Water Management

The Squeeze on American Farmers Demands Better Tech, Stronger Collaboration

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 07:32:39 GMT

ORLANDO, Fla. — When Ashley Rawl, vice president of sales, marketing and product development at WP Rawl, was asked to describe the headwinds facing the fresh produce industry, he used the analogy of a shop vise, where the farmer is in the middle between market volatility and government regulation.

“On one side, we have volatility — whether it’s the weather, disease pressure, labor or H-2A; we really have no control over our input cost and not to mention the land values currently that farmers are grappling with,” he says. “Then on the other side, we have the rigidity of specs — the audits are for multiple different reasons … and then government regulation. Then we have the farmers that are in the middle trying to let this country eat for the lowest price in the world.”

Rawl was a panelist at the Southeast Produce Council’s 2026 Southern Exposure event. Moderated by Robby Cruz, vice president of produce and floral for Target, the panel also featured Steve Church, chairman of Church Brothers Farms, and Sarah Frey, founder and CEO of Frey Farms.

Headwinds Abound

Church says that while water, labor and food safety are perennial challenges and concerns for growers, a major up-and-coming threat is that the fresh produce industry is short about 80,000 drivers.

“That could be a problem that comes down the road here in the next year,” he says.

Frey says that while water issues often mean availability in the West, for her operation that is east of the Mississippi, she sees a potential clash with water usage for massive data centers needing to power and cool the servers for artificial intelligence. Frey says the agriculture industry needs to pay attention to the future implications of AI and water on farming businesses.

She says when her family started farming in southern Indiana, a permit wasn’t needed to drill a well. Frey says it was common to hit free-flowing water at 60 to 80 feet. Now the state is courting AI data centers, and that’s changing the conversation about water regulation.

“I think many in California are probably sitting back thinking, ‘OK, all right, and now it’s your turn to go through what we’ve been through,’” she says. “We share a lot of the same challenges.”

Death of the Open Market

Church also says disease pressure has been a major challenge for growers. He points to impatiens necrotic spot virus, which decimated about 30% of the lettuce crop in 2022. INSV once again hit Salinas, Calif. Then heavy rains put a lot of leafy greens underwater, which were unusable due to Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement rules. He says he’s optimistic that future research will help develop disease-resistant varieties.

“There are very few places in the world that you can grow good iceberg lettuce,” he says.

Frey says crop equalization is a key focus to ensure her family’s operation can offer retailers full crop utilization.

“One thing that remains sort of a core consistency is that no matter where we’re growing, we’re trying to figure out how we take up more pieces of the value chain,” she says. “How do you do more with less? And then how do you make more of what you have?”

Rawl says his family follows the sun and latitude throughout the season to continue to meet the needs of retailers. His family’s business grades performance weekly against planting plans and the execution.

“It’s almost an engineering process, the planting schedules today,” he says.

Church says it’s been an evolution, where 10 years ago about 50% of produce was grown on contract, but now it’s closer to 80% or 90%.

“It’s almost like you can’t grow more because there’s no more open market,” he says.

A challenge, Church says, to growing on spec is that retailers often don’t understand why a spec might need to change.

“I know Robby said the worst thing is to first hear about that problem when the truck’s in the warehouse,” he says. “There’s certain things that we have to work with the customer. I have two rules of customers: Rule No. 1, the customer is always right. Rule No. 2, if he’s wrong, revert to rule No. 1.”

Working With Retailers

Frey says building partnerships is incredibly important to the future of the fresh produce industry, as is working within the changing, growing season and being flexible.

“A truly great customer is the one that you don’t prorate,” Church says.

Rawl says that flexibility helps increase supply. He says sometimes that could be on sizing or other ways to mitigate any major weather issues.

“I think there’s ways we can back up and be creative, collaborative to get the product on the shelf and still make the farmer and the customers and the retail partner whole,” he says.

Frey says “no two growing seasons are alike,” and that’s where having those relationships with retail partners is key. She says proactive communication with retailers can help highlight if produce is coming in at a different size or spec. She says it’s critical those conversations are unfiltered and honest to work through market gluts and other things that might come up in the course of a growing season.

“The partnerships that we have that are most responsive to the needs for us to make sizing or spec change almost always seem to be the most competitive retailers, because it’s not that you’re just doing your grower partner a favor because they have a different size or a different spec,” she says. “It’s actually helping your bottom line as well … Being able to pivot quickly and work with your grower partner, get a new retail into the system, actually sort of puts you at a great competitive advantage because now you’re not selling the $8 or $9 watermelon. ... Now you might be selling a $5 or a $6 watermelon, and you’re beating your competition.”

Administrative Burdens and the Potential for Technology

Rawl says part of the aforementioned shop vise is the administrative burden of food safety and audits.

“Sustainability is the new food safety,” he says. “It’s another audit. It’s another thing that we have to do to be able to sell our product. And it’s not that we’re not doing it, it’s just that we’re being asked to prove it in five different ways for five different customers.”

Growers are getting squeezed while there is no universal sustainability standard now. One retailer might want carbon sequestration data while another wants water-use efficiency metrics, which means growers must conduct multiple audits.

“Farmers are the original environmentalists,” Rawl says. “If we don’t take care of our land, it’s not going to take care of us.”

Frey says a major challenge with a low-margin commodity is how to return more to the farm and that her family has explored value-added products to offset food waste. She says her family has started to offer watermelon juice for those melons unsuitable for retail. She sees sustainability as being “the right thing to do for the farm, it’s the right thing to do for for consumers and it’s the right thing to do for the planet.”

For Rawl and Church, technology has great potential in the future of farming. Rawl has used laser weeders equipped with AI to run constantly to achieve return on investment. Rawl has also installed real-time data sensors to monitor different parts of the farming operation, which he says has potential when coupled with AI.

“It’s going to be several years, but it’s building out models specific to crops,” he says. “It’s really, really early, but there seems to be some possibilities.”

Church says he’s used AI for forecasting, but a challenge to using AI is it will pick up data from the middle of the global pandemic when those market conditions were atypical.

“I do believe that it’s it is the future and I think that’s why we need a lot of young people who are trying to come in and work with AI,” he says. “Data is king. The more you know about data, the better off you’re going to be. And optical sorts inside of our processing plants, you know, that’s driven by AI. If you have any issues, really learn a lot from that.”

Future of Farming

In the end, Frey says that while there are significant headwinds in the industry, strong partnerships will be key with retail partners.

“We have some challenges, not just here today that we’re dealing with tactically, but we will have some challenges in the in the not-so-distant future that we’re going to need our partners to tackle those challenges with us,” she says.

Rawl says it’s important to remember how critical the domestic produce industry is in the U.S.

“A strong domestic food supply is a matter of national security,” he says. “We’re all part of that and this next generation is going to continue to make it better and better.”

Johnny Amaral Becomes CEO of Friant Water Authority

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:09:58 GMT

On Jan. 22, the Friant Water Authority announced it appointed Johnny Amaral as its new CEO following years of service and leadership within the organization. FWA represents 23 irrigation and water districts throughout California’s Central Valley.

Amaral joined FWA in March 2019 as chief of external affairs and was appointed chief operating officer in early 2022. In these roles, he has overseen FWA personnel and day-to-day operations, while leading FWA’s engagement on water supply reliability, water policy, legislative advocacy and communications.

As CEO, Amaral will focus on protecting the Friant water supply, safeguarding critical infrastructure such as the Friant-Kern Canal, strengthening trusted partnerships across the region and leading FWA’s experienced and dedicated team, according to the group.

“We welcome Johnny in his new role as he brings a strong understanding of Friant operations, water policy and the needs of valley farmers and communities,” says Rick Borges, chair of the FWA board of directors.

During his time at FWA, Amaral has played a central role in advancing initiatives critical to the region’s water future. His work has included expanding opportunities for groundwater recharge for San Joaquin Valley farmers and leading the Friant-Kern Canal Capacity Correction Project as FWA’s staff lead on construction activities. In this role, Amaral has worked to secure funding and develop partnerships to support long-term repairs to this vital facility, helping protect both water deliveries and the communities that rely on them.

Amaral has also led FWA’s efforts to build and maintain strong working relationships with Groundwater Sustainability Agencies, community representatives, farm bureaus, commodity groups, advocacy organizations and other water agencies, recognizing collaboration as essential to achieving long-term water sustainability in the San Joaquin Valley.

Prior to joining Friant Water Authority, Amaral served as deputy general manager for external affairs at Westlands Water District for more than four years. He began his career in public service as chief of staff to Congressman Devin Nunes, where he worked on water and public policy matters for more than 13 years.

5 Water Trends to Watch in 2026

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 16:27:54 GMT

The “everything old is new again” proverb will be at play in 2026 when it comes to water trends irrigators need to know in the new year.

The Packer sat down with Melissa Lilze — who, as of Jan. 1, became senior vice president of Netafim North America, the top position for Netafim in North America, and the first woman to lead Netafim’s North America division — on the top water trends coming in 2026. Several are long-running themes from years past that will continue to dominate in the new year. Others, however, are new and potentially novel.

No. 1: Water scarcity

This one is nothing new, but Lilze notes smart water management or “digital irrigation” that involves remote sensors, automated irrigation systems and real-time monitoring of conditions such as weather, soil moisture and crop needs — once the purview of highly techy early adopters — is increasingly mainstream in the face of ongoing water scarcity.

“Today it’s more of a necessity,” she says.

This fits with both USDA records and data from The Packer’s 2025 Grower Sustainability Insights .

According to the Census of Agriculture’s most recent few Irrigation and Water Management Surveys, the number of farms and open-field acres under irrigation using drip, trickle or micro-flow sprinklers has grown since 2008, even as farm numbers and open-field acres under irrigation have fallen.

For example, in 2008 , 43,368 farms (14.4% of 2007’s total irrigated farms) reported using these water-saving irrigation systems on 3.76 million acres (6.84% of total irrigated acres in 2008). In 2023 , the numbers had jumped to 60,160 farms (21.14% of 2022’s total irrigated farms) and 6.43 million acres (12.11% of total irrigated acres in 2023).

The Packer’s Sustainability Insights survey responses showed similar grower attention to water conservation efforts. Water efficiency was ranked as the most important sustainability issue by produce growers, and precision irrigation ranked high on the list of sustainability investments growers are making on their operations.

No. 2: Regulations and reporting requirements

Just like water scarcity is nothing new, so too is the mounting regulatory pressure because the two are so closely intertwined.

“[Ongoing water scarcity] just changes what we will see in the next few years with regulation around water use and groundwater use,” Lilze says, pointing to regulation and reporting requirements as a major water theme in 2026.

“We have increasing regulatory pressure in different farming regions. Growers must adapt to allocation limits that they’re given, especially in the western U.S.,” she says. While California and its Sustainable Groundwater Management Act come to mind when it comes to water regulations squeezing produce growers, regulations and their attendant reporting requirements can vary wildly by state, county and even by watershed.

Lilze framed digital irrigation as helpful to irrigators regardless of the regulatory situation they find themselves in because it not only helps with water conservation efforts but documents them at the same time.

“Many times the reason you have regulation is because you don’t have the data to show that you are being conservative with the water and of your resources,” she says. “I absolutely think the more information you have available to prove that you are a steward of the land, which these farmers are, I think the better situation they’re in on the front end of things.”

No. 3: Drip irrigation expanding

Lilze reports the well-known water saving strategy of drip irrigation has been expanding into new crops, something she highlights as a trend to watch. Alfalfa is an example she’s seen with Netafim.

“With an alfalfa, we’ll do an SDI system, which is a subsurface drip irrigation system, meaning we’ll actually bury the drip 10 to 12 inches underground,” she reports. Not only has this resulted in extra cuttings and increased yields, but it has management implications as well.

“You can get into the field quicker after a cutting because we’re not having to flood irrigate,” she says.

No. 4: Return of federal funds

A welcomed “new” trend in 2026 according to Lilze is the return of federal funding for conservation and sustainability improvements, including for water.

“There’s a lot of federal funding, NRCS [National Resources Conservation Service] and EQIP [Environmental Quality Incentives Program] monies, that are available typically every year. In 2025, a lot of that money got put on hold,” she says. “We just received news that the 2026 funding will be available in January, and growers will be able to apply and access those funds for smarter, more efficient irrigation systems.”

On Dec. 15, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service announced it was opening its first funding round of key conservation programs. This includes the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, Agricultural Management Assistance, the Conservation Stewardship Program, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and the new Regenerative Pilot Program .

According to NRCS, growers, farmers and ranchers have until Jan. 15, 2026, to apply for the first batching period. National and State Conservation Innovation Grants will open later in the year.

“We’re really starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel with this funding coming,” Lilze says. “There’s been a lot of farmers that have benefited from this money over the years, and having it frozen last year really prevented a lot of new irrigation systems going in because [growers] need the funding to help with that initial year return.”

No. 5: New or untapped funding sources

In addition to the return of federal funding that can go to conservation irrigation efforts, Lilze points to other, potentially more novel or unexpected sources of funding for water sustainability projects as something irrigators should look for in 2026.

On the one hand, the “partnership economy” around water — basically, applying the carbon credit concept to water — is growing. Lilze pointed to Netafim’s Corporate Partnership Program as an example, explaining that they pair companies with high water usage with area farmers and growers who still use less efficient irrigation like flooding. The company helps fund the grower’s conversion to a drip irrigation system.

“So basically, we’d put in a drip irrigation system, we’d put our automation system out, and we can track water usage over that crop and over time, we can show the amount of water that’s been saved by investing in that drip irrigation system,” she says.

