The human pressures on the river’s resources have come about through a combination of the valley as attractive farmland, significant urban growth and an influx of tourists wanting to hike, boat, bike and bird-watch. The population of Phoenix, which relies on water from a combination of the Verde and Colorado rivers, has grown to 4.75 million in 2024 from 221,000 in 1950, now the fifth largest city in the US, while climate change and agricultural demands have placed additional pressure on the river’s supply. 

Global environmental nonprofit The Nature Conservancy has been working on the Verde River for more than 50 years, and as the issue of low water flow became increasingly critical about 15 years ago, it began working with local communities to effect change and save water. This was the launch of Sinagua Malt, Arizona’s first malt house, a Certified B Corp public benefit corporation, which works by incentivizing farmers to transition from water-intensive summer crops such as corn and alfalfa to barley, by providing them with a stable market and offering local breweries and distilleries the opportunity to use locally sourced malt. This measure has saved more than 725 million gallons of Verde River water between 2016 and 2023, according to data from The Nature Conservancy—or more than 50 gallons per pint of beer.

Kim Schonek and Chip Norton inside the Singua Malt malt house. Photography by Justin Brummer.

Barley to the rescue

It was a 2015 meeting between The Nature Conservancy’s Kim Schonek and the Verde Conservation District’s Chip Norton that resulted in the game-changing plan to conserve the Verde River flow. The idea for Sinagua Malt came about through Schonek’s and Norton’s shared goals, approached from different perspectives. For Schonek, the key objective was elevating flows in the river, along with protecting farmland and ensuring its viability. Having tried fallowing agreements, where farmers were paid not to farm, and drip irrigation, which was hard for farmers to manage in large areas, they needed a new initiative. “We were also looking for a crop that would still be profitable while using significantly less water in the area—and barley was an obvious choice,” explains Schonek. 

Barley is planted in January and February, so it receives a lot of water from the winter rains as it irrigates. It dries out through May and is harvested in June, when the river is at its lowest. Conversely, alfalfa or corn need one foot of water per acre of irrigation during June, which places a significant burden on the river. 

Norton came to the issue of water flow through his work on habitat preservation in the Verde. During this time, Schonek and Norton had both built strong relationships with local farmers, and they were able to convince nearby Hauser Farms to take part. 

The initial test batch of 15 acres of Harrington two-row malt barley was planted and harvested in 2016, but it had to be sent to Austin for malting, as there were no malting houses in Arizona. When the returning malt was tested by local breweries, including Arizona Wilderness and Sedona Brewing, and found to be of saleable, usable quality, Norton and Schonek were left with a conundrum: The transportation costs and environmental impact of sending their barley all the way to Central Texas negated any savings for local farmers and brewers, as well as some of the benefit to the river. They needed to malt closer to the source, and the only way to do that was to build their own malt house.

Chip Norton with some of the barley now grown along the Verde River. Photography submitted. Photography by Justin Brummer.

Learn by doing

“It worked because Chip didn’t expect anyone else to do stuff—he just jumped in and did it. He was willing to be the guy to make it happen,” says Schonek. Norton came out of retirement to start the business. His background as a project manager in water and wastewater plant construction came in handy. “I had a great deal of experience with automated process equipment in my previous career, but I knew nothing about farming or grain processing,” he says. “My training as a maltster was essentially being thrown in the lake and learning to swim. It has been a steep learning curve.” 

After researching technique and recipes through various resources, including the equipment manufacturer and the Craft Maltsters Guild, Norton “just started doing it.” Although Norton says his first batch was “the easiest I’ve ever made,” it wasn’t long before the realities of running a malt house single-handedly set in. “Malting needs cool weather, and there was no air conditioning, which was very challenging in the summer as it was 95 degrees inside—I had to go and buy blocks of ice to throw in the steep water by hand to keep things cool,” he says. There was also a great deal to learn, and batches didn’t always go to plan. Norton says he “learned the correlation between fields that didn’t yield well by quality of barley, so good communication with farmers was crucial. I didn’t have a mentor so I had to self teach—so we learned which fields not to harvest, what techniques gave the best consistency of quality and, over time, we’re making good malt on a small pilot scale.”

Photography by Justin Brummer.

