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Unrestricted growth and unrelenting
drought threaten
the future of farms and ranches in the Mountain West |
By Gary Nabhan
for Headwaters News |
| Something unprecedented in
scale but chronic in its effects on our livelihoods and landscapes
is happening all around us in the American West: drought.
Recently, the water level of Lake Powell has dropped more
than 100 feet, and federal agencies predict that the lake
may be empty by 2007.
In central Arizona's Verde Valley, eight of 10 springs have
dried up, and irrigators have been told that they must cut
their deliveries to forage crops by a third.
Drought-driven bark beetle infestations have killed off more
than two-thirds of the trees on a million acres of New Mexico,
Colorado and Arizona, increasing fire hazards that can further
diminish rangeland productivity.
While some of these changes are "natural" and largely
beyond our control, most have been aggravated by having already-scarce
water supplies shunted from working landscapes in the West
to cities where both growth and per capita use remain largely
unchecked.
In a survey of residents living in every county of Arizona,
less than a third of the urban dwellers in metro Phoenix and
Tucson felt their consumption patterns had been affected in
any way by the drought, whereas well over two-thirds of rural
dwellers had already suffered impacts on their economic and
food security.
In a recent forum aimed at advancing food security and sustainability
in the West, I was asked which was the worse threat to the
future of Western ranching and farming, drought or land conversion
for urban sprawl?
If we step back a moment, and look at the course of Western
history, it becomes clear that there is a curious but insidious
connection between the two.
It is now dawning on many Western livestock producers that
pre-drought levels of cattle, sheep and hay production in
the region will never again be achieved, at least not during
our lifetimes. The reason for this is that whenever a prolonged
drought occurs in the rapidly urbanizing West, more water
is permanently shunted away from agriculture to maintain the
growth of cities and their suburbs, which then further subdivide
and fragment the West's working landscapes.
Take a look at the fate of Arizona's farms and ranches since
the prolonged drought began to worsen around 1997. Because
farmers in the state have faced diminished irrigation supplies,
higher water prices, reduced yields and rising input costs,
they are currently shouldering nearly a quarter more debt
than they did at the start of the drought.
The average number of Arizona farms and ranches lost each
year over the past half-century has been 82, but since the
onset of the current drought, it has increased to 100.
Many of the region's prime farmlands have been converted to
condos, retirement homes, malls and golf courses that demand
more water be permanently allocated to them. Ironically, there
are ample indications that while farmers are adopting water-conserving
practices that have cut their per-acre use by one-fifth over
the past quarter-century, per capita urban use in Western
cities has increased by one-quarter over the same period.
What many fail to see is that current water allocation policies
exacerbate the meteorological drought faced by farmers and
ranchers, creating a "political drought" that threatens
to undermine our food security.
The facile assumption of such developer-biased policies is
that the food production lost in the West due to urban expansion
can always be made up by importing meat, vegetables and grains
from offshore sources.
But as Americans are quickly learning, food produced and imported
from beyond our borders may be fraught with perils: mad cow
disease, contamination from E. coli and salmonella, high pesticide
residues and farm worker abuse.
In a recent public opinion survey undertaken for the Center
for Sustainable Environments by the Social Research Laboratory
at Northern Arizona University, it became clear that well
over half of consumers contacted are deeply concerned about
the quality, safety, traceability and production proximity
of the food they eat.
And yet, while such strong concerns are prevalent among every
economic class and ethnicity now living in the West, they
have yet to influence state and federal water and land policies
that determine how secure our food future will be.
Let's look in detail at what the public wants that our federal
water projects, land-use agencies nor land grant agricultural
colleges are not currently offering.
Recognizing that local food production contributes to food
security and safety, 59 percent of Arizonans surveyed strongly
support and 33 percent somewhat support setting aside a portion
of each community's water supply to be used exclusively for
local food production.
Surprisingly, 80 percent claim they would be willing to pay
as much as 10 percent more than their current food bills if
locally produced food became accessible to them.
In addition, 24 percent of those surveyed are concerned enough
about meat safety to want to purchase more locally produced
and packaged range-fed beef and lamb. Of those, 71 percent
claimed they would pay more for range-fed beef and lamb produced
and direct-marketed by neighboring ranchers, given current
concerns about meat safety and traceability.
While this should be good news to the farmers and ranchers
forging the marketing efforts of the American Grassfed Association,
there remain many obstacles in the way of both producers and
consumers.