Other precision irrigation or ag tech companies have similar programs, such as Phytech and N-Drip. Though Lilze says Netafim has been “leading the charge” on developing these kinds of partnerships.

“We’ve been successful over the last two years in matching up these companies that have this money set aside for these sustainability practices with the farmers in the region that are trying to be more efficient in their farming.”

Lilze also recommends irrigators look at other, potentially untapped local funding sources for irrigation efficiency improvements such as state, county or watershed organizations.

For example, she notes that Utah’s Department of Agriculture has a fund specifically “to help their growers become more efficient water users.” Utah growers could receive as much as $500,000 in funding for irrigation optimization efforts. Applications for the program open on Jan. 1, 2026 and run through the end of February.

“There’s plenty of state funding moving because they want people to move away from flood to drip and conserve,” Lilze says.

Water Issues Headlined 2025 and Will Likely Stay There in 2026

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:29:39 GMT

The year 2025 saw several big water issues hit the news, both nationally and in some of the biggest produce-growing states. Many of these stories will continue into 2026’s headlines.

For example, EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers set a water milestone late in the year when they finally released their long-awaited updated definition of Waters of the U.S. with implementation expected in February or March of 2026.

The announcement was made Nov. 17, and the proposed rule was released Nov. 20. This update was spawned by the 2023 Supreme Court’s Sackett decision, and — according to the EPA — will bring the definition in line with that ruling .

The release followed numerous listening sessions seeking input from states, industry, agriculture and other stakeholders. A resounding theme was the need to maintain state’s rights on the one hand and streamline the WOTUS determination process so landowners can easily determine if something on their operation counts as a jurisdictional water.

The proposed rule is up for public comment through Jan. 5, 2026.

The five-year water cycle ended, but the story continues for Texas

Late October 2025 saw the end of the most recent five-year water delivery cycle from Mexico to Texas according to the 1944 treaty. As expected, Mexico did not deliver the 1.75 million acre-feet it is required to within that five-year span, only sending just over 50% of that.

However, it did deliver more than a year’s worth of water (350,000 acre-feet) between late April and Oct. 24. That is good in the short-term, but Texas water and produce experts warn that the pattern of late or non-existent Mexican water deliveries is not sustainable for the state. They worry more crops, including the Texas citrus industry, will go the way of its sugar industry .

A common refrain from Texans is that Mexico is not keeping up it’s end of the bargain, having instead built up its permanent agriculture in arid Chihuahua and capturing water that should flow to Texas for those water-hungry crops. Experts have pushed for some ability to enforce the 1944 treaty, potentially through the upcoming U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement renegotiations .

But the story is and will continue into 2026. Early in December, President Donald Trump demanded Mexico deliver 200,000 acre-feet of water on its debt by Dec. 31. Mexico’s president called that impossible but said Mexico and the U.S. are working on an agreement for the future to pay down the water debt.

California’s water woes and their impact grow

The economic value of water to California’s produce drew the limelight early on in 2025. In April, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the Golden State had become the fourth-largest economy in the world . But that rank is tenuous and could be threatened if the state does not take action to ensure its water future.

Up to 3 million acres of farmland, 67,000 ag jobs and $39.5 billion from the economy could be lost if the state doesn’t invest in water storage and other strategies, according to a University of California, Davis study . All of this played out on a backdrop of ongoing, many say man-made , drought and disappointing water allocations even when there is water available.

As the year came to a close, California’s largest irrigation district released its economic impact review report, which found that water restrictions had wide-reaching negative impacts on the state and its people. In short, when water is cut, the production of fresh fruits and vegetables declines, more acres are fallowed, jobs and economic benefits are lost and more.

As the new year kicks off, the 2026 irrigation allocations will start to trickle in, so growers in the Golden State will know how to plan for their coming crops.

Less Ag Water Means Fewer Jobs, Deeper Poverty, More Sickness

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:03:19 GMT

Everyone in ag knows how interconnected every element of the ecosystem — literal and figurative — is to the wider community. But a recent report quantified just how widely the ripple effects of water restrictions in one irrigation district can reach.

On Dec. 17, the Westlands Water District released the fourth installment of its Economic Impact Report , which examined economic data from 2022 (most recent complete). While the report found the agricultural production enabled by water from WWD directly supports thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity in the area — 20,456 jobs and $2.41 billion, respectively — plus more indirectly, it also highlighted the negative impacts of water restrictions.

“Decreased water availability reduces the number of jobs and level of economic activity within Westlands Water District,” declared the report’s executive summary.

These reductions amounted to about 7,500 fewer ag jobs in WWD’s region, which includes two of the poorest counties in the state, and a decrease of almost $25 million in local government revenues in 2022 compared to 2019.

Direct economic findings

The new impact report uses data from 2022, and updates the 2022 report, which used data from 2019. A key difference between those two data years was that 2019 was a year where WWD received 75% of its surface water allocation and 2022 was a year where WWD got no surface water allocation.

The 2019 report found that WWD “is directly and indirectly responsible for some $4.7 billion dollars of economic activity and nearly 35,000 jobs across the economy.” By comparison, that number for 2022 was $3.55 billion and about 28,000 jobs respectively.

“When that water disappeared, obviously it had significant impacts on the economy,” said Michael Shires, former professor and vice dean at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy and co-author of the report, in a preview event on Dec. 16. “Westland still has a tremendous economic impact. I mean, you can’t ignore $3.6 billion and 28,000 jobs, especially in this region.”

The report credited the lack of water allocations, plus the impact of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act on groundwater growers can pump, for more fallowed acres in 2022 (227,563) versus 2019 (158,103) in the area served by WWD.

And more fallowed land means less production.

“Nationally, farms in Westlands provide 3.3% of the national production of fresh fruit and nuts and 2.8% of the national production of vegetables and melons,” the report notes. It added that the 2.8% share of vegetable and melon production is down from 5.4% in 2015.

“These are the fresh produce that we need, that we want to have in our system if we’re going to have a healthy economy,” Shires said.

More indirect, wider-reaching impacts

Reduced production also has other health impacts, according to the report. It means fewer jobs and less economic activity. Shires highlighted how this connects to poverty in the area.

“The reduction in availability of surface water has led to significant economic impacts, both in terms of economic production and overall activity, but more importantly, in the lives of the people that economic activity reflects,” he said. “These tend to be the poorest in some ways in our communities, but once they lose their jobs, they join the group of poverty.”

He noted that the 20,456 jobs directly supported by WWD represent about 42% of total farm employment in the region, and that Fresno County has roughly 50% higher rates of poverty than the state rate average.

“So, [water reductions] affect these vulnerable populations the most,” he said. “It also affects local tax revenues that you need to support those populations as they grow.”

Disease and pilot endangerment

The report also found potentially unexpected negative impacts associated with water restrictions and more fallowed land; increased disease and pilot endangerment through increased bird strikes.

During the preview event, Shires pointed out the association between the incidence of Valley Fever — a fungal infection of the lungs resulting in flu-like symptoms that is also called San Joaquin Valley fever — and the volume of fallowed acres in the area.

“When land lies fallow and dust blows, there are spores in the dust that infect people’s lungs and create health complications,” he said. “That is a phenomenon that is exploding across the state in the last 10 years especially.”

Another, more indirect health concern is in play as well, according to the report: Threats to pilots at area airports.

The path from water cuts to pilot endangerment has a few steps to it. Reductions in water availability for growers can result in both more fallowed land and more abandoned orchards. Both fallowed fields and abandoned orchards can host massive rodent populations .

“Then the owls and the hawks come and eat them. The raptors obviously then concentrate in those areas and you end up with a higher incidence of bird strikes,” Shires explained. This can be costly because a bird strike can damage or even destroy planes, including the very valuable military jets at the nearby Naval Air Station Lemoore, and risk the lives of pilots.

“Surface water has direct implications to the safety of those pilots and everybody that’s there,” Shires summarized.

Allison Febbo, general manager of WWD, echoed this perspective in the group’s announcement of the report.

“Thousands of families, small businesses and essential public services depend on the economic activity generated by agriculture in our district,” Febbo said. “This report reaffirms how central reliable water supplies are to keeping our communities strong and healthy.”

Details Unclear on Promised Water Deliveries From Mexico

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 20:22:58 GMT

Texas will supposedly get up to 202,000 acre-feet of water from Mexico in accordance with the 1944 Treaty beginning this week, the week of Dec. 15, according to the USDA.

However, it is unclear where this water will come from because Mexico doesn’t have that volume of water in its international holdings. Depending upon source, it is also unclear how useful this release will be to Texas agriculture.

“They don’t have a whole lot of the international storage and international reservoirs,” says Sonny Hinojosa, current water advocate and former general manager at the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 in San Juan, Texas. He does note Mexico has some water in its internal reservoirs, however.

During her daily morning address on Dec. 15, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, told the press “we are not giving away water that we don’t have or that would affect the Mexican people.”

Backstory to the 202,000-acre-feet announcement

USDA’s Dec. 12^th announcement was the main outcome of a series of meetings between the U.S. and Mexico that was kicked off on the afternoon of Dec. 8, when President Donald Trump demanded Mexico release 200,000 acre-feet of water by Dec. 31 on threat of an additional 5% tariff in a Truth Social post.

“Mexico continues to violate our comprehensive Water Treaty, and this violation is seriously hurting our beautiful Texas crops and livestock,” he wrote.

President Donald Trump’s Dec. 8 Truth Social post.

(Screen capture)

This is a reference to Mexico’s failure to deliver 1.75 million acre-feet of water to Texas via the Rio Grande by the end of the most recent five-year cycle, which ended on Oct. 24. According to the 1944 treaty, when Mexico fails to deliver the full amount within the five-year cycle, the remainder is carried over into the next cycle as debt. Water debt must be paid in addition to the current cycle’s volume.

USDA’s Dec. 12^th announcement included that there are ongoing negotiations between the countries to finalize a plan by the end of January 2026 for Mexico to repay its outstanding water debt of roughly 800,000 acre-feet.

Appreciation from Texas

The announcement was widely welcomed by Texas agricultural groups.

“I applaud President Trump for putting American farmers first and holding Mexico’s feet to the fire to get this treaty honored,” said Texas’ Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller in an announcement on Dec. 14.

“For years, producers in the Rio Grande Basin have been shorted the water they are legally owed, causing the loss of crops, jobs, industries, and livelihoods,” he added. “Let me be clear: Texas farmers expect Mexico to fully meet its obligations — not just today, but for years to come. Water is the lifeblood of agriculture.”

In a letter to the editor sent out midday Dec. 15, various Texas produce and row crop groups expressed gratitude to the Trump administration, including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. But the co-signed groups and their leaders also urged quick implementation and consequences for inaction.

“While Mexico did deliver some water this year, thanks to pressure by the Trump administration, it was not enough to cover the debt,” wrote Dante Galeazzi, president and CEO of the Texas International Produce Association.

“This new understanding must be quickly implemented. The U.S. must not allow Mexico to delay fulfilling its obligations, or it risks Mexico overusing water resources that should be shared. A tactic taken by Mexico for years without penalty or accountability,” Galeazzi continued.

Dale Murden, president of Texas Citrus Mutual, similarly applauded the move, but urged the administration to push Mexico to “honor this new agreement or face consequences.”

“The short- and long-term impacts on Texas farmers are beyond the data on paper,” Murden wrote. “Livelihoods have been uprooted, and the region’s agricultural landscape may never be the same again. Meanwhile, Mexico continues to expand its agricultural production that directly competes with U.S. producers … with water that should have been delivered to the U.S.”

Where will that water come from?

The co-signed groups and Hinojosa, who helped provide data for the meetings held between the U.S. and Mexico, all noted details from USDA on this new water transfer are currently unknown. What is known is that Mexico doesn’t have 202,000 acre-feet of water in the international dams.

According to public records (based on Nov. 29 conditions, most recent) from the International Boundary and Water Commission, the U.S. side of the group that adjudicates the water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, Mexico’s water ownership at the Amistad and Falcon dams amounts to just under 166,000 acre-feet.

The Rio Grande reservoirs and tributaries in Mexico. From pg. 4 of Assistant Rio Grande Watermaster Jose A. Davila’s 2023 presentation for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

(Image and presentation from the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission)

Sheinbaum told reporters Dec. 15 that Mexico “examined different river basins to determine how we could meet the United States’ request.”

Hinojosa reports hearing that the near-term repayment could include water from the Rio San Juan, which fits with Sheinbaum’s description. However, the Rio San Juan is not one of the original six Rio Grande tributaries covered by the 1944 treaty. It is also a problematic source, according to Hinojosa.

“We can’t capture or store that water,” he said. This means that such water would be of little use to farmers, but could be used for municipal purposes. “We’ve utilized it in the past, but [Mexico has] restrictions as far as what they can release.”

Those restrictions mean that the full 202,000 acre-feet could not come from that source alone, and certainly not by the end of December. Regardless, the agreement could be too little, too late for Texas growers who have already suffered tremendous losses, Hinojosa said.

“Once again, our spring crops are planted in late February, and I know our farmers; they’re not going to go on a limb and invest unless they know that we have the water,” he said. “So we might be looking at a fourth year of limited row crops. Now, if this continues and we get that 202,000 acre-feet, maybe it’ll help our vegetable farmers come next September or October, but we’ll be facing a fourth year of shortage.”

Mexico’s perspective

The U.S. and Mexico do not agree on the why behind the short water deliveries. While stakeholders on the U.S. side have pointed to growth of Mexico’s, especially Chihuahua’s, irrigated agriculture in recent years, Mexico has given a variety of reasons for not delivering sufficient water in a timely way.

