Betting the Farm
Farm along the Rio Grande in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Photo by Brian Richter.
Farming has always been a betting game.
The risks are always there. A late frost. A plague of insects. Stem-cracking storms. The creek needed for irrigation that ran dry too early.
The decision to start farming thousands of years ago may in fact have been the biggest bet ever placed by humankind. As migratory hunters and gatherers we managed against the risk of insufficient food or water by walking our way out of trouble. We could head for places shown to us by elders and ancestors, places where edible plants or wild game could be found and where water emerged as springs from the rock or pooled on the land.
Once we became agrarian our human relationship with water changed in a profound way. No longer would we go to the water. We started betting it would come to us.
For thousands of years farmers and ranchers in the West have been winning that bet enough of the time to feed their families and – for the past century – feeding others around the globe. Since the beginning of the 20th century their bets have been hedged by massive federal investments in water infrastructure: storage reservoirs that hold and release water when farmers need it, and canals that bring cheap irrigation water to farms miles and miles from the source, enabling farmers to persist in a marketplace defined by razor-thin profit margins. Today, nearly 90% of all water consumed in the West goes to irrigating farms.
But climate change is drastically changing the odds in irrigated farming because water supplies are evaporating faster with warming temperatures. Hotter temperatures suck the moisture out of soils, creating empty pore space that must be filled before rain or snowmelt will run off the land, meaning the soils “take the first drink.” Even in winter, snowfields are increasingly evaporating directly into the atmosphere instead of melting to fill rivers and reservoirs.
This new climate reality is greatly shifting the odds of farm productivity. It’s pushing many farmers toward financial ruin.
In the Rio Grande basin, river flows since 2000 have been 11% lower than the 100-year average. That doesn’t seem all that bad. But it has been sufficient to nearly dry up Elephant Butte Reservoir in southern New Mexico, now 94% empty and falling. Without Elephant Butte, nearly 200,000 acres of farmland in southern New Mexico, west Texas, and northern Mexico wouldn’t exist. Farm diversions were shut off at the end of June, months before the end of the growing season.
In the Colorado River, river flows have been 13% lower in recent decades, and both Lake Mead and Lake Powell are two-thirds empty. Water deliveries have stopped flowing to many farms in Arizona. Many more cutoffs are expected next year as reservoir levels continue to plummet.
Lake Oroville in California – a lynchpin in the State Water Project that supplies water throughout much of the state – is two-thirds empty. The Feather River that feeds it has been running 57% lower since 2000. Allocations to farmers reliant on the SWP will be 5% of normal this year, at best.
In southern Oregon, inflows to Upper Klamath Lake are down 17% in recent decades and the lake is half empty. All irrigation deliveries have been terminated this year to save endangered species including coho salmon.
Western farmers have persisted through many previous droughts. But many are coming to believe what climate scientists are telling them: this one isn’t going to go away. We may see brief interludes with wetter years but the long term outlook is chronic aridification.
Scientists warn that by 2050, climate warming will rob 7-14% of the Rio Grande flow, 14-31% of the Colorado River, and critically dry years will come 32% more often in the San Joaquin Valley of California.
Big cities in the West will likely weather this climate disruption with only modest pain, mostly because they are rapidly lowering their water needs even while their populations grow, and because they can afford expensive “alternative” water supplies such as desalination and recycled water.
But farmers cannot. They are going to be repeatedly and more frequently shorted in coming years. And their losses will not be theirs alone. They’ll become our costs, in the form of food shortages and price hikes, and in crop disaster payments.
We can continuously salve these agricultural wounds, or we can change the game.
While all cities should do everything they can to relieve their pressure on natural water sources, their total use accounts for only a tenth of water consumed in the West. You could wipe all Western cities off the map and farmers would still be experiencing shortages because in many Western river basins, the volume of water needed to irrigate existing farms is greater than the volume running down the river during droughts.
To secure the water future for everyone in the West – cities, industries, and farms alike – we must substantially reduce the volume of water being used on farms. Period. Full stop.
There are two reliable strategies available. We should implement both immediately.
One is to help change what is being grown on many of the farms. For example, one-third of all water consumed in the West goes to water-guzzling cattle-feed crops – three times more water than is used in all cities combined – and much of it is exported internationally. Shifting to less water-intensive crops could literally cut farm water consumption in half. Federal and state farm subsidies must incentivize these shifts.
The other is to selectively retire some farmland. There are vast acreages of marginal farmland in the West where boatloads of water are being applied, but they do relatively little — as compared to more productive farms — to feed or clothe us. Federal and state buyouts – particularly of lands that could serve as valuable wildlife habitat or generate renewable energy – should be top priority and can contribute to environmental restoration goals.
This won’t be easy politically, or culturally. And it will be costly. But we can no longer afford not to invest in our water future in ways that meet the rules—and realities—of climate change today.
