Water is Life

REFLECTIONS FROM A FARMER IN SOUTHERN NEW MEXICO

By Shahid Mustafa · Photos by Stephanie Cameron

“Water is life” is an adage both simple and profound in its truth. As a person attempting to produce food, I embrace it as a philosophy and as a practice. So critical and integral to the survival of the majority of life on our planet is water, yet so easily taken for granted as a static and widely available resource.

I have what I consider a very complicated relationship with water. Growing up in Chicago, I often marveled at how vast and powerful Lake Michigan appeared. Standing on the shore, it was easy to be overcome by its awesomeness. I almost drowned in a pool as a child, so sometimes my amazement was coupled with the fear of how powerful and overwhelming a large body of water could be. For the majority of my life, water scarcity never came to mind. I took for granted the annual winter snow, and the seasonal rains of the spring and summer. If I’m honest, I’ll admit that for the most part, I was just plain annoyed with spring showers. Because snow inevitably turned into a hard-packed, frozen, slippery, dangerous obstacle in the path of my daily life, that subsequently melted into a combination of sand, rock salt, mud, and an assortment of contributions from domestic pets, I didn’t look forward to its falling.

When I moved to Las Cruces in January 2006, I couldn’t wait to hike the Organ Mountains and sit next to the mighty Rio Grande River that I had heard so much about. The hike up the mountain was all that I thought it would be—the visit to the Rio Grande, though, not so much. It was completely dry. Somewhere I’d heard that the river flowed almost 1,900 miles from southern Colorado, traversing New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico directly into the Gulf of Mexico. So when I finally had the opportunity to visit the river, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw, or in this case, what I didn’t see. I walked down the bank of the river and “waded” through the sand and sediment to the center of the riverbed. It turned out that, as with many things I’d learned in history, the lore of the mightiness of the Rio Grande was a matter of subjectivity.

Experiencing my first monsoon season, it became apparent that the natural landscape of the desert doesn’t lend itself to efficient water capture. The main road that I regularly rode my bike to work on every morning became what appeared to be a river during the heavy rains, as there was no drainage infrastructure to control runoff or divert the water from the streets. There was pooling in many areas, which provided the conditions for massive waves to be created as vehicles navigated the thoroughfare. What was most interesting, though, was the evaporative rate that, within the span of my eight-hour workday, made it appear that nary a drop of rain had fallen.

Eventually, I learned that the water of the Rio Grande was being impounded about eighty miles north of Las Cruces at the Elephant Butte Dam near Truth or Consequences. The river was dammed in the 1910s to help mitigate issues related to agriculture, such as runoff, evaporation during droughts, and the inequitable appropriation of water. Years later, in 1939, the Rio Grande Compact was ratified between the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. It was established for the purpose of effecting an equitable apportionment of waters between these states. The Rio Grande is currently under the authority of the United States Bureau of Reclamation through the Rio Grande Project, and the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) manages the river’s water provided to the southernmost part of the state. (The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District manages the river and irrigation systems in central New Mexico.) For over one hundred years, EBID has been in charge of the surface water of New Mexico’s portion of the Rio Grande Project, meaning the irrigation district operates and maintains the diversion canals, ditches, and drains that provide water for fields of chile, potatoes, alfalfa, and other crops farmed in the Rincon and Mesilla Valleys.

Because it is being fed by the melting snowpack from the mountains of southern Colorado, the Rio Grande has always been impacted by changes in weather patterns. The historical conditions that have affected the availability of surface water throughout the centuries have been exacerbated by both regional population growth and the recent warming weather trends. These conditions have created an untenable situation for New Mexico agricultural producers, especially those wholly dependent on surface water irrigation south of the dam.

From information obtained from EBID on historic water allocations, there has been a significant reduction in available surface water. Between 1979 and 2002, their allocations remained steady at 36 inches, or 3 acre-feet per year. Subsequently, the allocations have varied from as high as 36 inches in 2008 to as low as 3 inches in 2013. The average allotment over the past twenty years has been around 14 inches. According to data obtained from EBID, the allocation in 2022 was 6 inches. To offer some perspective, pecan trees, which are a naturally heavily water-dependent crop, require about 4 acre-feet per year, so the balance of water necessary short of the allotment must come from wells supplied by groundwater aquifers, which are restored by surface water. Well water from shallow wells tends to be brackish, which means it contains a high level of dissolved solids, making it high in salts. When salt levels are high in the water, most plants have a difficult time taking up the water; this produces a drought-like effect, causing the plants to wilt or die. Producers who are heavily dependent on well water rely on available surface water to flood and push accumulated solids farther away from the roots of their crops. The reduced surface water availability puts their crop production in jeopardy of lesser yields or irreversible crop loss.