During her Dec. 9 press meeting , Sheinbaum summarized the reasons why Mexico had not delivered more water in the past cycle as two-fold; Mexico’s own water needs and the limiting factor of the pipeline that carries water to the Rio Grande. However, she said the governors of the Mexican states, including Chihuahua, are united “to find the best agreement with the United States.”

On Dec. 15^th, she answered questions specifically about the details of the meetings, saying: “[the U.S.] requested that a certain amount of water be delivered by December, and we said that this was not possible, not only because it’s physically impossible, but also because it would have consequences if done in such a short time. So, an agreement was reached to deliver it over a longer period.”

She also cited drought and lack of rain in Mexico.

“So, an agreement was reached in this regard,” she said. “The agreement is typically for a five-year period, but now we will determine, based on the amount of rainfall during the rainy season, how to make up for the water that wasn’t delivered in the previous five years due to the drought.”

Sheinbaum also brought up the possibility that the 1944 Treaty, which she noted is very favorable to Mexico, might need to be renegotiated.

“Various experts say that Mexico may no longer be able to comply with this treaty, since the exceptional drought provision has been invoked in the last three cycles,” she said on Dec. 10. “It seems that the drought situation, or the lack of water to comply with the treaty, is no longer an exceptional one, but rather a reality.”

Why EPA Says Farmers and Ranchers Won't Need a Lawyer to Understand the Newly Proposed WOTUS Rule

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 16:10:31 GMT

Agricultural groups have been asking for a new WOTUS rule that eliminates red tape and clears up confusion for farmers and ranchers. As EPA unveiled its latest proposed Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS) rule this week , Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi says the agency’s goal was simple: clarity, consistency and fewer regulatory headaches for farmers and ranchers.

Fotouhi joined “U.S. Farm Report” for an exclusive interview to break down what this new rule means and why EPA believes it hits the mark.

A Rule He Says Brings Clarity and Certainty

Fotouhi says the agency’s top priority is eliminating uncertainty farmers have faced under previous interpretations of WOTUS.

“We really emphasize the need for farmers, ranchers and all stakeholders to have clarity in terms of how broad or narrow federal regulation of waters is in this country,” he says. “From Day 1, we start working on a proposed rule to bring that clarity and certainty to landowners across the country. On Monday, we are able to announce a proposal that is consistent with the law, that provides needed clarity on the extent of federal regulation, and that recognizes the primary jurisdiction of states and localities because they know their resources best.”

He adds that the proposal strikes what he calls a good balance.

“We think we really strike a good balance between protecting our nation’s waters and making sure farmers and ranchers can do the work that feeds Americans and produces the fuel this country relies on — without adding unnecessary regulatory burden to their day-to-day life,” he says.

EPA Says Farmers “Won’t Need a Lawyer” to Understand the New Rule

Fotouhi stresses one of EPA’s biggest priorities in rewriting WOTUS was ensuring farmers no longer need legal help just to determine whether they can work their own ground. He says the agency intentionally crafted the language to be plain, practical and rooted in the realities producers face every day.

“We take a fresh look at the Supreme Court’s direction and try to apply that in language that is easily understandable. Producers should not need a lawyer to understand how this rule applies to their property. We write it in a way that lets farmers look at their land and have a clear sense of whether federal permits are required.”

Fotouhi explains past WOTUS rules often included terminology that was vague, overly technical or open to interpretation, something EPA heard repeatedly during outreach with farm groups.

He says the agency makes a conscious effort to eliminate that ambiguity.

“We listen to farmers tell us repeatedly that the rule has to be understandable,” he says. “So instead of broad definitions that leave too much room for interpretation, we focus on concrete, workable language. We take geographic differences into account, we remove subjective criteria and we make exclusions, like the groundwater exemption, explicit so there’s no second-guessing.”

Fotouhi says that level of clarity is a direct response to years of frustration in rural America.

“We know farmers need certainty,” he says. “They need to know what they can and can’t do without waiting months for an answer. That’s why we put so much effort into making this rule clear, transparent and grounded in what the Supreme Court actually tells us to do.”

EPA Pushes Back on Claims the Proposal Overpromises

Some critics argue the agency risks overpromising. Fotouhi strongly rejects that idea.

“We take a fresh look at all the critical issues the Supreme Court lays out in the Sackett decision,” he says. “We think the previous administration does not faithfully implement that decision when they revise the rule, so we come back, reassess everything and come up with a definition that fully implements what the Court tells EPA and the Army Corps to do.”

He notes the agency made readability a priority.

“We try to apply the Court’s direction in language that is easily understandable, that takes geographic differences into account, and that doesn’t impose unnecessary burdens on farmers when they’re trying to decide if they need a permit,” he says.

Groundwater Exclusion: “We Want It Crystal Clear”

One standout change is the explicit exclusion of groundwater — language EPA says is included to eliminate confusion.

“Groundwater has never been part of the Waters of the United States, but we think it is absolutely necessary to make that exemption clear as day so there is no confusion about whether someone would need a permit for a discharge that may impact groundwater,” Fotouhi says.

He says repeated questions from stakeholders and newer case law convinced the agency to spell it out directly.

“Based on the case law that’s come out in the last few years and the general confusion we hear from stakeholders, we think it is incumbent on us to clarify this as clearly as we can,” he adds.

Final Rule Expected in Early 2026

EPA filed the proposal with the Federal Register , which means the rule’s comment period is officially underway.

“We publish the rule today, and it will be out for public comment for 45 days,” he says. “We know there is an absolute need for certainty and clarity and one nationwide standard, so we move quickly. We are hopeful that in the first few months of 2026, we can have a final rule out for the public.”

RFS: EPA Reviewing Comments, Aims for Certainty

Fotouhi also discusses EPA’s proposed Renewable Fuel Standard volumes, including record-setting biomass-based diesel levels.

“We understand how important it is to get this exactly right. From day one, Administrator Zeldin is laser-focused on ensuring the RFS strikes the right balance,” he says. “We know farmers and all stakeholders implicated by this program need certainty. We are working as quickly as we can to take final action.”

EPA’s Deregulatory Push: More Actions to Come

Fotouhi says the agency’s deregulatory actions announced earlier this year will have significant impact on agriculture.

“Reducing the cost of energy is one of our biggest focuses,” he says. “Many of the actions we identify are aimed at reducing energy prices for farmers, ranchers and manufacturers so we can reduce input costs and ultimately reduce the cost of the products they produce.”

This is evident through their efforts on WOTUS.

“The WOTUS proposal is a prime example; it’s designed to reduce unnecessary and illegal regulatory burden, and we are undertaking a score of additional actions across offices, working with USDA, the Department of Energy and the Interior Department, to identify ways to reduce input costs for agriculture,” Fotouhi says. “A thriving agricultural sector is a priority for the president, and lowering consumer prices is something we have to achieve.”

Texas Faces Growing Pressure as Mexico Paid Only Half of Water Owed

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 19:41:08 GMT

Mexico’s water payday to Texas came and went Oct. 24. Once the full data came out a few weeks later, it was clear Mexico had only paid half the water it owed.

While this was not a surprise , it was still disappointing, according to sources.

“We’re just wrapping up a third year of water shortage,” says Sonny Hinojosa, current water advocate and former general manager at the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 in San Juan, Texas. “So, we’re going to start a fourth year of having insufficient water for ag. We got half the water we need, so we’re going to be crippled again for fourth year.”

According to the 1944 treaty that governs water sharing between the U.S. and Mexico on the Rio Grande, Mexico must deliver 350,000 acre-feet of water annually, equating to 1.75 million acre-feet every five-year cycle. For this most recent five-year cycle, Mexico had only delivered 884,864 acre-feet, 50.5% of the total.

Texas Farm Bureau State Director Brian Jones called the situation infuriating in a statement issued on the last day of the previous cycle.

“Another missed water delivery deadline by Mexico is another serious blow to Rio Grande Valley farmers and communities,” he said. “Farmers in the Rio Grande Valley have done about as much as they can to hang on until Mexico delivers the water it owes, including reducing the number of acres planted and switching to dryland crops that require less water.”

He pointed to Texas’ recent loss of its sugar cane industry as an example. He also spoke from his own experience, saying he can’t irrigate a third of his operation — cotton, corn, grain sorghum and soybeans in Hidalgo County — even once with the water available to him.

“It’s getting harder and harder to hang on,” he said. “How can someone sustain more than half of their farm sitting unproductive? You can’t.”

Accolades for April’s Meeting

Despite the recent focus on five-year cycles, agricultural water needs to operate on a seasonal-to-annual cycle. The 1944 treaty also says the deliveries should be annual.

When looking at Mexico’s water deliveries on an annual scale, it did really well in this past year (Oct. 25, 2024, through Oct. 24, 2025), delivering roughly 475,000 acre-feet. Most of that delivery — about 360,000 acre-feet — happened since late April, following a meeting between the U.S. State Department and the Mexican government.

Hinojosa says he is very glad of the State Department’s efforts in the situation.

“Had it not been for that meeting and pressure being put on Mexico, we probably wouldn’t have got this much water from them,” he says.

A chart showing the most recent five-year cycle’s deliveries (black line) compared to other past cycles’ deliveries from Mexico to the U.S. “Had it not been for that [late April] meeting, that black line would have just continued straight across, and this would have been a historical low,” said Sonny Hinojosa, current water advocate and former general manager at the Hidalgo County Irrigation District No. 2 in San Juan, Texas.

(Chart from the International Boundary and Water Commission; retrieved Nov. 3)

According to Hinojosa, Texas agriculture needs about 1 million acre-feet of water per year. Based on the most recent data, the state has about 900,000 acre-feet of water in storage, including from what Mexico sent this year.

“But after you subtract the reserves and such, agriculture is just left with a little over 500,000 acre-feet,” Hinojosa says. Still, the steady flow of water from Mexico this year was helpful to agriculture in the Rio Grande Valley, he adds.

“The sad part about it is, it was in the summertime,” a time when the most water losses occur, he explains. “But nonetheless, we needed the water for our vegetable growers.”

This water year in the cycle is a bit of a bittersweet situation.

“We still don’t have sufficient water, but we have more water than we have had the last couple of years,” Hinojosa says.

Still, the 2020-2025 cycle came in as the third-lowest delivery cycle in the past 10. Only the 1992-1997 cycle (when about 41% was delivered) and the 1997-2002 cycle (about 33% delivered) were lower.

Inner Workings of Water Debt

Mexico now finds itself in water debt. Again.

When Mexico doesn’t make its full 1.75 million acre-feet of water deliveries in a five-year cycle, it goes into debt that it must repay in the subsequent five-year cycle. This repayment comes in addition to the water it owes during that cycle.

“So, everything must be repaid within a 10-year period,” Hinojosa explains, adding that the treaty doesn’t allow for the debt to be carried into a third five-year cycle, though that did happen following the 1992-1997 cycle. Mexico has fallen into a habit of waiting and gambling for “a tropical system to pay this water for them,” he adds.

“A cycle ends when the United States conservation capacity is filled at both reservoirs,” he explains. “So, if there was some kind of storm that filled our capacity at 3.3 million acre-feet, then a cycle ends, all debts are considered paid, and a new cycle begins.”

This weather-dependent mindset needs to change, Hinojosa says.

What Now?

Even with the comparatively good 2024-25 year of water deliveries from Mexico, Jones characterized the situation for Texas as a dire one.

“The 2026 spring planting season here begins in February, and agriculture has only 50% of the water it needs,” he said in his statement. “Something must be done and done now, or we risk losing an entire industry.”

Hinojosa says the U.S. needs more leverage to enforce the annual water deliveries from Mexico the 1944 treaty requires. He and many others have said working treaty enforcement into the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is a potential way to prevent these situations in the future.

The trade connection isn’t new. Hinojosa notes the short water deliveries from Mexico started after the North American Free Trade Association was executed in 1994.

“With the passage of NAFTA — that started out with waiving the tariffs on about 50% of the goods from Mexico, then 10 years later eliminated the tariffs completely — that just gave Mexico free rein to increase their irrigated agriculture with the water that used to flow into the Rio Grande,” he says. “That really hurt us.”

Comments Due Soon on California's San Joaquin River Tributary Proposal

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 17:36:12 GMT

Voting on Nov. 4 isn’t the only way to voice perspectives on local issues impacting agriculture. If you’re in California, you can also submit comments.

The California State Water Resources Control Board announced an opportunity for stakeholders to comment on a proposal dealing with the Tuolumne River under the state’s Bay-Delta Plan.

The Tuolumne River is a San Joaquin River tributary that brings water from the Sierra Nevadas down into the agriculture-rich San Joaquin Valley. In general, the proposal document suggests various physical restorations to the river that would benefit salmon and trout in place of the flow requirements laid out in the Lower San Joaquin River portion of the Bay-Delta Plan.

Stakeholders who are interested in commenting have until 12 p.m. Pacific Time on Nov. 7 to submit written comments. Written comments must be submitted to LSJR-SD-Comments@waterboards.ca.gov .

There will also be a public informational workshop on Nov. 5 held “no earlier than 9 a.m.,” according to the board, with both in-person and remote attendance options where members of the public can offer verbal comments.

The in-person portion will be held in the Coastal Hearing Room on the second floor of the CalEPA Building at 1001 I St. in Sacramento. The board recommends in-person attendees allow at least 10 minutes to get through security. Those who wish to attend virtually should consult the board’s Remote Meeting page , which will include the Zoom link on Nov. 4 for those who wish to offer verbal comment and links for remote viewing for those who only want to listen.

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Automation Takes Valve Flipping Out of Watermelon Farming

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 13:36:54 GMT

Even drip irrigation can be made more efficient with comparatively simple, adaptable irrigation automation technology. So says the finding of a University of Florida assessment into watermelon growers in northern Florida’s Suwannee Valley.

