars on programs to reduce groundwater withdrawals,” said Amber Pacheco, the Rio Grande Water Conservation District's deputy general manager, who oversees irrigators in six subdistricts. (A seventh is operated by the Trinchera Ground Water Management Subdistrict.) Some of the region’s subdistricts still haven’t seen any aquifer recovery and, she added, they “are in a fight against Mother Nature.”
Easements Ain’t Easy
Most of the water-saving programs in the valley so far have focused on short-term drying up of land. None have created perpetual groundwater savings or allowed people to keep farming by reducing irrigation over their entire property.
Enter groundwater conservation easements. These are legal tools that restrict pumping on a certain piece of property, and in the arid West and Midwest, they present innovative solutions to aquifer depletion.
Such agreements, like the one forged on Peachwood Farms, allow growers to reduce the number of acres they plant, and thus the amount of water they use, in perpetuity, in exchange for federal and state tax benefits. These agreements can overlap with other solutions. The Rio Grande Water Conservation District, for example, is using money from the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to revegetate easement land with drought-resistant native and non-native plants.
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Even after growers in the San Luis Valley cut pumping by a third, in 2022 water in one of two aquifers fell to its lowest level on record. Water authorities must permanently withdraw up to 60,000 acres of land from irrigation, about 10 percent of the valley's arable land.
(Photo credit: Jennifer Oldham)
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Even so, this promising tool faces challenges to its potential. Chief among them are both a lack of funding for such deals and the fact that appraisers who value conservation easements are unsure how to put a value on groundwater.
“People call me and say they want to put in place a groundwater conservation easement and I say, ‘That’s great: We have no idea what we would pay you,’” said Sally Wier, groundwater conservation project manager at Colorado Open Lands, who lives and works with producers in the San Luis Valley. “I have people who are 70 years old, and they are trying to decide whether to fallow their land or stay optimistic and continue farming.”
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“I have people who are 70 years old, and they are trying to decide whether to fallow their land or stay optimistic and continue farming.”
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Appraisers are adept at valuing traditional conservation easements, in which farmers and ranchers receive tax breaks and grants in exchange for placing deed restrictions on their operations that bar most development. Such deals exploded in popularity over the last decade as agricultural producers sought to stave off big-box stores, self-storage complexes, and residential construction, all of which already consume millions of acres of fertile open space. But applying the same approach to water is tricky.
The Spread of Innovative Easements
In the San Luis Valley, Colorado Open Lands also pioneered a conservation easement program that ties surface water rights to the land. This legal assistance project paired farmers with law students to formalize verbal water-sharing agreements into bylaws. As a result, it preserved a network of centuries-old irrigation ditches known as acequias, whose operators hold the state’s oldest water rights.
Similar efforts are underway elsewhere in the West. Just a six-hour drive to the south, near Clovis, New Mexico, lies another arid region desperate to replenish its drought-stricken aquifer.
Here, the Ogallala Land and Water Conservancy is pursuing short-term conservation easements on groundwater rights while it works to secure more funding for perpetual deals. It’s a sprint to refill the massive Midwest aquifer, which spans eight states and declined about 17 feet, on average, from when irrigation began in the 1950s through 2017, a U.S. Geological Survey study found.
The diminished water supply requires sacrifices like those made on Peachwood Farms. Eight landowners have forged groundwater leases with the conservancy in which they’ve agreed to stop pumping from 51 wells, saving about 4 billion gallons a year. Their actions will help secure groundwater supply for Cannon Air Force Base, the city of Clovis, and Curry County—and will protect habitat for endangered species.
To figure out how to fairly compensate the landowners for their water, the conservancy installed a special flow meter on center-pivot sprinklers to calculate total gallons per minute of annual groundwater production, said Ladona Clayton, the Ogallala Conservancy’s executive director.
The organization also reviewed crop budgets to analyze harvests over previous years and the herbicides used, as well as insurance, labor, and other production costs, she added. Using about $5 million in federal and state funds, it then annually paid the landowners for 100 percent of the appraised value of their groundwater, allowing them to keep 20 percent of their water. Agreements extend for three years while the nonprofit works to secure further funding for conservation easements.