The challenge of managing water distribution under current conditions is widespread. Not only are individual farmers struggling with decreased availability, but there is also dispute at the state and federal level as to what the solution should be. In 2013, Texas brought a case to the US Supreme Court against New Mexico and Colorado that alleges farmers using wells to irrigate their crops are depleting the Rio Grande water that New Mexico is required to deliver to Texas under the previous Rio Grande Compact. The decade-long case has been wrought with counterclaims and disputes, requiring input from entities including multiple water districts, the cities of El Paso and Las Cruces, the state of New Mexico, and farmers associations. A pending agreement has been reached, and at the time this story went to press was awaiting acceptance by the Supreme Court.

Perhaps due to the pending litigation, or the politicization of the topic of climate change, it has been hard to find producers who are willing to go on record to discuss their personal experience with water allocation, for fear of some level of repercussion. I find it strange that something like that would even be a consideration, but in my discussions with the few I have had the pleasure of talking to, I have concluded that we are facing a monumental issue that, considering its potential impact, seems relatively ignored by a large section of the general public. Population growth continues, and with growth comes greater demand on resources and infrastructure.

Sam Calhoun has been farming orchards for forty-four years. His company, Calhoun’s Farm Services, is a custom service organization that works with orchards. Calhoun’s, based in Anthony, does a lot of custom work to establish orchards from La Union to La Mesa. According to Calhoun, “From 1980 to 2000, we had, for the most part, all the water we wanted. Irrigation was mostly flooded. We didn’t know how good we had it.” Now most farms are heavily dependent on groundwater from wells they have had installed. Calhoun says that the most obvious impact that he sees in response to the reduced allotment is farmers’ increased costs to continue to operate. “Everybody has had to spend a lot of money on the infrastructure. There are more and more people using drip tape, subsurface irrigation, and sprinklers in orchards. The onion and lettuce market is mostly all drip tape.” On his orchards, he has added subsurface drip irrigation, which incorporates a buried drip irrigation tube to evenly distribute water and reduce evaporative rates. His orchard is not 100 percent drip irrigated, but he has noticed the efficiencies in incorporating the system. “It has helped our efficiency in very sandy soils and has helped our efficiency as far as timing. On extremely hot days, we can deliver water quicker.” When asked about what his plans are in regard to dealing with the impact of reduced allotments, Calhoun said, “We think one day it’ll come back, but nobody knows when that’s going to happen. We hope it snows again.”

As critical a resource as water is to our daily lives, especially in the desert of the Southwest, I am always surprised at the level at which most of us take it for granted. Even small farmers such as myself get too comfortable with the anticipated availability of water. Many of us have implemented drip irrigation systems to conserve water, and try to practice farming methods that help develop healthy soils, which support water retention. But the fact is we are always at the mercy of environmental conditions largely outside of our control. The challenge of year-round vegetable production relying mostly on well water has led me to appreciate rainfall in a way that I never have before.

In December, I attended a Zoom webinar hosted by Professor Geno A. Picchioni from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at New Mexico State University. The subject was the use of saline groundwaters and their effects on growth and secondary metabolites such as antioxidants in several native halophytes, which are salt-tolerant plant species. Picchioni presented some encouraging data, which supported the possibility of there being benefits in planting crops, such as quail bush and four-wing saltbush, that produce secondary metabolites for dietary supplements. This suggests that some functional food additives would actually thrive in the salty soils that we are likely to have to contend with moving forward. But still, I long for the monsoon season that I haven’t experienced since 2006. I’m somewhat saddened by the sight of the dry bed of the Rio Grande every time I have the chance to drive over a bridge that crosses it, and I wonder how much of the mineralization that clogs my irrigation emitters and builds up on my showerheads and faucets affects my personal biology in the way I see it affecting my vegetable crops.

Again, I return to the adage profound in both its simplicity and truth: water is life. As we continue to choose to inhabit a region whose geological and vegetative landscape reflects its historical experience with long periods of drought, and occasional abundant rainfall, we must face that we might have to consider adjustments to how we all manage our use of water and what our expectations might be. The ultimate result may be completely out of our control, but we can no longer ignore the long-term effects that will be determined by how responsibly we regard and collectively steward this most critical and finite resource.