Communication is key

Schonek emphasizes the importance of Norton’s persistence but also of strong communication and integrated goals shared between herself and Norton, the farmers and the brewers. “The brewers’ willingness to try malt that maybe wasn’t the greatest was critical,” she says. Sinagua’s stable of three to four breweries kept them at full capacity, until additional investors funded a new malthouse, which has scaled up production to 1,700 tons from 150 tons per year. Sinagua is now operating at a capacity where it is looking for new farms and new breweries and distilleries to work with. 

The Nature Conservancy measures the change in the Verde River watershed by evaluating the change in crop and how much water each crop uses. It compares the volume of water used to grow barley to that which alfalfa and corn require per acre to see the savings. Measurements are taken during the summer months when the river is at its lowest ebb, and the pair estimates that its initiative has saved 725 million gallons of water. They’ve been able to grow to 610 acres this year from 95 acres of barley produced in 2016. Sinagua Malt now works with five farms, including Hauser, the Yavapai-Apache Nation’s Cloverleaf Ranch and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s Hatler Farm. They estimate they will be able to supply upwards of 25 local breweries and distilleries by the end of 2024.

Schonek says there has definitely been more water in the last few years. “You can go boating again now,” she says, “and we expect the impact on the river to at least triple with the new production facility.”

“It’s a dream come true to have such a meaningful impact on the river flow,” says Norton. However, the pair is keen to highlight that there were things they could have done differently along the way and things that have been essential to making the project work. 

“Looking back, one more year of assessment before launching would have been beneficial,” says Norton. They both emphasize that you can’t second-guess the future, but that thorough planning, communication and responsibility are essential when working with multiple partners. “It is critical to listen to agricultural partners and understand what their options are—and to have partners who are on board with shared goals and willing to take some level of risk but also help them manage that risk,” says Schonek. The Nature Conservancy initially helped farmers manage the risk by offering compensation for failed batches, although this has now ceased. It also played an integral role in getting investment from donors, a process by which both Norton and Schonek had to present the venture as practical and profitable. The pair emphasizes goal alignment with other complementary initiatives, such as Friends of the Verde River’s Verde River Exchange Water Offset Program, to which Sinagua contributes, and The Nature Conservancy’s work on eliminating waste in water conveyance and ground water management to ensure the best possible outcomes. 

When it comes to solving the kind of social and environmental issue that the Verde River flow raised, persistence is the key for Norton. “To achieve results, you have to keep plugging away and not quit—things don’t fall in your lap,” he says. Schonek puts creative problem-solving at the forefront. “We can’t just do what we did last year or what we did a decade ago. We must learn from what we’ve done, scale up and invest in better infrastructure,” she says, highlighting the need for greater funding and policy work across the board. 

The post How Two Committed Conservationists Revitalized a River With Beer appeared first on Modern Farmer.

In 2023, Phoenix endured record-breaking heat that had residents coping with an entire month of daytime temperatures that never dropped below 110 degrees Fahrenheit, with the typical monsoon rains nowhere in sight. While other regions may not be quite so blistering, hotter temperatures and less rain in certain areas are likely to become more common as climate change, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, warms the planet. In Phoenix, where a harsh climate has always been more or less the norm, gardeners and farmers have been adapting for centuries, and they have wisdom to share. Their top tips? It all comes down to shade and soil. 

The native soil of Phoenix is often very clay-heavy, high in poor drainage and low in organic material. When it is exposed to the sun, it dries quickly and cracks, cooking anything below. This type of earth is fine for native food plants such as prickly pear cactus. But to grow more food, the soil needs to be both protected from the sun and built up with organic material for nutrients.

Phoenix’s clay soil is ideal for native plants such as the prickly pear cactus. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Rose Courtney is an urban gardener who has transformed her backyard into a food forest where she grows year-round. She even had a bumper crop during last year’s seemingly unending heat wave. In July, she was still growing vegetables such as carrots, kale and cucumbers, tending to her garden early in the morning, when the temperatures were in the 90s instead of the triple-digits.

“Invest time and energy in permanent [shade] structures,” she advises. “Without that, you’re not going to have a lot of success.”

Shade comes at two levels for desert gardeners—shade for the plants with shade cloth or trees and shade for the soil in the form of groundcover. At the Arizona Worm Farm, permanent shade structures, trees and wood chip mulch are all part of the soil-health strategy, too. In fact, owner Zach Brooks says that the mulch is potentially even more important than the shade—combined with high microbial activity, it keeps the soil moist and allows for a system of deep watering, less frequently. 