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“I’m hoping that I can see in my lifetime that our aquifer can get back up to where it was in the 1950s.”
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“These producers who have lease agreements shut off wells in 2022, many that were dry on certain parts of their land,” Clayton said. “Now those wells have water—it’s music to my ears—they can haul water for their livestock.”
Such deals are showing promise, and more will be needed. Extended drought throughout the West is unlikely to abate, nor is demand for water.
Meanwhile, farmers in the San Luis Valley who raise livestock near Peachwood Farms hold high hopes for the groundwater conservation easements. Such deals may eventually play a key part in the ongoing effort to restore the region's aquifer system.
“I’m the fifth generation to farm in the area, and I wouldn’t mind doing more deals” like Peachwood, said Pete Stagner, who is vice president of the water subdistrict overseen by Frees and runs 200 head of cattle on a ranch adjacent to Peachwood. “I’m hoping that I can see in my lifetime that our aquifer can get back up to where it was in the 1950s.”
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Irrigated farmland in the desert of the Imperial Valley.
(Photo credit: Steve Proehl, Getty Images)
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How Should We Be Farming in the Desert?
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BY NINA ELKADI
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Just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, California’s Imperial Valley is both a desert and an agricultural wonder. Bordered by sand dunes and barren mountains, the region receives less than three inches of rainfall per year, 27 inches less than the U.S. average. From June to September, high temperatures here often exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. By most measures, the Imperial Valley is not a great place to grow food. Yet carrots, cauliflower, sweet onions, honeydew, broccoli, and alfalfa all grow here, incongruous crops that spread across half a million acres of cultivated land.
Ronald Leimgruber farms 3,500 of those acres. Given the lack of rain in the region, Leimgruber says he has “about seven” different irrigation projects on his farm, where he grows an array of crops, including carrots, lettuce, watermelon, and hay. Leimgruber, a third-generation farmer whose grandparents helped build the All American Canal, estimates he has spent millions of dollars on various water conservation techniques over the years. Some of that spending was subsidized by the federal government; some came out of his own pocket. He’s not sure it was worth it, especially because
the government does not fund the upkeep of new systems.
“The jury’s still out,” he says. “Short term, there’s no maintenance. Long term, these things don’t last. Technology changes. They get worn out. We get a government grant to get them put in, and they look good at first, and then all of a sudden, we have to operate them.”
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“I use about 7,000 gallons of diesel per field per year. . . . And everybody says that’s real efficient. Well, it is efficient around water, but that’s the only thing it’s efficient on.”
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Leimgruber has implemented a number of
projects—including drip, linear, and solid set irrigation systems, plus more—all designed to improve efficiency. But many of these drought mitigation techniques are costing him tens of thousands of dollars each year to maintain. And they are less efficient than they seem.
“I use about 7,000 gallons of diesel per field per year,” he says. “The system itself has 1,000 plastic nozzles and regulators and hoses. It has 35 rubber tires on it. It has 15 electric motors on it, a 300-horsepower diesel engine blaring away, emitting carbon into the atmosphere. And everybody says that’s real efficient. Well, it is efficient around water, but that’s the only thing it’s efficient on.”
Leimgruber and countless farmers like him are the beneficiaries of massive government efforts to make the arid western United States more habitable.
This level of agriculture was not possible in the Imperial Valley until the construction of the Alamo Canal, also known as the Imperial Canal, in 1901, which diverted water from the Colorado River. Now, climate change is challenging these efforts, and forcing an unsettling question: On a warming planet, how much tech will it take to farm an increasingly hostile environment?
Water Adaptation
In the desert, getting water to crops often requires irrigation. The USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) provides both technical and financial assistance to farmers for conserving ground and surface water, reducing soil erosion, and mitigating drought through increased irrigation efficiency.
Critics, however, say these programs don’t address the bigger picture, and may not be of much help as the climate shifts weather patterns, precipitation, and temperature. In June, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) published a report admonishing the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a lack of programs to help farmers to make major changes.