One of them is the disappearance of smaller-scale slaughterhouses
and meat-processing plants near where range-fed and grass-finished
beef and mutton are produced.
In the aftermath of the mad cow scare last winter, federal
agencies began to close down some of the few small-scale meat
processors, claiming that they didn't have enough inspectors
to frequently monitor such operations. This was an infuriating
move in the wrong direction, since most critics agree that
large feedlot and slaughterhouse operations run by the likes
of ConAgra and Tyson are more likely to chronically violate
food-safety rules.
Range-fed cattle and sheep are among the few food-production
strategies that do not require large water diversions to function,
and conservation-oriented ranchers in particular need the
hurdles lowered to provide their neighbors with fresh, safe,
sustainably grown meat.
Westerners will inevitably face further impacts of drought
driven by erratic and changing weather conditions. But it
is time to end the agricultural water shortages caused not
by drought itself but by greedy developers who push our region's
population beyond the carrying capacity of our land and its
water supplies.
Such "developer-driven droughts" threaten to rob
the West of its food security and the health of its rural
communities, while leaving no water in our rivers and lakes
for fish or wildlife.
To arrest these trends, the Center for Sustainable Environments
has launched a marketing campaign for regionally grown food
products grown with water-conserving practices: "Get
Your Fresh From Canyon Country."
It is time that water-conscious consumers and environmentalists
help farmers and ranchers stay on the land through this era
of record drought, rather than standing by passively while
land developers further diminish our region's chances to have
a sustainable food future.
Dr. Gary Nabhan is co-author of
a new policy paper on drought, water scarcity and food security
in the West, available at www.environment.nau.edu. |
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Changes
plow agriculture under
By Shellie Nelson, assistant
editor
Headwaters News
May 26, 2004
Farmers and ranchers in the West are feeling
the heat these days. Unrelenting drought combined with explosive
growth is fueling competition for precious water and making
selling out much more attractive than eking out a living for
an ever-shrinking share of the market.
Experts forecast that the drought
will continue for the sixth straight year.
Mild winters have allowed increased populations of bugs
to munch their way through trees and plants.
Disappearing grass and hay crops are causing
farmers and ranchers to cull
their herds again and again, and given the changing times
making them realize their herds may never return to levels
seen a decade ago.
The arrival of mad cow disease in the United
States closed borders to American beef and caused widespread
layoffs in packing plants across the West.
Brucellosis penned Wyoming
cattle into the state, and other states either banned
the import of Wyoming beef or required more extensive testing
for cattle shipped from there.
As water supplies dwindle, county, state, federal and tribal
officials are faced with tough choices. As the drought deepens
and spreads, they are forced to negotiate and trade away water
to save salmon
and to slake the thirst of new developments.
Family farms are disappearing at a rate calculated
in acres per minute in Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico, and
teamed with Texas, they lead the nation in farmland lost between
1997 and 2002.
A recent study by Colorado
College indicated that less than 3 percent of all Westerners
make their living at agriculture and natural resource-based
industries, and those industries contribute only 2 percent
of earned income to the economies of the Western states.
The crushing drought, encroaching development,
growing demand for dwindling water supplies and change in
economic base are driving farmers and ranchers from their
land in record numbers.
Those who stay must adapt and learn new ways
to hold onto their land in face of increasing challenges.
Some are turning to agritainment or agritourism,
where city dwellers are treated to authentic rural experiences
on working farms and ranches.
In Colorado,
agritainment is the perfect melding of the $7 billion tourism
industry and the $5.2 billion agriculture industry.
Farmers and ranchers in New
Mexico are hitching a ride on the agritourism bus with
festivals, hunting, dude ranching, farm tours and wildlife
safaris.
The mad cow scare is driving increased consumer awareness
of food production methods and has helped fuel demand for
organic
beef.
Agriculture, as with all industries in a changing environment,
must adapt and change to survive. Western farmers and ranchers
are showing their resilience by changing their crop base,
developing other streams of income and creating local markets
for their produce and beef. |
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Author's blog:
While some critics feel that the fight
for water between farmers, city dwellers, and wildlife advocates
is the last great battle in the West, others are finding ways
to bring these various interests together in collaborative
conservation projects.
In the town of Dewey in central Arizona, Young's Farm is both
a natural and cultural landmark. It is a natural landmark
because of the ancient cottonwoods growing ins its healthy
riparian corridor adjacent to fields and turkey production.
