Imperial Valley grown alfalfa is the number two commodity behind cattle in the County.  

The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) issued a call last June to the public for assistance in developing long-term operations on the Colorado River. This announcement came within days of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton’s message to a Senate Committee that the seven states of the Colorado River Basin must come up with an emergency deal by mid-August to conserve between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water in the next year to protect the entire Colorado River system, according to the Family Farm Alliance (FFA) newsletter. 

Touton told the Committee that shortages on the Colorado River system need at least 2 million acre-feet of reduction in water use by 2023 just to keep Lake Mead functioning and physically capable of delivering drinking water, irrigation and power to millions of people.

“The science of the system across the West and especially in the Colorado River basin indicate one of immediate action,” she said. 

“Extreme drought is a concern to all Westerners, but especially to small rural farming and ranching communities in Wyoming,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said at the hearing. “Reducing the use of water doesn’t just put ranchers and farmers out of work, it increases the cost of food.” 

FFA President Patrick O’Toole told the Senate committee that farmers and ranchers are always the first ones asked to make sacrifices. 

“Here’s the reality … we’re in an unprecedented situation,” Mr. O’Toole said during the hearing. “We’re about to do with agriculture what we did with manufacturing, let it go overseas. We cannot give up our production to the Third World.” 

Since Commissioner Touton’s announcement at the Senate hearing, there’s been a flurry of forums and meetings of agriculture landowners and organizations in the Imperial Valley and Yuma to discuss the crisis and how to respond to it. 

Coachella, Palo Verde, Imperial and Yuma farmers are bracing for severe reductions next year in their river water supplies — cuts they say could lead to widespread crop production cutbacks, major economic dislocation and, possibly, food shortages according to the FFA. 

Overall, the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada are expected to take the largest share of cuts because they use more than twice as much water annually as the Upper Basin states of Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming, the Tucson.com reported. A top Colorado water official, Rebecca Mitchell, said last week she believes the Lower Basin should take most of the cuts. 

The IID owns the single largest share of river water rights in the entire basin at 3.1 million acre/feet (maf), although local use totals 2.5 maf, the remainder is sold to San Diego, Los Angeles, and Coachella due to the QSA.

Bart Fisher, a governing board member for the Palo Verde Irrigation District, noted the district already agreed in 2021 to fallow up to 19,461 of its 94,000 acres for three years starting this year, in return for $38 million from state and federal agencies, per the FFA newsletter.

“Then, if they come and say we need significantly more fallowing, what’s left to farm? What about our farmworkers? What about rural communities? When people don’t have employment, they are going to find employment somewhere else. We don’t want to be depopulated,” Mr. Fisher told Tucson.com.

The most specific forecast of economic harm to agriculture comes from Alan Boyce, according to Tucson.com. Executive chairman of the Manterra Farming Company, Boyce oversees farming activities from the Imperial Valley to Central Arizona’s Pinal County to California’s Central Valley and beyond, according to an article from Tucson.com. 

Academically trained as an economist, the article read, he spent two years as a Federal Reserve Board junior economist and later worked as a Wall Street bond trader. 

In a slide show he has presented to several farming communities, Boyce said the 12 irrigation districts need to cut 2.2 million acre-feet, almost half their total river water supplies, to do their share to meet the Bureau of Reclamation’s goals for stabilizing the big reservoirs, per the Tucson.com article. He calls his effort “Save the River.” 

A cut of that scale, he projected, would require major fallowing from the Lower Basin irrigation districts. 

In 2020, the Valley had just shy of 500,000 acres of harvested farmland, down slightly from 2019, according to the Imperial County Crop Report.

The 2.2 million acre-feet is about twice as much as the river basin states are currently discussing cutting from Lower Basin farmers in their ongoing negotiations, various sources say. But Boyce said he believes a cut of less than 2 million won’t be adequate to protect the reservoirs in the long run he said in the Tucson.com. 

To accomplish the needed water savings, “We need every irrigation district on the Lower Colorado to chip in or we cannot get there. Nobody rides for free,” he said in an email to the Arizona Daily Star. 

As for what lands would be fallowed, he added, “Hopefully we pick the worst ground that grows the lowest value crops. There is a bunch of that out there, old lake bottoms, sand bars and sand dunes.” 

He also projected the farms could save about 10% of their lost water without additional production cuts, by switching about 148,000 acres to more efficient practices such as drip irrigation. He would prefer to do that before resorting to large-scale land fallowing but said he doesn’t think the Lower Colorado farmers can all do it at once. 

“Massive shortages and supply chain issues make this even harder, and prices of pumps and pipe are zooming. Drip tape? Skilled labor? Non existent,” he said in an email to the Arizona Daily Star. 

However, as Imperial Valley farmers become more efficient with irrigated water, less field run off contributes faster to the Salton Sea’s demise.

 “We’re five little counties, 12 little irrigation districts, negotiating against Arizona, California and the federal government. We’re a bunch of little irrigation districts arm wrestling with 800-pound gorillas. 

“But all together we’re a pretty strong gorilla,” said Boyce, about the farmers organizing in Arizona and California. 

The farming communities have become targets for criticism and for future water rights purchases by cities, which have long eyed the farms’ abundant, senior water rights as possible sources to replace what they’ll lose as the Colorado River continues its rapid decline. Much of the criticism has stemmed from the farms’ heavy dependence on growing water- thirsty alfalfa and other feed crops.

Imperial Valley grown alfalfa is the number two commodity behind cattle in the County.  

Bart Fisher, a governing board member for the Palo Verde Irrigation District, outside Blythe, California, noted the district already agreed in 2021 to fallow up to 19,461 of its 94,000 acres for three years starting this year, in return for $38 million in compensation from state and federal agencies, per the FFA newsletter. 

“Then, if they come and say we need significantly more fallowing, what’s left to farm? What about our farmworkers? What about rural communities? When people don’t have employment, they are going to find employment somewhere else. We don’t want to be depopulated,” Fisher said. 

Moving food production overseas experts say would increase already rising food prices and hasten food shortages.

The Family Farm Alliance board of directors on March 11 formally adopted a policy brief that sets forth Colorado River principles developed in collaboration with several key agricultural interests, per its newsletter. 

“We have helped organize a group of Basin agricultural water users from the headwaters to the Mexican border to come together to present key principles and expectations that are critical to sustainable and durable operation of the Colorado River into the future,” said Alliance Executive Director Dan Keppen. “We believe this group can play a major role as the seven Colorado River Basin States and Basin stakeholders engage to replace the 2007 Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated Operations for Lake Powell and Lake Mead.”

The Interim Guidelines are set to expire in 2026. The Alliance policy brief urges Colorado River Compact decision-makers to incorporate 8 principles into new operating guidelines, the first one being recognizing that Western irrigated agriculture is a strategic and irreplaceable national resource, another saying that future urban growth cannot be incouraged without locking in sustainable and diverse water supplies.

The Alliance policy brief has already been adopted by California and Arizona irrigation districts, including the IID. Other agricultural water districts throughout the Colorado River Basin are also considering adopting the policy brief. 

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