Farmers received more than $6 billion from the USDA from 2017 to 2023, the report notes, including $521.7 million from EQIP (and $5.6 billion in payments from the agency’s crop insurance program). California and Colorado alone received more than $1 billion. The EWG estimates that only around 30 percent of EQIP funding goes toward helping farmers reduce their emissions and adapt to climate change.
“Conservation dollars spent to update irrigation systems are funds that aren’t spent helping Western farmers adapt and become more resilient to climate change,” EWG’s Midwest Director Anne Schechinger says in the report. Instead, she writes, EQIP funding needs to help farmers in the Colorado River region better adapt. “[Funding] should focus more on paying farmers to switch to more drought-tolerant crops, to incorporate conservation crop rotations and to adopt other conservation practices that make their operations more resilient to climate change.”
One tool for resiliency is the Water Adaptation Techniques Atlas (WATA), another USDA initiative, which provides an online resource for users to explore different techniques being applied in the Colorado River Basin. At the Yuma Agricultural Center at the University of Arizona, for example, a company called Desert Control is working to improve soil moisture retention by “spraying a mix of nano clay particles and water onto
the soil surface.”
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A screenshot of the USDA’s WATA map.
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And along the Colorado River, the Cocopah Tribe is clearing out invasive, water-sucking plant species and replacing them with native trees. Users of the atlas can explore projects that might help them with their own water adaptation. That’s important, since the simple act of watering crops is, in much of the West, incredibly complex.
“Maybe somebody’s first thought is, well, what if we just converted to more efficient irrigation systems?” says Noah Silber-Coats, a research scientist at the USDA Southwest Climate Hub who helped create the WATA. “Well, now we’re potentially increasing the amount of water that a crop is taking up, right, and we’re reducing the return flow downstream.”
More efficient watering, in other words, could mean healthier crops and higher yields, but an increase in overall water use.
“So from the get-go, we’re kind of aware of all the tradeoffs involved in any sort of solution to water scarcity,” Silber-Coats says.
Silber-Coats acknowledges that some of the most popular crops in the West, like alfalfa, are driven by demand—not solely by subsidies—which means farmers are loath to leave them. Alfalfa is primarily used as an animal feed, and as demand for animal products increases worldwide, experts expect the alfalfa market to increase, too. And it grows well in the arid West, where there is a lot of sunshine. However, alfalfa is an incredibly thirsty crop, requiring 20 to 46 inches of water per season. In a region that receives less than three inches of rain per year, almost all of the water for alfalfa growth must come from irrigation.
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Alfalfa farming in the Imperial Valley.
(Photo credit: Timothy Hearsum, Getty Images)
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“Farmers plant alfalfa because it’s the highest-margin crop they can plant,” says Ethan Orr, an agriculture and economics expert at the University of Arizona. “Say you move your alfalfa crops to somewhere like the Midwest, and you said, ’OK, there’s a lot more water here.’ But you have less sunshine, so you’re going to get five to six cuttings, about half the productivity of [Arizona] alfalfa, and then you’re going to have to ship it here for the dairy farmers. So you’re going to create transportation costs and a large carbon footprint, because you didn’t count all of the inputs.”
Arizona, Nevada, and California—the lower Colorado River Basin states—have each committed to reducing their water usage by 3 million acre-feet (1 acre-foot is about 325,000 gallons) through 2026 as all the Colorado River states negotiate a new water plan amid ongoing drought. It isn’t yet clear exactly how these reductions will happen. Right now, farmers have little incentive to plant alternatives, while there are
still programs, like the USDA’s, dedicated to propping up existing irrigation infrastructure.
In the Upper Colorado River Basin, the System Conservation Pilot Program pays farmers to fallow their land to conserve water. But that program is off to a rocky start, with farmers complaining of low offers for payment. Other agencies, like the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, are looking to potentially pay farmers in the Imperial Valley to fallow their land for a season.
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“What if we just converted to more efficient irrigation systems? Well, now we’re potentially increasing the amount of water that a crop is taking up, and reducing the return flow downstream. [There are] tradeoffs involved in any solution to water scarcity.”