Biologists have documented that when Central Arizona's riparian
habitats are adjacent to pesticide-free small-scale agriculture,
they harbor the highest densities of breeding birds recorded
anywhere in North America.
Yet these fields and wildland habitats lie smack-dab
in the trajectory of growth for Prescott Valley, one of the
fastest-developing bedroom communities in the Southwest.
As other farms and ranches in the area have been converted to
subdivisions, none of the water formerly used for crops and
livestock has been returned to streams or cottonwoods for wildlife.
Recently, however, the Trust for Public Land
determined that Young's Farm is far more valuable to this state
as a working farm than as another housing development.
Fortunately, many of the thousands of visitors to the Young
family's farmers market, cafe and nursery agree that the
preservation of family farms for local food production, open
space and wildlife habitat benefits all of us.
They have begun to play a vital role in safeguarding this
rural heritage by helping the Trust raise funds to purchase
the development rights to Young's Farm. This will place a conservation
easement on the property that will allow the Young' family and
those who come after them to utilize the land for only for the
purposes of farming and wildlife enhancement though those farming
practices.
Currently, this coalition of farmers, urban consumers
and land trusts is trying to convince the legislature and the
governor to fund the Arizona Agricultural Protection Program
(A.R.S. § 3-3301-3308).
For such a purpose, approximately $2 million to $4 million is available
from the "Agricultural Program" of "Growing Smarter." However,
this money needs statutory direction into "conservation-based
management alternatives" that preserve open space.
The Arizona
Agricultural Protection Program does this and also works to
leverage additional funding for the preservation of open space
through the federal Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program and
nonprofit organizations such as the Central Arizona Land Trust
and the American Farmland Trust.
Funding this program will help
purchase the development rights of Young’s Farm and other prime
agricultural lands throughout Arizona.
In short, farmers, wildlife and urban-dwelling conservationists can all win through such collaborative
conservation efforts. If we can help conservation-oriented
farmers and ranchers stay in business and on the land, we
will protect some of the most diverse working landscapes in
the West.
Rather than seeing more range wars in our region,
lets all step in toward "the radical center" and make such
visions a reality.
See www.youngsfarminc.com or contact Sara Young-Teskey
at 928-632-7272 | P.O. Box 147 Dewey, Arizona 86327
- Gary Nabhan
Interesting debate on this issue. I think
the over-production of food must stop immediately, let alone
the water and land it takes to feed cows.
To think, all of that land and water to feed animals, oh the
humanity! Let's "sell" the land and water rights
back to the government and let them manage it effectively.
I mean really, we don't need to export food
to developing countries. We can burden their agriculture systems
by simply importing what is required. If you think of it,
we import and export food and animal products from around
the world and for what?
We should all go vegetarian and move to the
city and the problem will certainly be solved. Oh wait, we'll
need that land, water, and overproduction for our new vegetarian
diet. Ooops. <ctrl-alt-sarcasm off>
As with everything in our free market economy
(I know this is a shocker for the more socialistic in this
debate), market conditions should dictate the business cycle
for the most part and all subsidies should be reduced to absolute
minimum levels.
Otherwise, we become captive to foreign markets and end up
with severe limitations on the economy in the long run. Make
water and land-use alternatives economical to the farmer and
rancher, and you'll be able to shift the impacts somewhat.
Let's talk about the unfair burden metropolitan
areas create on our resources and the negative impacts this
has on our environment, shall we?
Mike Eiselein
Baker City, OR
George Wuerthner's literal calving over
Gary Nabhan's essay was emblematic of those whose minds lack
the room for any more facts.
That said, I don't particularly agree with Nabhan's call for
more locally based agricultural production which I assume
is driven by a "bioregionalist" outlook.
The fact is, America already produces more food than it needs
in toto. That's the main driver of our food reality. That's
why prices are low, margins are narrow, debt is high, second
jobs are rife, and why droughts will blow away more farmers.
I think that sucks, but that's reality, too.
It is certainly possible to have a food crisis inasmuch as
a war could disrupt a stream of supply, but in the main, America
still domestically
produces the essentials, the commodity crops that provide
plain old calories, in sufficient amounts that mass starvation
isn't a realistic scenario. Yet.
If such a scenario develops into a realistic one, then there
will be adjustments, some very difficult, and land will be
put into production, returned to production, or changed to
the crops most needed and wanted.
That, folks, is the way the real world works, always has,
and always will -- at least in a free society.