Tyler Pittman, the UF Extension agent who conducted the 2024 assessment, explains that watermelon growers in the area already used drip tape under plastic tarping with manual or diesel pumps. Because watermelons benefit from frequent short waterings , and fertilizer efficiency is heavily impacted by proper irrigation, that means a lot of valve flipping for growers.

But the crop is also transient, maybe growing in the same field only once every seven to 10 years according to Pittman, meaning traditional automated irrigation technology built for permanent or consistent crops are difficult for watermelon growers. Pittman wanted to help change that.

“We started with what looked like analog garden timers on water-operated valves,” he says. “We did that with two farmers on about 80 acres as a proof of concept that we could automate this process and take the valve flipping out of the farming so that they could irrigate differently. From there, Toro organically came into the space with Tempus.”

In the 2024 assessment, four area watermelon growers collectively farming 1,883 acres, using Toro’s Tempus AG controller, reported using 24% less water, or an average of 873 gallons, per day irrigating. That amounted to roughly 164 million gallons, or 503 acre-feet, of water saved over the course of the 100-day watermelon growing season in the region.

“We’re flirting with saving more than 696 million gallons of water each year if the farmers of all 8,000 acres of watermelon in the region adopt this technology,” said Pittman in a UF spotlight on the assessment .

Participants in the assessment also reported spending, on average, 1.7 fewer hours in the field per day. One participant reported eliminating three staff as a result of the automation, saving $36,000 over the course of the 100-day growing period, according to an assessment results document.

About the controller

Adoption of irrigation automation in Suwannee Valley’s watermelon growers grew rapidly between 2022 when Pittman conducted his initial proof-of-concept trial on 80 acres to 2024 with the larger assessment. Toro’s Tempus systems have been popular among growers.

“The funny part about [the 2024 assessment] is I was trying to find demo farms for the Toro system, and everybody turned me down,” Pittman says. “Usually, farmers don’t turn down free equipment. But the reason they were turning me down is because they had already purchased it themselves, and that was a testament to the utility of it.”

Tony Tavares, marketing communications manager for Toro, explains the Tempus AG is a controlling automation system developed to be easy to use and install. They are battery powered and use “LoRa” technology that allows for long-range, low-power communication.

This means they “can be installed directly at the valve rather than in a centralized location,” he says. “This makes it very easy to re-deploy the system in different configurations each year as field layouts and irrigation needs change between seasons.”

He adds that the controllers can be operated via Bluetooth by any Android or iOS devices. To use the systems remotely, the controllers need to be in WiFi range or can connect to 4G via base stations provided by Toro.

“I would say probably 90% of the operations here have put in Tempest because it didn’t require the infrastructure and it was simple to install,” says Pittman, adding that the region’s watermelon growers rarely have electricity in the field.

“So having the ability to run something off of 12 volt with solar power that can automate a field, but also be picked up and moved next year to another field, was kind of the big selling point for a lot of our growers,” he adds.

New California Law Focuses on Long-Term Water Planning

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:19:06 GMT

A bill with unanimous support is basically a unicorn in today’s divided politics, so California just saw the return of a water-planning unicorn in the form of SB 72 that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Oct. 1 .

Prior to being signed, the bill — effectively an update to the California Water Plan that enforces the need for quantifiable water needs reports and water goals — passed through the state’s legislature without any “no” votes.

This also isn’t the first time it happened. Past iterations of the bill also received unanimous support, but this is the first time the governor signed it.

According to Jason Phillips, CEO of the Friant Water Authority — which supplies water to over a million acres of irrigated farmland in the San Joaquin Valley — the overwhelming and repeated legislative support shows a shift in the understanding of the state’s dire water situation.

“It is an acknowledgment that water conservation is not going to solve the supply deficit both current and projected that we have in this state,” he says.

The bill’s author, state Sen. Anna Caballero , District 14, said in an early September press meeting that the cost of this inaction has been borne mostly by California’s farmers. This is especially true in the San Joaquin Valley, a massive center of the state’s fresh produce production.

She said that the state’s water challenges have resulted in “a scenario where fallowing land has become the norm as a way to make it through the growing season.”

Caballero also characterized that fallowing of farmland as threatening the entire state’s economy — currently the fourth-largest in the world — to the tune of up to $14.5 billion and 67,000 jobs annually .

“It’s all the ripple effect that comes from taking millions of acres out of irrigated lands in California, and we just need to understand that that’s just in one region,” she said.

About the Bill

Caballero said that the California Water Plan “hasn’t seen meaningful revisions in 20 years,” but Phillips characterizes SB 72 as an effort to solve that issue.

“This bill is going to mandate that the California Water Plan do what it was supposed to do and what it used to do, which is identify the water needs of the regions of the state of California, both now and in the future, and put together a plan on how those needs will get met,” he says.

The bill creates a planning framework with deadlines that will require the state to establish long-term water supply targets and strategies to reach them. One of the earliest goals of the bill requires that, by 2028, the California Department of Water Resources creates plans on how it will achieve 9 million acre feet “of additional water, water conservation, or water storage capacity” annually by 2040.

Philips called the efforts necessary to achieve such a goal “no small planning task.”

“This is a very significant task that the state will have to go through to identify how [it’s] going to come up with 9 million acre feet per year statewide and with storage and conservation, recycling and desal,” he says.

California’s Current Crisis

Despite the daunting task, Phillips says there’s no real choice; the state must ensure there is water for farms and people today and into the future. But that goal can’t be achieved through the popular narratives, he adds.

“Water conservation is what people want to go to first when thinking of farmers,” he says. “But agricultural use in the San Joaquin Valley is already about maximized on water conservation.”

Phillips says the only things that will help solve the water challenges in the over 5.5 million acres of productive farmland in the San Joaquin Valley are more surface water to offset the groundwater overdraft or to permanently retire over a million acres of productive farmland. This would be in addition to the farms and farmland already lost.

According to USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service records, there were 24.3 million acres of land in farms in 2020. This compares to 2024 when there were only 23.7 million acres . The number of individual farms also fell from 69,600 operations to 62,500 in that time.

Policy and Planning

“The most unfortunate form of [water] conservation that we have in this state is people leaving and farms leaving,” Phillips says. This exodus of farms from California is not a policy decision but instead the result of inaction and a lack of reporting on current conditions, he adds.

“The governor of the state of California needs to have that presented with that; [farm loss is] a policy decision,” he says. “It needs to be highlighted to policymakers that we either find a way to develop that water or we’re going to lose a substantial amount of productive agriculture.”

That needs to change, and he hopes SB 72’s passage and the reporting requirements it contains will help.

“My engagement is going to be to make sure there is a thoughtful and thorough assessment of the water supply situation that we have today,” he says. “It’s very quantifiable and needs to be quantified.”

California's Water Crisis: Farmers Warn Water Rules Could Cripple Central Valley Agriculture

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 10:52:47 GMT

On Hansen Ranch in the Central Valley, fifth-generation farmer Erik Hansen grows a little bit of everything — pistachios, almonds, pomegranates, alfalfa, corn for silage and cotton.

“We farm 15, 16 different crops,” Hansen says. “Cotton is our biggest acreage crop, and that’s in the form of Pima cotton.”

That diversification has long been the Hansen family’s survival strategy. But in spring 2023, no amount of crop rotation could shield them from disaster.

“Where we’re standing right now was underwater,” Hansen recalls. “A mile from here, over by that PG&E substation, was the edge of the lake.”

The flood wiped out 600 acres of pomegranates and 400 acres of pistachios. One thousand acres of permanent crops gone in one season.

“It was a massive hit,” Hansen says. “We had about 5,000 to 6,000 acres under water. Some of that water lasted for over a year.”

From Too Much Water to Not Enough

The irony is hard to ignore: In 2023, floodwaters destroyed thousands of acres. Now, Hansen says it’s the lack of access to water that could cripple farms across the Central Valley.

“The last projections I heard were anywhere from 1 million to 1.2 million acres totaled in the valley,” he says, referring to farmland that could be idled by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) .

Passed in 2014, SGMA requires local agencies to reduce groundwater overdraft and achieve sustainable use by 2040. On paper, Hansen says, that makes sense.

“To some extent it is good because you have to have a way to manage the overdraft,” he explains. “The problem is there are surface water facilities we developed back in the 50s and 60s that we’re just not using. A lot of that water is going out to the Pacific Ocean.”

For Hansen, the politics sting. He believes decades of state decisions — prioritizing fish and wildlife, reallocating water, and neglecting infrastructure — set up today’s crisis.

“I’m frustrated because the families that have been farming here for years, some decades, sometimes even more, are being footed with a bill for problems that somebody else created,” Hansen says. “If the state doesn’t look in the mirror, I think we’re going to find ourselves in the same position again.”

Young Farmers Face the Same Struggles

Forty miles south, 30-year-old Elizabeth Keenan is navigating the same regulatory headwinds. Her grandfather Charlie started Keenan Farms in 1972, acquiring one of California’s first pistachio orchards. Today, Elizabeth farms alongside her parents and brother.

“Rolling with the regulatory punches can be complicated,” she admits. “Despite pistachios being such a high-value product, despite having optimal land and weather conditions, we really have everything set up beautifully — except for legislation.”

Water, she says, is the most difficult hurdle.

“We’re up to a 50% allocation,” Keenan explains. “The base allocation is 2.2 acre-feet, so we get 1.1 acre-feet to use. Otherwise, we have to have open fallow fields. To pump more water, we have to buy it on the open market, and that’s expensive too.”

A Political Battle Over Flows

Signs line highways across the Central Valley warning that 80% of California’s river water flows out to the Pacific instead of farms. Assemblyman David Tangipa, a freshman lawmaker representing the 8^th District, says those numbers are real.

“It’s 100% happening,” Tangipa says. “Almost 83% of all water in the state is automatically pushed out for environmental purposes.”

California averages about 200 million acre-feet of water each year, Tangipa notes, but despite record rainfall, farms often get less than half of their allocations.

“We’ve prioritized so much environmental legislation that more than 80% of our water is pushed out immediately to the ocean, unnaturally,” he says. “Meanwhile, farmers get less water and more land goes out of production.”

Proponents of Current Water Flows

There are proponents of the current way the water flows, mainly for environmental reasons and to prevent saltwater contamination of freshwater sources.

California releases water into the ocean to prevent saltwater intrusion into freshwater supplies, protect endangered aquatic species and ecosystems, and maintain the delicate balance of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta estuary, a critical source of drinking and irrigation water.

A portion of released water is also used for stormwater management to prevent flooding, as it can be difficult and impractical to capture and store all of it.

And those in favor of environmental water releases say it’s essential to support broader ecosystem benefits like water filtration and carbon sequestration, which are important for overall environmental health.

The Ripple Effect

The Central Valley of California is a powerhouse in food production for the U.S. That area alone produces approximately half of all the fruits and vegetables grown in the U.S., as well as a large portion of the nation’s nuts and other foods. When you break down the numbers, the Central Valley accounts for about 60% of the nation’s fruits and nuts, and about 30% of the nation’s vegetables.

For Thomas Putzel, who works with farmers across the Central Valley, the impact of regulations isn’t just measured in acre-feet. It’s measured in livelihoods and the food supply.

“The environmentalists try to say farmers are wasting water,” he says. “But when we look at what farmers provide, we’re planting forests. One acre of almonds will capture 18 metric tons of carbon a year. That’s like taking 29 million cars off the road.”

Putzel says California voters already approved a water bond to build new storage a decade ago, but no new projects have been built.

“Not one shovel has gone in the ground in 10 years,” he says. “Actually, they took some of that money and tore dams down.”

Meanwhile, permanent crops wither when water isn’t available, leaving behind dead orchards that invite pests and rodents into neighboring fields.

“SGMA’s not necessarily a bad thing,” Putzel says. “But you’ve asked growers to run a marathon with their legs tied together. People don’t understand; food doesn’t come from a grocery store. It comes from a farmer. If California stopped shipping produce for one week, our stores would be empty.”

“Is Farming in California’s Best Interest?”

For Erik Hansen, the question is bigger than water allocations or acreage lost.

“Government is probably the biggest problem right now,” he says. “It just seems California hasn’t really decided whether farming is in their best interest. Politicians like to say they’re for small business and small farming, but virtually every piece of legislation makes it more difficult to survive.”

As the Central Valley wrestles with the challenges of floods, drought and regulations, one reality is clear: The fate of these farms is tied not just to weather and soil but to political decisions that could shape the future of food in America.

Michigan’s Proactive Water Withdrawal Tool Gets Update

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:27:05 GMT

Every good tool needs to be proverbially sharpened every now and then. Michigan’s Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) department has done this with the state’s key water tool.

On Sept. 22, the EGLE previewed the state’s updated Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool (WWAT) to the public. Updates to the tool will be available for public use as of Wednesday, Sept. 24.

“Anyone who wants to register a water withdrawal in the state of Michigan has to use the Water Withdrawal Assessment Tool,” explains Lena Pappas, manager of EGLE’s groundwater and geological services section, who spoke to The Packer before the Sept. 22 preview event.

Presenting at the event, Hannah Arnett, a member of EGLE’s water use assessment unit, explained that WWAT is a screening tool that estimates the impact of a proposed water withdrawal on the local streams.

“The WWAT also acts as an accounting system which allows EGLE to track water use and identify cumulative estimate impacts from the registered water use for each watershed,” Arnett added.