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“If you were to do anything to limit alfalfa use in Arizona, you’d probably have a farmer that would fallow one field and still plant alfalfa in the other, because the margins are so much better than some of these other crops,” Orr says.
The Limits of Tech
But Schechinger argues that no amount of technical changes can keep up with the depletion rates in the Colorado River Basin.
“We know that 75 percent of the Colorado River water withdrawals go to irrigate crops, and the crops are being grown in an area that’s running out of water,” she says. “So, really, in the not-too-distant future, it’s going to be very difficult for Colorado River state farmers to farm what and how they farm today.”
Schechinger calls for a more holistic approach to water management in the region—one that involves growing different crops each year and not just improving irrigation practices. This approach also involves turning away from planting on marginal acreage that is not ideal for crops.
“When you are growing in a floodplain and you get more rain or more frequent precipitation events because of climate change, then those floodplain acres are really more vulnerable to the increased precipitation,” she says.
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“In the not-too-distant future, it’s going to be very difficult for Colorado River state farmers to farm what and how they farm today.”
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Orr advocates for an overhaul of the one-size-fits-all system and tailoring practices to each farm. “We need grand ideas,” he says. “I don’t want to solve a one-time problem of using less water and then not take care of the soil and let the salinity go up and let crop productivity go down.”
Tech still has a role to play, he says, including broadband infrastructure in the fields. With expanded broadband, for example, farmers can use global positioning systems and live drone monitoring to measure how thirsty certain plants are. These highly specific monitoring techniques, which have been used in U.S. agriculture since the 1990s, are known as “precision agriculture.”
“One of the issues that precision agriculture gets to is the overuse of inputs,” Orr says. “When you look at the environmental degradation, like the seepage of nitrogen fertilizer into water systems, simply having the ability to know exactly how much fertilizer and water should go on the plants is the best way to avoid that.”
When it comes to water use, precision agriculture can help farmers determine what is best for their own land—which may differ from what their neighbors need.
“[These issues are] basin-wide, but when it comes down to it, it has to be a conversation with an individual farmer,” Orr says. In his role in the extension office, he meets regularly with Arizona farmers to discuss which tools are best for their land. “Every field is different, and so I think that’s really what we have to do is study this before we do it.”
Silber-Coats hopes the WATA can help farmers and researchers begin adapting to water scarcity.
“We want to see specific action affecting water use or availability,” he said. “The atlas part of it helps us remember that context matters, and everything takes place somewhere.”
Technique Over Tech
In other parts of the region, farmers are relying more on conservation techniques than on the tech of the future.
The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), for example, pays the Quechan Tribe to forgo irrigating part of their land in the Imperial Valley. Through a pilot program, MWD pays the farmers leasing the land and the tribe up to $473 per acre. The farmers, who are both tribal and non-tribal, receive 75 percent of the payment, while the tribe receives the other 25 percent.
The Quechan used the money to contribute to a decades-long conservation project, restoring the wetlands surrounding the Colorado River. The tribe supplants pink saltcedar fronds, an invasive species that pulls water from the river, with native vegetation, including cottonwoods, willows, and honey mesquite.
In the Mojave Desert, 240 miles from the Imperial Valley, Michael Kotutwa Johnson lives and farms 11 acres on the Hopi Reservation. Johnson, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona School of Natural Resources and the Environment, dry farms with Hopi methods that do not require irrigation. These methods include wide row spacing, planting multiple seeds per hole, and planting drought-tolerant varieties of seeds.
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“We respect the land, and we respect the impact that we can have on the ecosystem. It’s [a matter] of respecting the water that we’ve been given as a gift, and we use it as many times as we can, as efficiently as we can.”
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“Our crops are suited to fit the environment,” he says. “Our seeds have been adapted for over 3,000 years to be raised with little moisture.”
For him, agricultural resilience in the West means less manipulation of the environment. “The only agriculture left in Arizona after about 20 years will be Indian agriculture,” he says, “because they do have the water rights, they do have the land.” Indigenous agriculture relies on an approach to land that is grounded in time-tested, abiding ecological principles rather than technical innovation.
