Arizona, USA — Editor’s Note: The video above was shown during the first Colorado River outage of 2021.

To reach San Diego’s sparkling blue waters from Phoenix, you’ll first need to navigate the brown-hued waters along Interstate 8. Desert dust in the color of Dad’s weekend khaki cargo shorts. Rocks covered in dark brown desert varnish. Like the wheat fields of Kansas, the trees died and turned brown.

The beige landscape has the occasional green dot where the dry stream was wet. Until you reach Yuma Valley: Emerald City.

Yuma County Farms “Winter Salad Bowl City” It produces most of the domestic lettuce, spinach and cabbage crops during the cold months. This area is not some kind of mythical paradise. Crops require a substantial supply of water to stay crisp and fresh in Arizona’s dry heat.

As such, farms are the main players in the fight against the West, which is being reduced to dust by drought.

Experts are predicting farm “catastrophe” ahead of the Bureau of Reclamation’s water outage announcement.Local authorities are concerned about future reductions and Drought getting worse It is projected that many small farms will still be out of business, jeopardizing local crop production, in a best-case scenario.

Yuma’s failure doesn’t just hurt Arizona. State agriculture experts said the entire country would have to rebuild a modern esophagus if farms in the area dried up.

The Bureau of Reclamation told Southwestern states in June that they need to figure out ways to reduce the Colorado River’s water by two to four million acre-feet next year.

The agency said the state has until mid-August to come up with a plan. The deadline has passed. Experts expect the authorities to announce significant cuts by the end of the year.

“To reach the amount of water that the water quantity experts say they need to keep in the system, the water has to come from agriculture,” said Kyl, director of the Center for Water Policy. says Sarah Porter,

Arizona farmers weren’t surprised by the announcement, but they were frustrated.

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Chelsea McGuire, Director of Government Relations, Arizona Department of Agriculture, said:

Arizona has seen most of its rivers cut off since the first Lake Mead water shortage was declared last August. This cut has significantly reduced river water supplies for growers in central Arizona.

Farmers in the rest of the state took this as a sign that they should start preparing to reduce their water use. Recent Research by the Federation of American Farm Services More than half of Arizona’s farmers are increasingly dependent on groundwater, indicating they face increasing local water restrictions.

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“Farming will have a goal behind it…it’s kind of the easy fruit in a lot of people’s minds about where to get water when they need it,” McGuire said. rice field.

About 74% of Arizona’s Colorado River water supply is used for agriculture. This fact has been used to justify the goals behind the sector.

But Chris Udall, executive director of the Arizona Agribusiness and Water Council, said the amount is in line with global dry farm water use standards.

“The numbers are worldwide,” Udall said. “Because we have to grow food to survive.”

Officials expect the cuts to primarily affect Yuma Farms as the Department of Restoration’s announcement looms, as the area is one of the largest users of river water in the state.

Water usage doesn’t lie, but a major water cutoff to Yuma would have a lot to do with both Arizona and the nation at large.

The expected cut is just the first of Yuma’s problems. When the river reaches deadpool conditions, the community faces disaster.

“For Yuma, and for other communities and farmers along the river, Deadpool will be a catastrophe. It means no water,” Porter said.

The “catastrophe” will not be limited to Yuma County, but will affect all food production in the United States.

Yuma Farms is a national leader in produce production, especially during the winter months when much of the United States faces temperatures too cold to grow.

Yuma’s lack of cold weather, combined with Arizona’s year-round sunshine and robust water infrastructure, has allowed lush greenery to thrive during the winter months.

“From November to March each year, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and other leafy produce are grown in the Lower Colorado River basin on approximately 95% of the country,” University of Arizona professor.

Yuma’s climate is so favorable that the nation’s food system is practically built around it.

“The question is not where to find lettuce if Yuma fails. The real problem is that there is no place to replace such winter vegetable production,” said Porter. There are few places on earth that offer what is available.”

All affected crops are listed on page 7 of the Arizona Leafy Greens Report.

If Yuma farmers can’t find another water source when they lose most of their Colorado River quota, the United States will have to find another way to get their vegetables for the winter.

“Without Yuma’s thriving agricultural industry, not only would Arizonans lose access to lush greenery in winter, but the entire nation would lose that access in winter and spring,” McGuire said. Told.

“Prices will rise, availability will fall, and we will have a very different food system.”

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Agriculture in the desert can create conflicts over water. Mr. Silvertooth, who has served Arizona’s agriculture for decades, said some farmers were plagued by a form of water paranoia, including accusations of stealing water being thrown at neighbors. I have seen

But this water crisis has created more cooperation rather than competition among Arizona farmers.

“Some tough negotiations took place and farmers worked out plans to cut as much water as possible to keep the farms viable,” Silvertooth said.

plan, It is outlined in Judal’s recent letter entitled “Save the Colorado River”. Propose a drastic but agreed compromise.

“A farm with a total of 925,000 acres of farmland would try to stay in business by using one acre foot of water on the farm over four years, which is a significant reduction,” Udall said. “Some farmers wrote it down and said, ‘Can’t we do more than that, it’s a curtain.'”

Farmers do not pass this limit for free. To do this, they say, he must receive compensation from the federal government of $1,500 per acre-foot of water.

So far, there has been no communication from the Reclamation Bureau.

Udall said it would be nice to see some of the city’s facilities cut ahead of the state’s essentials while farmers waited for officials to respond.

“You would want less water for food production, and less grass for pools and lawns,” said Udal.

While this idea seems easy enough on paper, it’s much harder to realize in the real world due to how Arizona’s water rights are set up.

Arizona agriculture has a troubled history of excessive water use. Before using the Colorado River water, farmers relied on groundwater, which almost drained the state. This crisis he appears to have been averted in 1973 when the CAP Canal was formed.

Abuse of well water has led farmers to surrender their CAP rights to the city in exchange for the city subsidizing water through city property taxes.

State water rights weren’t the only rights causing Arizona farmers’ dissatisfaction. Mr. McGuire tells many that while Arizona consistently cuts the most river water, California is the largest user of river water and the state with the upper rights to the river. I had her tell me she was puzzled by the lack of cuts at all in the state.

But as the drought worsens, both state and national water rights could change.

“The Arizona renegotiation process for the Colorado River is actually already underway,” McGuire said.

“The priority system we use today is based on old and flawed assumptions about hydrology that may have been normal at the time, but all those circumstances are changing. have to look and ask, ‘Does this still make sense?

McGuire expects these changes to be long, painful, and difficult, especially as things get worse. , believes Arizona is poised for success.

Water levels are falling across the Southwest as a massive drought continues. Here’s how Arizona and local communities are affected.