About the WWAT

Michigan water use is regulated under a number of agreements. Key among these are the Great Lakes Charter — a 1985 agreement between the U.S. states and Canadian provinces that depend on the Great Lakes’ watersheds — and the Great Lakes Agreement and Compact . In general, these agreements require that water consumption in the Great Lakes’ watersheds must be managed to conserve the “precious public natural resources” that are the water resources of the Great Lakes Basin, as the charter says.

The WWAT was deployed in 2008 as part of Michigan abiding by these various agreements. Anyone in the state who wants to initiate a new or increased large quantity withdrawal — defined as having the capacity to withdraw 100,000 gallons per day or more (i.e. a pump capacity of 70 gallons per minute or more) — has to register with EGLE by using the WWAT before they begin the withdrawal. The tool is way to get these water users a quick assessment on if their proposed withdrawal will negatively impact the watershed.

“The statute actually requires us to have a determination back to people within 10 days and so the tool was an essential part of making that piece work,” Pappas explains.

She adds that the tool and the agreements that helped create it were put in place before the need actually occurred.

“We had the benefit of being able to see some of the issues that had come up in other places,” she says, referencing more arid states like California and Texas, where international and interstate water sharing agreements are older. These older agreements were based on water conditions that no longer exist and have massive impact on the states’ agricultural water use.

“We could watch what was happening in other places and build around anticipated developments,” Pappas adds. “I think we just had the benefit of being further in the line.”

However, the WWAT has not been updated since 2014.

“The original tool was kind of a first-generation pass, and so then as the internet and everything has evolved, we wanted to be able to update it to bring it in line with current technology,” Pappas says.

Updates and Transparency

The updates to the 17-year-old tool aim to bring it up to date with current Michigan security guidelines and increase the transparency between EGLE and the state’s water users. However, not much will change in terms of functionality, Pappas says.

“The tool uses specific stream depletion algorithms, essentially, to estimate what the impact to resources would be,” she says. “That piece is going to stay very much the same.”

The first change users may experience is the need to log in via MiLogin before using the WWAT, as well as user interface updates that provide more options. Most substantial, however, will be the increased transparency, according to EGLE staff involved with the update.

“In addition to a more modern look, this update brings the ability to share state tools with water users,” Arnett says.

Some of the transparency includes the ability to see the current state of various watersheds, other withdrawal registrations in the area, and see increased granularity of data about an area. WWAT users will also be able to input site-specific parameters like transmissivity and storativity “for a more flexible and transparent assessment.”

“These changes have been made in response to recommendations in the 2020 report by the Water Use Advisory Council to share publicly the WWAT data on registrations, their individual impacts, and cumulative impacts,” Arnett explains. “EGLE has also gone a step farther and is sharing aquifer data and hydrological data in the WWAT as well.”

The current update that will be available to the public Sept. 24 is the first of two. The second update release, planned for early next year, will give the public access to two additional depletion estimate systems, one focused on confined aquifers and another focused on layered aquifers.

“The biggest goal is we are trying to be more transparent, showing you guys the data we are using when we are running registrations,” Arnett says.

Updates to the WWAT were tested in the major browsers of Edge, Chrome and Firefox, and the developers say common browser extensions should not hamper the tool’s functionality. They urge users to report any problems they might experience to WaterUseProgram@Michigan.gov .

Public Meetings Planned for U.S.-Mexico Water States

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 17:43:22 GMT

The U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) — the governmental entity that oversees the U.S./Mexican water treaties — has scheduled a pair of citizens forums for the public in Arizona and Texas for mid-August. The meetings will include presentations from regional officials with updates on projects in the areas, as well as an open public comment period.

The meetings will be held in person and remotely via Microsoft Teams or by calling in, according to IBWC. Times, locations and signup information for the meetings are below.

Southeast Arizona Citizens Forum Public Meeting :

When — Tuesday, Aug. 12, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. MDT.
In-person meeting — Tubac Community Center, Santa Cruz County, North Facility, 50 Bridge Road in Tubac, Ariz.
Teams meeting — Join at the time using this link .
Call-in participation — Call 915-320-4718, phone conference ID 604 116 403#.

Lower Rio Grande Citizens Forum Public Meeting :

When — Thursday, Aug. 14, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. CDT
In-person meeting — USIBWC Mercedes Field Office, 325 Golf Course Road in Mercedes, Texas.
Teams meeting — Join at the time using this link .
Call-in participation — Call 915-320-4718, phone conference ID 140 903 526#.

IBWC asks those who wish to speak during the public comment period to sign up by contacting the public affairs officer, Frankie Pinon, at frankie.pinon@ibwc.gov or 915-832-4716 a few days before the event in question. IBWC asks speakers sign up for the Arizona meeting by noon on Aug. 8 and by noon on Aug. 11 for the Texas meeting.

Waste to Resource: How Human Urine Is Fertilizing the Future of Agriculture

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:40:09 GMT

Once seen as taboo, human urine is quietly making a comeback in agriculture. Scientists and sustainability advocates say this overlooked resource could help close a vital nutrient loop, ease dependence on synthetic fertilizers and reduce the environmental costs of modern wastewater treatment.

A Rediscovered Resource

A trio of recent studies bolsters the case for urine reuse.

In a field trial published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry , researchers compared synthetic fertilizer and urine-only and urine-supplemented fertilizers on snap beans and turnips in Florida. The results were clear: Urine-only plots outperformed the no-fertilizer control, and urine-supplemented treatments matched synthetic fertilizer yields.

Meanwhile, researchers in a 2023 study created a liquid fertilizer from nitrified urine and graywater and used it to grow hydroponic lettuce. When key nutrients like phosphorus and potassium were added to the mixture, lettuce yields reached 103% of the control grown with commercial fertilizer. Importantly, the surfactants present in the graywater posed no toxicity risk after biological treatment.

These findings echo the projections made in the report, “Willingness among food consumers to recycle human urine as crop fertiliser: Evidence from a multinational survey,” which emphasized not only technical viability but also public acceptance. In a global survey, 68% of respondents supported recycling urine, and 59% were willing to eat crops fertilized with it.

“Urine is this relatively easy way of capturing a nutrient from human excreta for use,” says Carol Steinfeld, author of “Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine to Grow Plants.”

“Often it has more nitrogen in it than feces. Feces are more about carbon and maybe phosphorus,” she says.

Steinfeld says her book was inspired by pioneering Swedish studies on the safe and effective use of urine as fertilizer. Those studies helped establish holding times and sanitization protocols that make urine use safe in agriculture. For example, urine stored for one to six months naturally sanitizes itself by killing off most pathogens, especially when stored at ambient temperatures, Steinfeld says.

“Swedish sanitary researcher Jan Olof Drangert found that in Western cultures, children today do not have an innate aversion to urine,” Steinfeld says. “It’s a learned behavior — one we developed for good reasons, like pathogen avoidance. But urine carries very few pathogens compared to feces. The risk is much lower.”

In urban settings, where soil fertility and water access can be limited, urine has gained quiet traction among permaculturists and eco-conscious gardeners.

“I meet people who have adopted the term ‘liquid gold’ for their home practices,” Steinfeld says. “They’re collecting their own urine, mixing it with graywater and applying it to mulch or gardens. It’s informal, but it’s happening across the country.”

According to the Rich Earth Institute, which operates out of Vermont, human urine has been successfully applied to hayfields without causing nitrogen leaching into groundwater. The report, “ Reclaiming the Value of Urine for Agriculture, ” showed that, “Rich Earth’s field tests on hay over several years have shown equivalent yields between urine-fertilized and chemically-fertilized test plots, both significantly higher than unfertilized plots.”

The Wastewater Problem (and Farming Solution)

Steinfeld argues that agriculture — particularly rural or peri-urban farms — is key to mainstreaming urine reuse.

“Right now, wastewater treatment plants spend enormous amounts of energy just to remove nitrogen from urine,” she says. “In places like Palo Alto, Calif., the city’s largest power bill is from its wastewater plant trying to denitrify its effluent. If residents used urine-diverting toilets, the city could cut its energy costs dramatically.”

These specialized toilets , common in Sweden and now available in the U.S., separate urine at the source. From there, it can be transported to farms as a high-nitrogen fertilizer, reducing the need for synthetic products like urea, which require fossil fuel-intensive processes to manufacture.

“Why not take that municipal challenge and bring it to a farm growing corn or hay?” Steinfeld says. “The farmer wins. The city wins. We close the nutrient loop.”

Scaling Up: From Cornfields to Cover Crops

Though most current use is limited to gardens and research plots, the potential for broad-acre application is growing. Trials at the University of New Hampshire, Cornell University and the Rich Earth Institute have shown promising results in applying human urine to pasture, cover crops and even corn.

“Researchers in Sweden demonstrated that urine can be injected into the soil and displace commercial fertilizer,” Steinfeld says. American studies have confirmed that practice can be safe and effective, so long as application rates are managed to prevent runoff.

Phosphorus, another vital nutrient typically found in feces, can also be recovered from human waste streams, but Steinfeld emphasized that urine’s nitrogen content makes it especially valuable.

“We’re literally throwing away a nutrient that’s costing us energy on both ends — removing it from waste and making it synthetically,” she says. “This is a low-tech fix with high-impact potential.”

The biggest barrier? Perception

Still, despite science and economics aligning, the “ick factor” remains a formidable barrier.

“Even when people agree it’s safe and useful, cultural norms around excreta are strong,” Steinfeld says. “But that can change. In fact, it already is.

“Farmers are well positioned to be the big helpers here,” she adds. “And they should be paid to help. Or someday, they might even pay to get it.”

Disappointing Water Allocations for California’s Central Valley

Tue, 01 Jul 2025 20:20:10 GMT

California growers get the first news about how much water they will get for their operations that year in late February. In bad years, the news can start and end there. In over half of the past 24 years , however, allocation updates — usually slight increases, but not always — trickle in each month through the end of June.

June came and went this year without an update to the 55% water allocation for Central Valley Project (CVP) South-of-Delta agricultural contractors received in late May.

Of course, finding out you’re only getting half of your annual water allocation in May or June doesn’t work well for growers who have already planted crops. Knowing earlier rather than later is necessary to make fruitful plans.

According to the Westlands Water District, which serves a southern portion of the San Joaquin Valley, an estimated 210,000 acres will be followed in the district this year. That represents slightly more than a third of the district’s area.

Full Reservoirs, Low Allocations

At the end of May, when the allocation for South-of-Delta agricultural contractors went up from 50% to 55%, Allison Febbo, general manager for the Westlands Water District, called the increase appreciated but disappointing given the situation.

The situation? Almost all of California’s reservoirs were at or above their historic average levels at the time. This situation continued to the end of June.

Reservoir conditions in California as of midnight on June 30, 2025, according to the California Department of Water Resources reservoir storage monitoring app, available at cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain.

(California Department of Water Resources)

“If you look at the reservoir levels and you look at the stream flows and you look at the general hydrology — precipitation, snowpack, all of those things — we’re in a pretty good year,” she says. “We were really hoping, in a year like this, we’d be able to get much higher allocation, much closer to our full allocation amount.”

Westlands gets its water from the San Luis Unit , a joint effort of the federal CVP and the California State Water Project. It primarily supplies irrigation water to the farmland of central California’s San Joaquin Valley; some of the most productive farmland in the world.

“When the CVP came online and we built the San Luis unit of the CVP, the expectation was we would get 100% of our water supply in all years except maybe the very driest years, so extreme drought years,” Febbo says. “And that was happening for the first decade or so, but then we started seeing environmental restrictions come in and cut our water supply.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the South-of-Delta agricultural contractors have received full allocation, or come close, in only seven out of the past 35 years. In five of those past 35 years, the allocations have been nothing (0%), or close to it.

“We have a long decline in our available water supply to a point now where, instead of expecting something like 100%, we’re expecting on average maybe 30 to 40%,” Febbo says. “That’s really just unsustainable. It points to the fact that we have a broken water system in California that is not meeting the needs and intentions it was built for.”

Modernizing California’s Water Infrastructure

Febbo says the state needs modernized water infrastructure.

The two major water projects in California — the State Water Project and the CVP — were both conceived of in the early 1900s, built throughout the 1900s and represented huge investments from both the federal government and the state of California.

“The state and the federal government saw the value of building a water system in California to grow our economy to become what we are now: The fourth largest economy in the world . But unfortunately, in about the ’70s and ’80s, we as a culture stopped investing in our water systems. We haven’t made any major infrastructure improvements since,” Febbo says.

Modern water infrastructure looks like substantial investments in surface water storage and water conveyance, because it all comes down to surface water, according to Febbo.

“When we don’t have the water supply deliveries that we expect from the water projects, people turn to groundwater, and that’s caused overdraft and subsidence,” she adds. “The best way to protect our groundwater is to make sure we continue to have surface water.”

For 2025, the Westlands Water District estimates it will need to pump 200,000 acre-feet of groundwater to make up for grower needs. But the availability of groundwater will severely decline soon too.

According to California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 , local agencies must submit groundwater sustainability plans.

“We have an approved groundwater sustainability plan and we are meeting sustainability on a fast track by 2030, but that means we’re cutting our access to groundwater for our growers significantly — by more than half — in just a few years,” Febbo says.

This is part of why science- and data-based regulations and management systems for water are another big part of modernized water infrastructure, she adds.

“We’re looking at the various regulations on how we can move water through the Central Valley Project to make sure that, whenever we are cutting water supplies, it has a meaningful benefit. And if there is not a meaningful benefit to our ecosystems, then that action shouldn’t be taken,” she says.

“Westlands remains committed to working with state and federal partners to advance balanced, science-based solutions that improve the regulatory landscape, water storage and delivery capabilities for the hardworking families who grow the food that feeds California — and the nation — day in and day out.”

