Agriculture is big business in the West, supplying much of the country – and even the world – with fruits, vegetables, nuts, dairy, and meat, and has helped to feed a growing population. Some of the most productive and fertile valleys in the country are found in this region, including California's Central Valley. 

Irrigated agriculture accounts for 80% of water used in many parts of the West (i.e., California and the Colorado River) and agricultural interests are often the oldest water users. Farmers hold many of the most senior water rights and often pay extraordinarily low rates for their water. Historically, senior water rights holders have been incentivized to take their full share from rivers and streams, or risk losing their share in the future. This “use it or lose it” mentality has unintentionally incentivized the overuse of water resources by farmers. It has enabled water-intensive crops like alfalfa and almonds to expand across arid regions of the West. Today, roughly half of the total water consumption in the Colorado River that goes to agriculture is dedicated to the production of alfalfa and hay. 

Climate change threatens to destabilize the West’s agricultural economy and the lives of the people that depend on it. Increased temperatures will drive hotter, drier conditions that are expected to cause a decline in productivity. Climate change will also increase invasive crops and pests and may affect the nutritional value of some foods. Declines in production will impact farmer livelihoods and raise equity concerns, as 70 percent of American agricultural workers are immigrants. Changing conditions and rising costs to produce food may also drive up food prices, impacting everyone, but especially low-income households. 

Photo credit: CalMatters

To ensure the sustainability of the region’s thriving agricultural sector, the West must aggressively rebalance resources and improve water use efficiency. Already, efforts have been made to revise the rules, impose regulation, and, in some cases, simply buy out water rights—but these fundamental shifts in policies, regulations, and legal structures may be slow going. Still, much can be done in the meantime to improve the sector’s climate resilience, and the opportunities for water efficiency gains are tremendous. Solutions for more sustainable agriculture include:

• Implementing climate-smart practices. On-farm agricultural practices such as planting cover crops, switching from water intensive to more drought-resistant crops, retaining crop residues to conserve soil moisture, and diversifying crop rotations are part of the climate-smart agriculture approach. Climate-smart agriculture practices reduce the need for fertilizers, help retain carbon in soils, and help soils retain water which reduces the need for irrigation and helps agricultural lands withstand droughts.

While these practices have been adopted in all kinds of agricultural systems around the world, including large-scale commercial farms, they are rooted in traditional and Indigenous knowledge. Across the West, there is a resurgence in traditional farming among Indigenous Americans. More broadly, there is a widespread movement to move toward regenerative agricultural practices, which are generally more holistic in nature and more commonly employed on relatively small farms.

Battery Powered explored the benefits of regenerative agriculture in our fall 2022 FUTURE OF FOOD theme

• Improving water infrastructure and irrigation efficiency. Improvements to water infrastructure can include innovative solutions like precision agriculture technologies, as well as common sense solutions, like fixing leaky irrigation canals. In addition, switching to more sustainable irrigation practices, such as those that rely on locally available water resources, can increase irrigation efficiency.
• Managing agricultural landscapes. Sustainably managing agricultural landscapes and optimizing water use will require fallowing agricultural land through incentive programs or buy-outs, floodplain management, and the creation or protection of riparian buffers. Integrated regional planning is also important to ensuring coordinated management of resources and landscapes across state lines. 

How Philanthropy Can Help

Opportunities for philanthropy to drive change across the agricultural sector include support for:

• Incentives that drive behavior change. The practices that farmers can adopt are well established, though they assume different names and different ethics across agricultural traditions and communities. In some cases, new technologies (e.g., remote sensing or high-tech irrigation systems) can enhance their application. These need to be piloted, but more broadly, well-established practices need wider adoption. Philanthropy can support programs that increase farmers’ adoption of improved practices. These might include innovative insurance mechanisms, water banking and trading schemes, incentives, toolkits, and demonstration and training programs.
• Research and modeling. Data is critical to support decision making. Philanthropy can fund research and modeling efforts that will map future impacts and help determine if and where potential solutions may be effective. This research is particularly important for landscape level interventions (e.g., to determine optimal locations for fallowing or floodplain setbacks). 
• Support for traditional and Indigenous farming practices. Given the resurgence of Indigenous farming practices and the long tradition that Indigenous American communities in the Southwest have of farming in the desert, there may be opportunities to support these movements and amplify their relevance across the region.