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I think this article underscores and important fact that ag products for export consume much more water than the humans – or even US based cattle – do. It is not just forage crops – almonds in the CA Central Valley are mainly for export and consume huge amounts of water.
At some point the Public Trust Doctrine needs to kick in because using a scarce public resource for private gain in the face of environmental and public use needs seems to be out of alignment with that doctrine.
Thank you, Brian, for this excellent article. Where in the West are the solutions you propose being implemented and/or discussed, and by whom? How to weave these solutions into water policy and a political platform, in keeping with the scope and holistic vision of the Green New Deal?
Hello Madeline, shifts to less water intensive crops have been happening across the Western US for some time, but here’s a recent example from the Central Valley in CA, and here’s a story about crop shifting that has been taking place in southern Arizona. With state or federal incentives we would likely see much more of this shift taking place; there are real costs involved in doing so, and by subsidizing those costs we could help farmers that want to make this transition. Most of the farmland fallowing taking place in the West is being done on a temporary, compensated basis but some of these agreements are fairly long-term. Some of the most interesting discussions about permanent farmland retirement are taking place in the Central Valley of California, in response to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act that is designed to curtail over-pumping of groundwater. Those discussions include consideration of which lands could be fallowed, and how the land will be used for habitat or other purposes in the future.
p.s. Madeline, in response to your comment about compatibility with the Green New Deal, there is a good deal of discussion taking place regarding the placement of solar or wind farms on fallowed farmland. For example, in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, farmers are facing water cutoffs by the state engineer in an effort to curtail groundwater depletion. That is creating an opportunity to discuss how renewable energy development — such as when a portion of farms is leased to energy producers — can help farmers earn important income from solar or wind leases and enable them to hold onto the rest of their farm.
Hello Brian! Great article; it’s nice to see solutions being proposed that don’t include groundwater pumping to replace depleted surface water.
What are your thoughts about also including water for nature? Allowing rivers to just exist at all – to serve everyone’s needs, even the non-human? Our group gets concerned when all that is written concerning water is about current human needs.
“To secure the water future for everyone in the West – cities, industries, and farms alike – we must substantially reduce the volume of water being used on farms. Period. Full stop.”
Aridification affects all species that depend on water; yet only human needs are discussed at decision-making tables. Securing water for healthy ecosystems is securing water for everyone in the West. Water managers and water laws need to stop seeing the CO River as just a pipe for city water. It’s time to change the narrative about water; if we don’t allow healthy rivers to exist – then all needs are NOT met – including human.
You have written in the past about your commitment to advocating for environmental water. Real solutions need to address and rectify the problem of not including a river’s water need; water quantities to support human needs as well as wildlife, ecosystems, etc. Leaving those needs out has allowed river situations to get as bad as they are.
When river ecosystems fail, so will local recreation economies, wildlife, etc…
Your thoughts on including water for nature, water for healthy ecosystems, as part of securing water for the future for all?
Kristen Wolfe
Hello Kristen, thanks so much for raising this issue! I cannot believe that in my list of “everyone” I did not include other species and ecosystems (and instead only explicitly mentioned cities, industries, and farms). You are absolutely correct that we will never have true sustainability — nor even water security for people–unless we are adequately providing water for nature. Much of my previous 30-year career at The Nature Conservancy was focused on sustaining or restoring water for the environment, and I’ve continued to advocate for environmental flows in some of my blogs, e.g., see here and here. One of my greatest fears at the moment is that in this time of water shortage crisis in many Western river basins, those environmental water needs will be left on the back burner and water agreements will be negotiated in a manner that does not adequately protect nature. While I am hopeful that we may be finally beginning to address equity, diversity and inclusiveness in our human interactions, we’re still a very long ways away from doing the same for the non-human members of our community.
Hi Brian – following after Kristin’s comments… and what about considering and possibly changing the diets of our pets: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/the-truth-about-cats-and-dogs-environmental-impact
Taking another look at Richard Oppenlander’s 2013 book “Food Choice and Sustainability: Why buying local, Eating less meat, and Taking baby steps won’t work” as a review of how big a part of the challenge our collective consumption of animal products is relative to water consumption out this way…
Hope you’re well. Teo
Hello Teo!
I do believe that it’s very important for each of us to act as responsibly and sustainably as we possibly can in support of our beleaguered planet, and I know you do as well. But it is also very important for all of us to understand the volume of reductions needed to rebalance our water budgets in river basins and aquifers, and to support actions at a sufficient scale and magnitude to address the challenge/imbalance. That’s why we have no choice but to trim water consumption on irrigated farms in the West. Thanks for sharing that article about the impact of our pets — I’ve never contemplated Luna Azul’s contribution to the problem! Luckily, he prefers fish and chicken flavored kibbles. :>)