Those communities in California’s central valley are not doing well, she adds.

“We have local communities that completely rely on our agricultural operations, and we’re seeing them dwindle,” Febbo says. “Schools are closing. Businesses are closing. It’s really hard when people leave to get them back. We want to keep our communities thriving. We want to keep being able to have safe, affordable food. So, that’s why we are taking this so seriously and really advocating for our water supply.”

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There Are Strategies to Deal With Washington's Drought ... But They Cost

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 22:24:45 GMT

While the word drought might conjure images of parched, cracked earth and crispy, brown vegetation, drought means different things in different places. For tree fruit growers in Washington, for instance, it means snowless mountains and sunburned fruit. But growers in the state are working on strategies to keep their orchards alive and well and having fruit available to consumers.

According to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor, 87% of Washington is in some level of drought, ranging from abnormally dry to moderate drought. But that doesn’t tell all or even most of the story for the state’s tree fruit growers.

“Increasingly we have been seeing problems with drought in Washington state, both because we occasionally have years with lower precipitation overall, but more often our problem has been the pattern and format of our precipitation,” says Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association. He explains that for orchards east of the Cascades, irrigation-season water is stored primarily in the form of winter snowfall.

“If it flows out as rainfall or premature melt, then the water is not going to be available later in the season,” he continues.

That is exactly the situation facing the state and the whole of the Pacific Northwest.

According to the most recent drought status update from the National Integrated Drought Information System, the region is in a state of persistent snow drought and rapid spring snowmelt. Specifically in Oregon and Washington, the snow drought developed early due to low precipitation. The NIDIS says this was especially the case “along the west slope of the Washington Cascade Range, where many [Snow Telemetry] stations reported peak snow water equivalent of 50% to 69% of median. A handful of sites there reported less than 50% of median peak SWE.”

The peak snow water equivalent map for Washington as of June 2025.

(USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service)

The snowpack in the Washington Cascades was almost non-existent as of June 19, 2025.

(USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service.)

A drought emergency was declared for the Yakima Basin in April. It later expanded to 19 other watersheds in central Washington in early June. Washington is a center of fruit tree production, with roughly two thirds of U.S. apples grown in the state, with the Yakima Basin being central to the Washington apple growing industry.

Dealing with drought on the orchard

DeVaney says the increasingly-common drought situation in Washington points to the need for state-level investment in climate adaptation, primarily in water storage. But tree fruit growers are also taking steps to be more resilient in a future with less predictable precipitation and temperature patterns.

For example, a lot of Washington orchards already have an irrigation pond, DeVaney explains. This provides water during times of need out of season with usual irrigation water availability. It’s a strategy more growers are looking into.

“Having that on-site storage can be really beneficial, but it’s not cheap,” DeVaney says. “It can cost six figures to put in a new pond for your orchard. And, of course, if you’re putting in a pond, you’re taking land out of production.”

Another directly water-related strategy is paying annual crop growers for their water when there is sufficient early warning of drought conditions. That allows the annual crop growers to be paid to fallow their lands while getting the orchards the water they need to keep the growers’ long-term investments alive and productive, DeVaney says.

“Those irrigation districts do a really good job of that and that’s beneficial certainly,” he says, “but it is certainly an added cost for those growers to try to get water from their neighbors during a curtailed year.”

Another pair of strategies that are increasingly being used are specific to apples.

“A lot of folks don’t realize that the cells of apples are as susceptible to sunburn as humans are, so if the temperatures get too high, you can have damage to the fruit from those temperatures,” DeVaney says.

Traditionally the approach to this issue has been to have overhead cooling from sprinklers. Basically the same idea as having the kids run around in the sprinklers during summer, DeVaney says.

“That evaporative cooling effect is beneficial and reduces the surface temperature,” he says, “but, obviously, in a drought and intensive heat years, using more water may not be the best or even an available solution.”

So, apple producers are trying two different approaches: using shade cloth over orchards to offer UV protection and shifting sprinkling technology to produce mist, thereby reducing droplet size and water use while still getting the same cooling effect. Both of those strategies come with added costs, however. Shade cloths and the associated infrastructure come with costs and added annual labor to put it up and take it down. New misting infrastructure also comes with costs.

“The challenge in the current ag economy is you can solve one problem — constrained water — by replacing it with another resource, which is money,” he says, noting that money is often the scarcer resource. “It’s one thing to recognize that there are solutions and adaptations to climate challenges, but it’s another to actually pay for them because we are usually trading off one resource for another.”

State-level efforts to be more water resilient

While growers are taking the steps they can to improve their on-farm resiliency to increasing drought and uncertainty, becoming more adaptable to meet all of the state’s water stakeholders — agriculture, environment and beyond — takes state-level effort.

“I think the biggest water issue we’re facing is having the infrastructure to better manage the resource,” DeVaney says. While praising the state of Washington and its irrigation districts for making investments in a more versatile future, he also notes that “designing, permitting, and constructing some of those additional storage measures is going to take quite a while. That is a multi-decade effort.”

There are ongoing state-level efforts that run on a shorter timeline, however.

“A lot of our university researchers, including programs supported directly by industry dollars, are focused on climate resiliency and water management and heat management for our orchards,” DeVaney says, highlighting ongoing research on varietals.

“Some varieties are more vulnerable to damage from high heat than other apple varieties, one of the more popular apple varieties being Honeycrisp,” he says. “While that’s a very popular variety with growers and consumers, that is a factor that producers have to think about.”

Another big water issue DeVaney cites as being pressing to the tree fruit growers of Washington is public perception and understanding where water management is concerned.

“The changing climate can mean, over time, you’re going to have to have more interventions to manage that resource for optimal outcomes, both for farming but also for natural resource use,” he says. While he acknowledges that the hands-off approach can sound romantic, more management often results in better outcomes for everyone.

“I think that that is one of the biggest impediments, just getting people to recognize that beneficial management is not just a grower concern,” he continues. “Making further investments in managing our river systems can ensure that there’s water available for irrigation, and to manage flows for salmon and threatened or endangered species that are using those rivers. We can manage the flow levels to ensure that the temperatures are conducive to healthy rivers and streams.”

And growers, irrigation districts and Washington are good at managing the challenges of increasingly frequent drought and uncertain weather patterns, DeVaney says.

“They put costs on growers, but for the end consumer, it’s usually pretty invisible,” he says, adding that consumers won’t see a decline in quantity or quality of Washington tree fruit. “But they should have some sympathy for growers who are having to put in a lot of extra cost and effort in order to ensure that outcome.”

Proposed Final WOTUS Rule Coming This Summer

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 21:24:09 GMT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of the Army announced June 17 that the groups expect to issue a final Waters of the U.S. that will bring it in line with the Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett decision by the end of 2025.

The announcement came in the wake of nine listening sessions the groups conducted to get input from key stakeholders. Those listening sessions included one that sought comments from the state level and another that focused on industries including agriculture .

“When it comes to the definition of ‘waters of the United States,’ EPA has an important responsibility to protect water resources while setting clear and practical rules of the road that accelerate economic growth and opportunity,” says EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “These listening sessions gave us real-world perspectives as we work toward a proposed rule that follows the Supreme Court decision in Sackett, ends the regulatory uncertainty and ping-pong that has persisted for years, supports our nation’s farmers who feed and fuel the world, and advances the agency’s Powering the Great American Comeback initiative.”

During the state-level listening session, commentors stressed the need for cooperative federalism and flexibility. During the industry-focused listening session, those representing agricultural interests frequently echoed the need for a predictable, understandable definition that is consistently enforced.

“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plays a key role in implementing the Clean Water Act. The importance of input from all our stakeholders including landowners, local governments, the states, Tribes and others is critical to how we undertake our statutory responsibilities,” says Lee Forsgren, acting assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works. “We understand the importance of communication and appreciate the feedback we received as we move forward together with EPA on this important effort.”

What’s coming for WOTUS

EPA’s press office tells The Packer the agencies expect a proposed final rule will be issued in the coming months during the summer. This proposed rule will be available on the Federal Register .

“Once proposed, EPA and Army will open a public comment period, review comments and finalize a rule. Per typical agency practice, public comments would be submitted to the rulemaking docket, including via Regulations.gov ,” the EPA press office says.

The process of reviewing public comment can take some time, particularly on regulations that come with as much public attention as WOTUS. The EPA press office noted that it received over 45,000 letters submitted via the recommendations docket that was open alongside the listening sessions, for example.

The agencies said they intend to issue a final rule by the end of 2025 after the public input is reviewed.

“Once the rule is finalized, it typically takes effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register pursuant to Congressional Review Act requirements,” the EPA press office says.

More information about WOTUS can be found online . Interested members of the public can also subscribe to specific agencies on the Federal Register to be alerted when new documents for public comment are available.

Recent Water Delivery Win is Not Enough

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 21:41:00 GMT

On April 30, Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Texas, announced the Mexican government had “agreed to deliver up to 420,000 acre-feet of water” through to October when the current five-year delivery cycle ends. In a June 9 letter to the editor , TJ Flowers, vice president of Lone Star Citrus Growers, thanked De La Cruz and the Trump administration for securing that additional water. And later that week, representatives of Texas agriculture and crops impacted by Mexican water withholdings met with the U.S. Department of State and others in Washington, D.C., to stress that far more needs to be done.

“Part of what we told them is, first and foremost, we are incredibly grateful for this water, and it’s going to be well used,” says Dante Galeazzi, president of the Texas International Produce Association.

It’s a great start, he says, but it is not enough and certainly not at the right time. Growers in Texas and beyond need a more comprehensive solution they can depend on.

“We need to create a system that ensures there is enforcement and that these deliveries occur beyond October. This is a great short-term victory,” he continues. “We need to capture this opportunity, but we also need to expand it.”

Water stats along the Rio Grande

According to the 1944 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico , Mexico must deliver 1.75-million-acre feet of water from the Rio Grande to the U.S. every five-year cycle. This means an average of 350,000 acre feet of water delivered per year. These cycles begin and end in late October, with the current cycle ending on Oct. 24.

According to the International Boundary and Water Commission — the U.S./Mexican international body responsible for applying the boundary and water treaties between the two countries — Mexico has delivered a total 618,799-acre feet through June 7. This level represents roughly a million-acre feet less than what Mexico should have delivered by this time in the cycle.

Even if Mexico delivers all of the 420,000-acre feet of water De La Cruz mentioned as being possible, that will bring Mexico’s total deliveries for this five-year cycle to just over a million-acre feet, slightly more than half of what Mexico is required to deliver. According to records available from the IBWC , recent cycles have seen declining volumes of water deliveries from Mexico.

Water uncertainty means lost U.S. ag

Assuming all of the additional 420,000-acre feet of water is delivered by October, it will not only not be enough, the timing will also be all wrong, according to Galeazzi.

“The problem is, our farming season runs well beyond October,” he says, explaining that growers in Texas, especially south Texas, plan their crops in late summer, plant in fall, and harvest through the beginning of the following summer.

“How are farmers in the U.S. going to make a plan and buy seed and borrow money and everything else if they don’t know if they’re going to have the water?” asks Greg Yielding, executive vice president of the National Onion Association, summarizing the issue.

He outlines the result of not having predictable water, pointing to the closure of Texas’ only sugar mill in 2024 as an example. Galeazzi too offeres an example of a watermelon grower who had to make the hard decision to cut acreage and ultimately sell a recently acquired packing facility due to water issues. Both men say these outcomes are going to get more likely.

“[Growers are] not going to be able to grow crops and, ultimately, more and more of these guys are going to sell off equipment or sell off land,” Galeazzi says. “Or, God forbid, they’re going to have to make the hardest decision: ‘Do I keep doing this another year or do I close up shop?’”

Mexican state of Chihuahua not cooperating

Both Galeazzi and Yielding identify the Mexican state of Chihuahua as a major problem underlaying a lot of the water delivery issues from Mexico.

“What has happened over the last 20 years is Chihuahua has significantly grown its agricultural production,” Galeazzi says.

He explains that since the early 2000s, Chihuahua has more than tripled its acreage of pecans. Yielding similarly notes that the acreage of citrus, onions and other long-term and/or water-hungry crops have expanded greatly in Chihuahua in recent years.

All of this is happening in a state that is roughly half desert. Galeazzi compares it to trying to grow produce in Las Vegas.

“Chihuahua and their agriculture is the same thing — they are growing in an area that should not be growing fresh produce,” he says. “That’s why you see these cycles go down year after year and these deliveries not happening. It’s not because they don’t have the water. Let’s be clear: Chihuahua has the water. They’re just using the water instead of delivering it like they said they would in the treaty.”

Yielding also says Chihuahua has been planting produce crops that directly compete with U.S. producers, pointing to onions as an example.

“They greatly increased their onion acres in the last 10 years, and they are only able to do that because they don’t release the water from the impoundments,” he says, stressing that such efforts impact all of U.S. agriculture, not just onion growers in Texas.

“What [Chihuahuan growers] do affects prices — and I specifically talk about onions — all the way up to Washington and Oregon and Idaho and New York and everywhere,” Yielding says. “It’s affecting everything, all onions, not just the Texas growers.”

Enforcement is key to 1944 treaty issues

Solving the ongoing issue of growing demand on the finite resource of shared water is a difficult one. Galeazzi points to other sources of water Mexico could tap to fulfill their treaty obligations such as the Rio San Juan. But ultimately, he says the situation in Chihuahua needs to change.

“Chihuahua is going to have to make some very difficult decisions about what stays and what goes, but ultimately, that’s where a bulk of that water can come from.” Galeazzi says. “Chihuahua is obligated to participate in a treaty that the country of Mexico signed with the country of the U.S., and it is not OK for a state in Mexico to not comply because they simply don’t want to or don’t think it’s fair.”