“We respect the land, and we respect the impact that we can have on the ecosystem,” he says. “It’s [a matter] of respecting the water that we’ve been given as a gift, and we use it as many times as we can, as efficiently as we can.”
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Center-pivot irrigated fields in Utah. (Photo credit: Cavan Images)
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Utah Tries a New Water Strategy
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BY NINA ELKADI
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Before he was appointed head of Utah’s Department of Natural Resources, Joel Ferry was a full-time farmer—and a very good one. “I was the top ‘Young Farmer and Rancher’ in the state of Utah a few years ago,” he said on a recent phone call, as he drove across the state, minutes before heading into a meeting with the governor. “My wife was the Utah ‘Farm Mom of the Year.’ I’m raising my kids in agriculture.”
In Corinne, Utah, where his family has farmed for 125 years, Ferry, who is 46, raises cows, corn, and alfalfa. His is the last ranch before the Bear River—the longest river in North America that does not empty into an ocean—flows into the Great Salt Lake. On his farm, Ferry is witness to the effects of water usage in a drought-ridden region. “I’m personally seeing the impacts on the ecosystem, the impacts on the environment,” Ferry said, “and then also trying to balance these competing demands for agriculture and city growth. We’re right in the thick of it.”
The whole state of Utah, like many western U.S. states, is in the thick of it. Utah recently emerged from its driest 20-year period since the Middle Ages, while the Great Salt Lake, an iconic landmark of the West, is on course to dry up completely in a matter of years, not decades.
Ferry must now not only think of his ranch, but his neighbors, and their neighbors, and everyone else in the state, not to mention fish and wildlife that rely on rivers, lakes, and streams. Here, those resources are managed through a prioritization of water rights, where the oldest claims are first in line to receive an allocation of the water that flows through the basin. “The priority system has helped us manage a limited water resource in the West for over a century,” Ferry said.
But amid climate change, drought, and increased demands for water, Utah is trying to change the system, bucking one of the oldest water rules in the western U.S.
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“In most other places, you’re penalized because you ‘use it or lose it.’ We flip that completely on its head through some of the
statutes and laws that we’ve adopted.”
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As it does in other Western states, Utah’s water policy fits under a principle of “beneficial use,” which declares that water rights holders must use their water for beneficial purposes, such as agriculture, or give up those rights. In Utah, though, the state legislature has passed
multiple statutes that are attempting to encourage farmers to use less water without losing rights to it.
“Through our laws, we promote conservation,” Ferry said. “You’re benefited by conserving water. In most other places, you’re penalized because you risk forfeiture, you ‘use it or lose it.’ We flip that completely on its head through some of the statutes and laws that we’ve adopted.”
Water Rights in the West
The “first in time, first in right” doctrine, also known as “prior appropriation,” stems from the 1850s California Gold Rush, whose miners claimed stakes along rivers or streams and diverted the water as they needed it. Older claims, no matter where they were on the waterway, had priority rights to use the water. In 1928, California amended its constitution to include “beneficial use,” requiring those who claimed rights to water to make use of it. Today, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming all abide by the doctrine.
In the past, the doctrine prevented conflicts over water, especially for people coming from the Eastern United States, where water was plentiful and so-called “riparian rights” are related to land ownership along a waterway. But it also created an entanglement of rights, and as more people moved into the West, putting a strain on water use, this entanglement has become a real obstacle to conservation.
In these states, the right to use a certain amount of water is granted by date. Those with the oldest water rights have first claims to the water, no matter where they are on the river—as long as they continue to use it. If you don’t use water, you can lose your right to it, which hardly incentivizes conservation.
These water rights are incredibly important right now for states and tribal nations along the Colorado River, which winds its way out of the Rocky Mountains, through the desert Southwest and (almost, under the right conditions) into Mexico.
More than 40 million people rely on the Colorado River and its tributaries in Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming (the Upper Basin States) and in Arizona, California, and Nevada (the Lower Basin States). Through a complex legal agreement, these states share water from the Colorado River with each other and with tribal nations: the Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, Southern Ute, Jicarilla Apache, Navajo Nation, Chemehuevi, Colorado River Indian Tribes, Fort Mojave, Quechan, and Cocopah.