My farmer and rancher buddies fully realize the quandary they
are in. One rancher friend of mine tells me that here in the
Flathead, the farm support infrastructure is already at the
breaking point of viability.
Oddly enough, we both, at different stages, had latched on
to the availability of mechanical bearings as an indicator.
The sawmills now lost, the aluminum plant now near death,
even the railroad, had a symbiotic infrastructure relationship
with the ag sector. Now bearings are spendy and hard to find
... they used to be cheap, in all sorts of grades, and on
the shelf ready to run out to that busted combine ticking
itself cool.
So things are now just that much tougher. Some producers will
convert to specialty crops, but for many, the rational choice
is going to be to get out for top dollar, to either get back
in someplace else, or to retire reasonably well.
No amount of conservation easements will make all the farms
we now have economically viable under any circumstances.
No amount of zoning restrictions (as that Fort Collins dude
advocated last week) will do anything except rob already struggling
ag producers of the only thing they have remaining, once an
operating profit becomes impossible, the value of their land
in its highest and best use.
Someday, perhaps, the sky will fall, and it won't be possible
to transport crop products long distance. Then, and only then,
does bioregionalist policy make sense. But nobody can prove
that the sky will fall. Until it does, we shouldn't implement
policies based on unproven assumptions.
Dave Skinner
Whitefish, Mont.
Gary Nabhan writes that drought is making
it difficult for agriculture to persist in the face of subdivisions
and booming cities.
He believes that society should save western agriculture –
even in desert states like his own Arizona.
And he goes on to suggest we should subsidize agriculture
to make subdivision less likely so that local production can
provide food for these cities.
Nabhan bills himself as a conservation biologist. Any conservation
biologist worth his salt would be cheering the demise of western
agriculture, not lamenting it.
Analysis of land use in the West shows that agriculture is
the dominant use by acreage and is also the major cause of
species endangerment, habitat fragmentation, water pollution
and the spread of exotic weeds, and that it disrupts and degrades
natural ecological cycling and controlling processes like
wildfire and large carnivore predation.
Secondly, as an expert on agriculture, Nabhan knows, or should
know, that the vast majority of water in the West goes towards
agriculture not booming cities.
Our rivers and aquatic ecosystems are suffering not because
people are wasting water on green lawns – as lamentable
as that practice may be – but because we are trying
to grow water-loving cow-forage crops like alfalfa in the
desert.
Even in populous California, more than 80 percent of all water
consumed goes to agriculture, not to industry or urban domestic
uses.
In low-population states like Arizona or Montana, the distortion
between urban uses and agriculture is even greater.
In Montana, for instance, nearly 97 percent of all water consumed
is used for ag. In other words, we would have to have hundreds
of millions of new residents in the West before we would come
close to a situation where urban users were the largest consumer
of water and the major factor in aquatic habitat degradation.
But even more disappointingly, Nabhan should know that the
vast majority of western water does not grow food that is
directly consumed by humans.
Nearly all western farmland, and nearly all irrigation water
is used to grow cattle food – like hay, corn, and other
crops ultimately fed to livestock.
Agriculture, not cities and suburbs, are the major fraction
responsible for the loss and fragmentation of western landscapes.
Again even in California, the most populous state, less than
4-5 percent of the state's acreage is directly impacted by
urbanization and sprawl, while more than 70 percent of the
state is affected by ag, if you include lands used for livestock
grazing as well as crop production.
If one wants to point the finger at what is destroying western
landscapes, sprawl isn't the major problem – at least
not yet.
And when Nabhan talks about local production of food, he doesn't
admit that we could feed entire states on a fraction of the
land currently in ag production.
For instance, slightly more than 1 percent of the land in
California is used for vegetable crop production, even though
California grows half of all the vegetables in the nation.
If we only used precious water and land for growing food directly
consumed by humans, we could free up and restore hundreds
of millions of acres of the western landscape currently degraded
to grow livestock and livestock forage crops.
Finally, Nabhan makes another gross error by assuming that
greater subsidies will prevent sprawl and subdivision.
Subdivisions are driven by demand, not the availability of
land. The only way to prevent sprawl is not by subsidizing
agriculture – particularly agriculture in the desert,
like in Nabhan's home state of Arizona – but through
the enactment of strict land-use planning and using tax dollars
to buy land, instead of giving it away to a bunch of farmers
to grow cow food.
George Wuerthner
Richmond, Vermont
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