Enforcement is the key, however. Yielding says this is something for the current administration to take care of, praising recent past efforts of the Trump administration refusal to deliver water to Tijuana from the Colorado River .

“That’s the level it’s got to be at to get anything done.” he says. “We figured that out a while back. Everything was being done in terms of trying to negotiate with the Mexican government, and it hasn’t worked.”

Galeazzi also stresses the importance of enforcement. Though he says he doesn’t know what it might look like, he points to the upcoming renegotiation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement as a potential tool.

“That would be fantastic in my opinion, if the renegotiation occurred with a compliance mechanism for the water treaty.” Galeazzi says. “That has really been our ask of the government agencies as we move forward — we need compliance mechanisms created so that way Mexico sees that there is value in honoring that signature on the treaty.”

Yielding says he and the others who talked to the administration recently want them to know efforts can’t stop with these potential water deliveries.

“We don’t want people in the administration or the general ag community to think, ‘There’s going to be some water release, so everything must be OK,’” he says. “That’s not the case. This is not over.”

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Irrigators Are Water Supply Friends … if You Listen

Tue, 10 Jun 2025 20:05:00 GMT

DENVER — Speaking at the American Water Works Association’s Annual Conference and Exposition conference on June 9, Dixie Poteet, a graduate research assistant at Colorado State University’s water resources engineering, told fellow water workers that irrigators can be “friends for future water supply planning.”

She explained the issue of buy and dry — where water rights are sold away from historically agricultural land, usually to a local municipality — to her largely non-agricultural audience. She also pointed out that stripping the water rights from agricultural land usually precedes it being removed from production.

“The classic picture of that is when a farm field gets turned into multiple houses or a subdivision,” she said. “Typically, this is blamed on growing urban water demands or population,” she added.

Alternatives to buy and dry (and farm goodbyes)

Given the generally negative impact on agriculture and rural communities, many in production resist buy-and-dry strategies. But buy and dry isn’t the only way to temporarily offset a municipality’s water needs, Poteet said. Water leasing, under various names — including collaborative water sharing agreements or alternative transfer methods — is a viable alternative.

“These are strategies and agreements that utilize temporary lease or transfer of water to nearby or interested entities,” Poteet explained. Farmers “can temporarily lease that water to a nearby municipality or party and get paid at or above market value, hopefully, so that they offset the cost of not having that water to produce with and perhaps meeting the water needs of those nearby.”

But these strategies are poorly utilized, Poteet said. As part of her ongoing Ph.D. research efforts, she started by trying to find out why.

“We have a solution, supposedly, but why isn’t it more widely implemented?” she said. “I started my Ph.D. saying: Why don’t we talk to the farmers?”

Listening to the farmers

Through listening sessions and interviews with Colorado farmers and ranchers as part of her research, Poteet found a collection of barriers to the adoption of water leasing programs. These included knowledge issues (e.g. “what is a CWSA/ATM?”), support issues (e.g. “Who do I go to to learn more?”) and trust issues among stakeholders.

“There has to be trust between stakeholders, and there’s often a perceived power imbalance: us versus them, east slope versus west slope, urban versus rural ag, big ag versus small ag, that ditch versus my ditch,” Poteet offered as an example.

But the key Poteet stressed to the audience of AWWA members — water professionals across industries such as water utilities, wastewater treatment, scientists, environmental advocates and irrigation districts — was that working with agricultural water users requires trust and relationship building. That starts with keeping their needs in mind.

“I had someone tell me ‘I had an irrigation leak over the weekend; I don’t have time to think about how much I can sell my water right for if I’m trying to track down a leak and replace the pipe,’” Poteet said. “That is a key thing to think about when proposing solutions; these are people’s livelihoods where their lives revolve around if irrigation turns on.”

She added that, according to her research, there are agricultural water users who are actively interested in temporary water leasing. But working together for water supply planning at the ag-urban interface comes down to listening.

“We’re talking about irrigators as friends,” she said. “Part of being a good friend with irrigators and having key collaboration is to actually listen.”

Startup brings smart irrigation retrofits to growers

Thu, 22 May 2025 18:53:09 GMT

Arthur Chen, CEO and co-founder of the irrigation startup Verdi, came from a farming family.

“I was actually the first generation that didn’t have to farm growing up and that’s ironically what got me very interested in agriculture,” he said.

Chen co-founded Verdi in 2020 with fellow Canadian entrepreneur Roman Kozak. The company produces devices that can retrofit existing irrigation infrastructure into an app-connected automated irrigation system. Chen said growers currently using Verdi’s devices liken them to smart home devices, but for watering specialty crops.

With the startup, Chen brought his engineering training to bear on growers’ pain points around irrigation. He said the company is especially focused on the adoption of automation technology.

“When you talk to any grower, they tend to understand the benefits of automated irrigation,” he told The Packer, citing labor and water savings being key. “But about 95% of them we found still prefer not to use automation. They prefer to do things manually instead. As we dug into it, we realized that it’s because automation is really expensive and tends to be hard to set up.”

Chen said his company is trying to help growers overcome those adoption barriers by making an easy-to-install automation solution.

“We can retrofit to a wide variety of different equipment. If you have a valve, for example, we can retrofit that to turn it into a smart valve,” he explained. “Really all it takes is you have to plug in a few wires in order for that valve to be controlled remotely. Then you scan a QR code on our devices, and that connects it to the internet just by scanning it.”

Chen said the devices can be applied to a wide variety of devices, including pumps or even “a single piece of drip tube if you want row-level irrigation control or monitoring.”

To date, the company has devices in over 5,000 acres of mostly vineyards and fruit and nut orchards in North America, but the company’s next milestone is getting into 10,000 acres, he said.

New financing allows for expansion

Verdi announced its latest seed round raised $6.5 million Canadian ($4.7 million U.S.) May 15. Chen said the financing will allow Verdi to expand its products and reach more growers.

“It really allows us to continue what we’ve been doing with co-developing this alongside growers in the field,” he told The Packer. “There is a lot of outside capital that has come into agriculture that is more speculative. What we’ve focused on with this financing is to work with strategic partners, partners who have a vested interest in the success of growers.”

SVG Ventures led the funding round.

“We invested in Verdi because they’re solving one of agriculture’s biggest challenges — climate resilience — through a solution that is not only innovative but also practical and scalable,” SVG Ventures CEO John Hartnett said in Verdi’s news release about the seed round. “Their ability to integrate with existing farm infrastructure makes their platform a game changer for growers looking to stay competitive in a changing world.”

In addition to the goal of expanding into 10,000 acres, Chen said Verdi is aiming to expand into different crops.

“We work with over 20 different types of crops right now, so we are quite agnostic,” he said. “The new one that we’ve gotten into, especially with this new round of financing, is going to vegetable crops. So, [we’re] making sure we’re developing this in the right way that serves growers in that particular vertical.”

He added that the company’s current focus is on working with growers who already use drip or sprinkler irrigation, since that infrastructure can most benefit from retrofitting. However, Verdi is looking to expand to meet other grower needs too.

“A really big piece of that is really leaning into the data that growers can get from various sources, but actually turning it into something actionable for them,” Chen said. “That’s a big focus for us in terms of our software development.”

California governor proposes fast-tracking water infrastructure projects

Mon, 19 May 2025 12:35:54 GMT

California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a proposed addition to his state budget May 14 that would “fast-track” water infrastructure improvements. The presented changes would, among other things, change the way property acquisitions — including eminent domain — are dealt with relative to water infrastructure projects under the State Water Project . It would also change how protests to water rights permitting decisions are managed.

“For too long, attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape, burdened with unnecessary delay,” Newsom said in a news release. “We’re done with barriers — our state needs to complete this project as soon as possible, so that we can better store and manage water to prepare for a hotter, drier future.”

The proposal includes several changes to existing law.

For example, it notes the state currently must appraise a property it seeks to acquire before negotiations start. The government must also provide a summary of how that appraisal was reached to the property owner. The proposal would exempt efforts by the State Water Resources Development Board to acquire property relative to the needs of water supply facilities from these requirements.

The proposal also notes that, under existing law, protests to water rights permitting decisions must meet certain requirements, including deadlines. While existing law “authorizes the board to cancel a protest, permit or petition” for failure to meet the specified requirements, the new proposal would require the cancellation.

“The proposals will allow the Department of Water Resources to move quickly through the permitting and land acquisition processes for the Delta Conveyance Project to allow the state’s most important water supply and climate adaptation project to move forward, saving years, and billions of dollars by avoiding further delay,” Ryan Endean, deputy director of communications for the California Department of Water Resources, told The Packer.

“The State Water Project delivers water to 750,000 acres of farmland,” he added. “Fast-tracking the Delta Conveyance Project will allow the system to more reliably deliver water to those agricultural regions — providing growers with a higher degree of water supply security — as we see more extreme swings between wet periods and drought.”

Endean said Newsom’s proposed budget will go to the California Legislature, which is required to pass the main budget by June 15. The same deadline is not required of trailer bills such as the new proposal.

“If approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor, the proposals would take effect later this summer,” said Endean, who added, “The target date for the start of [the Delta Conveyance Project’s] construction is 2029 and these proposals keep that target on track.”

Agricultural water practices critical to California’s success

Wed, 07 May 2025 12:58:50 GMT

In late April, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared the state the fourth-largest economy in the world at a nominal gross domestic product of $4.1 trillion. He additionally called it top in the nation for agriculture .

Indeed, California had $59.4 billion in receipts for agricultural products in 2023 (most recent complete data) . The state also claimed over three-quarters of all cash receipts for fruits and nuts throughout the nation and almost half for vegetables and melons.

“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace,” Newsom said in news release. “Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of innovation.”

But there is no agriculture in California without water, and water is a precious commodity in the mostly arid and frequently drought-parched state.

Scarcity enforces sustainability

“There has always been a shortage,” said Charles Hillyer, director of the Center for Irrigation Technology at California State University, Fresno, speaking to The Packer on water in California. “We have to be sustainable.”

Hillyer explained that California is deeply committed to permanent crops like fruit and nut orchards and vineyards.

“You can’t abandon that crop. If you have a drought and you can’t keep the crop alive, you’re not just losing this year’s crop, you’re losing the whole orchard,” he said. “So, we have to plan for, not necessarily less water, but using it in a more sustainable way.”

One way that California growers have done this in the past has been to rely on groundwater pumping for irrigation to mitigate the uncertainty of surface water supplies, Hillyer said. He also pointed to the state’s 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act as an example of California’s efforts to keep groundwater use sustainable.

“Were not the first place in the United States that has tried to strive for sustainability, but the way the law works is a bit different from other states,” he said. “It’s innovative in some ways, but that is how the state is putting sustainability first in terms of agricultural water use.”

He also pointed out that water scarcity in California contributed to growers in the state being early adopters of technology like drip irrigation so they could do more with less.

“California growers, because they don’t have enough water and are growing very high-value crops, they invest in more efficient technologies,” Hillyer said. “Because of the margins, this is a place where you can try new things and be innovative and take risks.”

Driving innovation investments

Meena Sankaran, founder and CEO of Ketos — a California- and Texas-based company offering a vertically integrated water quality monitoring platform for agricultural, commercial and metropolitan water users — also noted that California growers have been early adopters of smart water technologies. She pointed to several unique elements of California as potential reasons: anything from proximity to Silicon Valley to having grower co-op systems that other states lack that can help disseminate new technologies.

“The innovations across these farms has been significant over the years,” she said. Specifically regarding agriculture’s contribution to the state’s new economic status, she added that, “it’s a culmination of years and years being smart about how water is being used.”

The state also has invested in innovation, according to Hillyer, who points to his own organization as an example.

“The California Energy Commission invested several million dollars in technology incubators, and the Water, Energy and Technology Incubator at Fresno State is one of those centers,” he said. “What we do is basically help startup companies with innovative ideas go from an idea to making money.”

The Center for Irrigation Technology works with the public and private sectors to advance irrigation, water and energy technologies and management practices through testing.

Focused on a sustainable future

Newsom said California’s economy was growing faster at 6% in 2024 than the three larger economies: U.S. (5.3%), China (2.6%) and Germany (2.9%). For that to continue, California’s ag sector needs to stay strong. For that to happen, the innovations and dedication to sustainable water use must continue.

Hillyer said the state will need to keep sustainable groundwater use at the forefront.

“We can’t assume that the groundwater will always make up the difference with the surface water,” he said. “There’s going to have to be some sort of moderation in terms of planning and planting of orchards that takes into account that we can’t just pump as much as we need to out of the ground. We have to have some sort of balancing to make this system sustainable.”

Sankaran suggested that future efforts to spur innovation could come from the state’s economic plans. She gave the example of changes to state regulations to allow for subsidies for growers adopting water-wise technologies.

“Right now, the state revolving fund is only applicable to nonprofits, to tribal organizations or to city utilities. It does not apply to growers,” she said. “If there was some sort of SRF allocation to growers, especially growers who are going above and beyond in terms of being sustainable, it would be an incentive for more growers to be conscientious.”

In the spirit of sustainability, Sankaran added that California and society at large must not let farmer numbers dwindle given the essential role they play.

“It is critical that we support and incentivize farmers very intentionally in our economic plans.”

Your next read:

How agriculture makes California a leader in the global economy

Water Problems Creep Across the U.S.

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:31:41 GMT

More than ever, water is the tension bar between agriculture and society. Urban centers desperately need more of it to satisfy an increasing population. Farmers require it to produce the food for all those people.