This agreement, known as the Colorado River Compact, is now under renegotiation, after prolonged drought and overuse of water caused a huge drop in the water held in Lake Mead—a key water bank and hydropower source for the region. If the states and tribes cannot agree on how to share the river, the federal government will take over. This has created a series of tough negotiations, as each state must agree to cutbacks—and
to find the best ways to use the water they do have.
Utah’s Solution
Amid these conditions, Utah wants to do something different. It wants to find a way around the “use it or lose it” doctrine, to encourage farmers to conserve water without punishing them for it.
“I don’t want to say Utah is doing better than anyone else,” said Warren Peterson, an agriculture and water attorney who also grew up on a Utah farm, “but I’d like to think that if there’s a pack at the lead of the race, we’re in that pack.”
Utah is primarily tackling the problem through its Agricultural Water Optimization Program, which awards farmers funding to become more efficient with their water use. Utah’s new initiatives are meant to address stress and uncertainty for farmers. But on a larger scale, these initiatives are aiming to thwart, or at least delay, catastrophic water shortages in the region. If water consumption in the region continues at the current rate, Food and Water Watch warns, food prices, energy systems, and ecosystems could be impacted indefinitely.
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Utah is primarily tackling the problem through its Agricultural Water Optimization Program, which awards farmers funding to become more efficient with their water use.
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At Ferry’s farm, for example, the fields are water optimized. He has thousands of feet of pipeline, drip irrigation, and GPS monitoring. He’s measuring his water use and the flow rate. In 2024, 190 farms received more than $20 million in funds to improve their on-farm practices.
Each farm received an average of approximately $106,000. Forty-five irrigation companies received approximately $22 million to improve their practices.
“These investments that I’ve made are to make my farm sustainable, so that the next generation can come and farm and be successful, and so that I can continue to farm,” Ferry said. “I don’t want to have the stresses of drought and of a changing climate and of uncertainty. I want certainty in what I do. And by doing these and implementing these types of projects, I then gain the certainty.”
The Agricultural Water Optimization Program was passed in 2023. Along with acquiring funding to improve water practices, farmers can also file a “change application” to lease out any “saved water” through a water marketplace.
“It kind of gives an incentive to save that consumptive use and potentially be able to lease it or do something else with it,” said Utah State Engineer Teresa Wilhelmsen.
Wilhelmsen estimates that around 400 farmers applied for grants this year. However, not all farmers are jumping on board. “As you can imagine, there’s a fear of the state engineer with some folks,” she said, because the state engineer is often the one enforcing water rights and making sure people do not pull more water than they should. Peterson describes her as “the lead water cop.” This is why she is trying to frame these programs as opportunities to “tune up your water rights.”
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“These investments that I’ve made are to make my farm sustainable, so the next generation can farm and be successful, and so that I can continue to farm.”
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Still, many farmers find the programs beneficial. Stanford Jensen, who runs a rotational grazing operation with cows, pigs, and chickens on a 560-acre no-till irrigated farm, is among them. Jensen’s irrigation is controlled by a local company. “All the water rights were put in the company years ago, so the company delivers all the water through a canal system that was put in in the late 1800s,” he said. “I’m a board member of that company. So, I went out and applied for the water optimization grant.”
That grant of $500,000 went toward a $2 million upgrade to the irrigation system by implementing automated canal readers and controllers to reduce waste in the system. Jensen saw the optimization program as a chance to “make sure that we deliver water accurately, timely, and then hold back as much water as possible.”
Not all new water programs are taking hold. In 2020, Utah introduced a statute known as the Water Banking Act, whereby farmers who do not use their full water right can lease their water to others. In theory, this would allow farmers to lease out their water rights. The law led to the establishment of the First Water Bank of Utah, where water is treated as a currency. The bank aims to protect water rights and other assets.
“Just depositing water in our bank eliminates the need to prove beneficial use,” the bank claims.
Ideally, this idea will promote water savings. Wilhelmsen notes that the adoption rate for water banking is currently low. According to her, the one application for the program that has been accepted is not yet set up or operating.
Future Use
Even with the more popular Agricultural Water Optimization Program in Utah, some believe more needs to be done. Burdette Barker, an irrigation expert at Utah State University, thinks efficiency is not the only issue that needs to be addressed; adaptation needs to be at the forefront, too.
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“A lot of these challenges we’re looking at have taken many years to fully develop, and it takes years to respond.”
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“Will [the optimization program] alone meet the objectives that the state and others have?” he asks. “Probably not. Will it allow farmers to adapt better as tighter crunches come? I think so. They will help provide farmers with tools to cope or adjust.”
Barker notes that the Colorado River Basin has always faced problems with competing needs for water. “You’re running into issues where there’s less supply available, or going to be less supply available,” he said. While he thinks the state should be credited for finding ways to ensure that farmers remain safely in production, he is worried about the timeline.
“A lot of these challenges we’re looking at have taken many years to fully develop, and it takes years to respond,” he said.
Still, Peterson is holding out hope that these new programs will be more than a drop in the bucket toward improving water use. Farmers, who are sometimes blamed for the depletion of the Great Salt Lake, could actually lead the way toward saving it. And many have a personal incentive: protecting farms for future generations.
“Farmers are forward-thinking because they know the law of the harvest,” he said. “They aren’t going to foul up our water supply system so that their grandchildren cannot do what they do, and maybe even do it better. You hear farmers say that all the time, ‘I want to leave this so my grandkids can do this better than I did.’”
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Member Spotlight |
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Photo credit: Maggie Menendez
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Ali Ghiorse Highlights Food Inequity in ‘Wealthy’ Communities
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BY JIM COLGAN
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Ali Ghiorse likes to push back against overly simple stories. For starters, the town she lives in—Greenwich, Connecticut—is known for its wealth, yet 29 percent of its residents do not earn enough to afford basic expenses where they live and don’t qualify for food assistance programs like SNAP.
“The press just loves to depict Greenwich like our roads are paved in gold,” Ghiorse says. “Yes, there is extreme wealth here. And we have a middle class. And we have a significant low-wealth population of people that calls this community home.”
Shifting these narratives is one of the goals of her initiative, The Foodshed Network, which Ghiorse started four years ago to highlight food justice issues and connect communities in Fairfield County, where Greenwich is located. While addressing racial justice in the area isn’t new, she says, addressing it in the food system is. “It’s incumbent on me to bring this to the belly of the beast.”
Ghiorse describes herself as a bridge from the mainstream to specific food-system issues. She does this by finding “entry points,” like asking people she meets whether they shop at a farmers’ market or compost their food waste. Or if someone volunteers at a food pantry, she says she helps move them from “a charity mindset into food as a human right.”
Her own interest in food started when she was an undergraduate at Mills College in Oakland in the early 1990s and realized the impact that ways of eating had on her well-being. After graduating, she went to the Natural Gourmet Institute (now the Natural Gourmet Center) in New York and moved back to San Francisco to become a chef. But Ghiorse says her time at the socially conscious Mills campus shaped her world view.
Ghiorse started organizing ambitious events with the philanthropist Hans Schöpflin, for whom she’d worked as a private chef. They started a series called Savory Thymes, which brought together grassroots organizers with influential figures in food and the arts at Schöpflin’s home in Marin County. “I really saw the power of convening through food, through beauty, and between communities,” she says.
One of The Foodshed Network’s main activities is hosting events at community spaces, like local libraries or at the Greenwich Town Hall. That’s where one of their more successful events took place last year, “A Tale of Two Towns: Addressing Food Insecurity in Greenwich.” A follow-up event later this year will examine food insecurity in Fairfield County, which has one of the highest economic disparities in the country.
Ghiorse feels she’s fulfilling her life’s role, formed when she was an undergrad. “My knives, my cutting board, my skills as a chef were always going to be in service of social justice.”
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Did You Know?
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Civil Eats membership includes:
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The Weekly Newsletter: a rundown of all our recent reporting
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That’s all for this issue of The Deep Dish. Thank you for reading, and thank you for being a member of the Civil Eats community. If this is your first time reading The Deep Dish (welcome!), be sure to check out our previous issues:
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