With the Earth’s water supply finite but demands for it ever escalating, conflicts about water are becoming commonplace. Farm Journal is committed to covering agriculture’s role in this clash. The story below about water problems on farms in eastern Colorado is the first in what will be an ongoing series that promises to touch every corner of the nation.

Caught in a devastating three-year drought, state and federal water agencies in California say they will cut deliveries to farmers in much of the San Joaquin Valley by at least 85% this year. That will idle land and result in 40,000 lost jobs and $1.5 billion in income, says Richard Howitt, chair of the Agriculture and Resource Economics Department at University of California–Davis. In addition, the nation’s food security could be compromised because that region produces half our fruits, nuts and vegetables, along with other crops, such as cotton, wheat and potatoes.

(Farm Journal)

The Ogallala Aquifer, which supports millions of acres of crops in eight Plains states, continues to decline. From the late 1940s, when farmers began irrigating in the Texas Panhandle, until 1980, portions of the aquifer dropped 100' and will fall another 100' by 2020, says Jim Goeke, University of Nebraska hydrogeologist. In Nebraska, the Department of Natural Resources recently issued a preliminary ruling that the Lower Platte River Basin appears “fully appropriated.” That could lead to a moratorium on new irrigation wells.

Texas, now in the midst of a long-term drought killing both crops and cattle, faces big problems. Nearly the entire state is in some stage of drought, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor maps. A new report by Susan Combs, Texas state comptroller, projects the state’s popu-lation will double to more than 46 million by 2060, boosting water demand by about 27%. The water shortage could cost Texans about $9 billion next year and more than $98 billion by 2060, the report says. Combs calls for new water management strategies to deal with the crisis.

The Southeast, after several dry years, is no longer assured of consistent rainfall. That puts the city of Atlanta and its fast-growing suburbs in conflict with farmers as well as surrounding states. Even oystermen on Florida’s Gulf Coast complained as fresh water supply dwindled in Apalachicola Bay, which produces 90% of the state’s renowned oysters. In February, Georgia’s Gov. Sonny Perdue appointed 300 people, including farmers, to 10 regional water planning boards to monitor the situation.

Shortage of water isn’t the only difficulty facing agriculture. Quality is an issue in many watersheds and streams across the country. North Carolinians, among others, deal with ongoing battles regarding hog lagoons. Farmers in the Chesapeake Bay watershed have had to change management practices to rehabilitate its water, long important for fishing and recreation. Florida’s farmers and ranchers are dealing with stringent environmental regulations designed to protect sensitive wildlife habitat. In many other areas, farmers and ranchers are devising ways to protect watersheds and lakes with innovative fencing for livestock and conservation tillage for crops.

With our new series, we at Farm Journal will not only outline the problems but pledge to also look for answers that can help farmers and ranchers overcome this threat to their livelihoods and legacies. Technology already offers some possibilities: irrigation refinements that reduce water usage and drought-tolerant hybrids, to name just two.

Water is the overriding concern for farmers, ranchers and society as a whole. Without workable solutions, everyone loses. Share your thoughts and let us know about water
issues in your area. We want to hear from you.

Colorado’s Water War

For Darrell and Cindy Johnston, 2002 was the turning point. The worst drought in memory shattered hopes of a profit on their farm in Erie, Colo.

“We didn’t get any moisture. Snowpack was way down. We planted bone-dry. Crops sat waiting for rain. Water was allo-cated, and we had to decide which crops to irrigate. We burned our water up getting the crop up, then we were out of water. So we didn’t have a crop,” Darrell says.

The future didn’t look much better, either. Located on the Front Range just north of the Denver metropolitan area near I-25, with water supply both short and at a premium due to booming development, the Johnstons decided moving was their best option.

“When the drought hit, farms went from irrigated to dryland overnight. The problem in Erie is that the cities have control of the water and dictate how much we get. It’s been going on for 10 years now,” Darrell says.

(Farm Journal)

Though they had both grown up in the area, the Johnstons sold some of their more valuable land near the interstate. They bought land with a more assured water supply 70 miles away in Fort Morgan, Colo., using an Internal Revenue Service Section 1031 Exchange to postpone capital gains taxes. They grow corn and sugar beets on the 700 acres in Fort Morgan and wheat, barley and hay crops requiring less water on the original 2,700-acre farm, which is now managed by their 23-year-old son, Brandon.

“Buying land in Fort Morgan is the hardest decision we ever made. But if we’re going to farm, we have to have water. When the 2002 drought hit, it was eye-opening to know we did not have water to irrigate,” Cindy says.

Lots of other Colorado farmers are seeing their worlds rocked in much the same fashion. In addition to the competition for water with cities on the Front Range, eastern Colorado farmers in the Republican River Basin and the South Platte River Basin have their own serious problems.

Four hundred irrigation wells in the Republican River Basin were recently shut down to comply with a settlement involving a Kansas lawsuit that requires certain flow levels. In the South Platte River Basin, pumping from as many as 4,000 wells has been limited or curtailed due to a plan to recharge the river’s water and comply with the Endangered Species Act, says James Pritchett, a Colorado State University ag economist working on water issues.

“Crop acreage has gone from 3 million to 2½ million. We’re likely to lose 250,000 acres in the South Platte, where we’re at 1 million acres now,” Pritchett says. “We’ve been depleting the aquifer at an unsustainable rate. Within one generation, we’ll have to find a way to continue agriculture in that area with less water.”

So far, farmers losing wells have gotten little compensation. “On the South Platte, they are not compensated. They are literally high and dry. On the Republican, these are voluntary measures through CREP [Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program] and EQIP [Environmental Quality Incentives Program], a token compensation nowhere close to what they could make from full production,” says Mark Sponsler, executive director of the Colorado Corn Growers Association.

Those economics won’t pencil out long-term for farmers caught in the 21st century water wars. The Johnstons enjoy farming their new Fort Morgan land but warily eye what’s happening to other producers.

“I just cannot comprehend that government can say, ‘Sorry, you’re done, too bad.’ A judge held the fate of all those people’s lives,” Cindy says.

You can e-mail Charles Johnson at cjohnson@farmjournal.com .

Braga Fresh shares update on its regenerative farming trials

Wed, 19 Apr 2023 21:34:38 GMT

California-based Braga Fresh, home of Josie’s Organics, is marking Earth Day 2023 by sharing progress on the company’s commitment to harvest and market regeneratively grown crops.

The grower is currently trialing a low-tillage farming method designed to increase the carbon content in soil and has shared its year two learnings in a video on its YouTube channel , according to a news release.

“Our team is committed to sharing our successes and failures as we focus on improving our practices and strive toward to becoming carbon neutral,” Eric Morgan, vice president of environmental science and resources for Braga Fresh, said in the release.

Related news: Oppy and Food Forward team up to cut down on food waste

This is Braga Fresh’s third season trialing regenerative agriculture practices. The company said 2022 was a learning year and an opportunity to build awareness with the Braga Fresh’s farming peers and retail partners.

In February 2023, Braga Fresh co-hosted a seminar for Salinas Valley growers with Sustainable Conservation and the Monterey County Farm Bureau that discussed cover cropping on California’s Central Coast and how cover crops can assist growers with complying with Ag Order 4.0, a Central Coast Regional Water Board water protection and restoration program.

Trialing regenerative farming practices

Multiple farming practices are being used in the regenerative growing trials such as:

Plant sap analysis.
Data management.
Companion plantings.
Crop rotation.
Intercropping.
Cover cropping.
Soil testing.
Water management technology.

Objectives of the farming trials are to conserve soil carbon by reducing tillage passes that allows for an increase soil biology diversity and decrease consumption of diesel fuel that powers the tractors conducting the tillage operation. With these goals, the company hopes to lessen water and fertilizer usage. All regenerative trials are grown to meet Good Manufacturing Practices and Leafy Green Marketing Agreement standards, according to the release.

“Our intent is to learn, adapt and demonstrate our proof of concept and feasibly change Salinas Valley farming practices,” Morgan said in the release. “Those changes could reduce our overall CO2 emissions.”

The next trial regenerative crop, organic sweet baby broccoli, will be harvested in June on the Braga home ranch in Soledad, Calif.

Mexican growers challenged by water shortfall, tight labor conditions

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:02:21 GMT

Mexican produce growers are pressured by short water and tight labor conditions this season, but distributors in Nogales, Ariz., and other warehouse cities continue to expand their capabilities, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.

There have been some issues with water and labor availability in the states of Sonora and Sinaloa. Growers in those regions have been in a long-term drought and some reservoirs that provide water to growers are only 20% to 30% full.

Growers of produce, grain and other crops have been hurt by the water shortfall, Jungmeyer said.

The questions about water availability have likely caused some produce growers to be conservative in the acreage they plant for the coming season. That played into a reduction in Mexican produce volume in the 2023-24 season and may likely cause a similar effect this year, Jungmeyer said.

USDA statistics indicate that U.S. imports of Mexican fruits and vegetables totaled 11.18 million metric tons from October 2023 to September 2024, down 5% from the previous season.

Labor availability also is a concern for Mexican growers. Factories being relocated from Asia to Mexico are drawing workers from rural regions.

“A lot of the Mexican migrant workers, people who are Mexican citizens and migrate from place to place in Mexico, are doing that less and less,” Jungmeyer said, which leaves less labor available in certain areas.

“I think you’re starting to see more Central American laborers in the farm workforce,” he said.

The factories also compete with farms for water, he said.

Another trend that is continuing for growers is an emphasis on social and environmental responsibility measures.

Distributors in Nogales also are expanding their warehouse capabilities, building some new facilities and rehabbing older warehouses, Jungmeyer said. Some of that capacity is helping to handle U.S. exports of apples and potatoes to Mexico, but mostly for Mexican produce coming north to the U.S.

There has been an increase in investments by private equity and foreign investors in the Mexican produce supply chain, which Jungmeyer said is a trend in many produce-growing countries.

FPAA is now representing the interest of distributors in Arizona, Texas and California, with dues based on the number of truckloads crossed in each district. Because of new growing regions and highway infrastructure, Texas ports have seen a more rapid increase in Mexican produce shipments compared with Nogales in recent years. The FPAA is representing the interests of all distributors of Mexican produce.

“I want to make sure the industry understands we’re not just a Nogales tomato association,” Jungmeyer said. “We are an association representing importers of all kinds.”

Water management critical to sustainability

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:47:04 GMT

Water supplies are under pressure now and will be even more so in the future. That spells trouble for growers and the entire planet.

Emilio Tenuta, senior vice president and chief sustainability officer at St. Paul, Minn.,-based Ecolab, spoke Sept. 22 at The Packer’s virtual Sustainable Produce Summit on the importance of water management.

Ecolab helped its customers save 206 billion gallons of water in 2019, he said, which is equivalent to the drinking water needs of about 700 million people. “We’re on track toward our goal of 300 billion gallons (saved) by 2030.”

The need to save water is real, he said, noting the reality of climate change.

“California has been getting hotter and drier for years now,” he said.

Tenuta said temperatures in California’s San Fernando Valley have recently topped 120 degrees, and hot weather has resulted in a longer and more destructive fire season.

“This is not a coincidence, it is a consequence of climate change,” he said.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has brought its share of troubles, Tenuta said water and other resource issues demand attention.

“We’re going to have 10 billion people on this earth by 2050,” he said. “By 2030, we need 40% more water, 35% more food and 25% more energy.”

Scientists say it is critical to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, Tenuta said, with net zero emissions by 2050.

With all of these concurrent pressures, he said it can be easy to downplay the fundamental importance of water. But water stress is an issue now in many countries.

“In all parts of the world, not just in low-income countries. our world’s freshwater resources are under stress,” he said. “Today, 2 billion people, more than a quarter of the world’s population, live in water stressed regions.”

The World Economic Forum places water as a top-five global risk, more significant than cyber attacks and man-made natural disasters.

“Given the trajectory of population growth, and economic growth, the world is facing a projected 56% water deficit by 2030,” Tenuta said. “If no action is taken, we will wreak havoc on the way we use and replenish water.”

Businesses will be hurt by water stress in ways we can’t imagine now, he said. By 2050, 45% of global Gross Domestic Product will be at risk due to water stress.

Ecolab helps companies manage water systematically, he said.

“Companies should build a water and climate resilience plan,” he said.

A plan to lower water use will also lower energy use and carbon dioxide emissions.

Ecolab was a founding member of the California Water Action Collaborative. The group brings together multiple non-profit organizations, agricultural producers, investors and global companies to address challenges to the state’s water supply.

The goal to improve local water management and stewardship by sharing best practices throughout the state.

“All this sounds very good and logical, but here is the challenge; most companies aren’t doing enough.”

A 2019 survey indicated that while many businesses have made pledges to reduce water usage, progress has been spotty.

“What we found is while there are many businesses that have made commitments to conserve water, the trend line is going the wrong way; 50% of companies reported they use more water today than they did in 2015,” he said.

Eighty percent of companies are aware of water-related risks, but he said only about half of them have a plan to manage these risks.

Ecolab has online tools that help monetize the risk of water insecurity. That tool can help rank businesses measure and monetize their water risks, he said.

“You can actually prioritize certain locations for action based on the highest risk,” he said.
That also helps companies put together an action plan for each produce facility based on what Ecolab calls a water return curve.

The collective challenge will be huge over the next 10 years, but it is possible.

“We can significantly improve our impact on the climate, and we can save money along the way,” he said.

“We’ll also be able to boost our reputation and improve our bottom line in the process. There’s no reason we shouldn’t do this.”

Correction: A previous version of the story had an incorrect number related to Ecolab-assisted water savings.

The Packer’s Sustainable Produce Summit Coverage

The Packer’s Sustainabiility Coverage