Permanent shade structures help protect crops from the hot Arizona sun. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

“What happens three or four feet underground to 18 feet underground is more important than what happens above ground,” says Brooks. “So, keeping your soil covered that’s how we get away with watering as infrequently as we do and having good results for the time periods that we do.”

In the summer, the Arizona Worm Farm’s combination of shade (from both 50 percent shade cloth and trees), mulch and active soil keep the farm’s air temperature about 30 degrees cooler than the ambient temperature of the city. So, when it’s 110 degrees Fahrenheit at Sky Harbor Airport, where the city’s temperature readings are taken, it’s a balmy 80-85 degrees seven miles away at the farm. 

Brooks and his team grow food on the farm roughly from October to April, excepting the trees in the food forest, where at least one of the 118 trees is producing food year-round. This fall and winter growing season is common in the Valley of the Sun, where even cold snaps are short and relatively temperate. By planting in the fall and harvesting in the spring, growers can maximize cooler temps and wetter weather—and gardening days that are a little less sweltering. 

Zach Brooks of the Arizona Worm Farm shows off the work of composting worms. (Photo: Callie Radke Stevens)

Michael Chamberland is an assistant agent for the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, a service of the University of Arizona. The extension provides resources for gardening all over the state. “What we’ve done here is taken advantage of the fact that our winter is cool and sunny and so we can grow things through the cool season,” says Chamberland. 

Chamberland also pointed out that it isn’t as simple as just swapping seasons. Seedlings are growing in temperatures that go from hot to cold instead of cold to hot, and the days are much shorter than a summer growing season. While you can grow almost anything in the desert with enough shade and water, it makes more sense to look for things that are better adapted to short days and low water use. 

Sierra Penn is the Indigenous Garden Educator for NATIVE HEALTH and runs a traditional garden on an urban lot in partnership with Keep Phoenix Beautiful. There, she plants in rows as well as using methods such as the Pueblo Zuni waffle beds and Akimel O’odham flood irrigation with water from Phoenix canals. 

Both techniques make it easier to water deeply and less frequently (another theme among the growers). In fact, many of those modern canals are built following the ancient canal systems dug by the Hohokam or Huhugam people thousands of years ago. Growing food in the Sonoran Desert is nothing new.

NATIVE HEALTH’s traditional garden incorporates Indigenous irrigation practices. (Photo courtesy of NATIVE HEALTH)

The garden is a teaching garden, and Penn runs workshops on everything from growing luffas to using grow bags to get started. Over the years, the garden has produced food such as brown tepary beans, Diné blue corn, Tohono O’odham melons and other traditional plants that grow well in the low-desert heat.

“I think it really helps them to kind of find that connection to ground themselves,” Penn says of the people who attend her workshops. “I think gardening is very grounding and just connecting us to our roots.”

Like most food growers, Phoenix farmers and gardeners have an extensive web of knowledge sharing within the region, too. Penn says that she didn’t have much experience when she started and has learned from Keep Phoenix Beautiful’s master gardener, who also knows about the traditional gardening methods, the garden employees and Native Seed/SEARCH, a southern Arizona nonprofit and heirloom seed source.

This knowledge web is particularly important in the urban, arid city because many gardening resources center on a longer growing cycle that has more lively soil and more water. 

“People get confused because they go on to these blogs and somebody in Minnesota is doing something spectacular, and it doesn’t work in Phoenix,” says Brooks. “If you follow Phoenix-based bloggers, then you get good advice.”

The traditional garden offers workshops and grows traditional plants such as Diné blue corn and Tohono O’odham melons. (Photo courtesy of NATIVE HEALTH)

The other gardeners agree. Penn has been diving deep into the gardening practices of Indigenous Arizona tribes, and Courtney looks for plants that grow well in similar climates. As the climate becomes less predictable, knowing how to successfully grow food in harsh environments will be vital. Just as these food growers have done, sharing knowledge will be equally as important. 

“I think my biggest tip would be to look at it as an experiment of trying something new, and if it fails, don’t be afraid to try again because you could create something bigger and better,” says Penn. 

Each of these desert gardeners shared failures, from pests to putting the wrong plant in the wrong soil. But they have also kept going, turning a suburban backyard, a cotton field and a misused urban lot into thriving food plots. As we rethink food systems, trying something new and creating something bigger and better might be just what we need.

The post Swapping Seasons, Casting Shade: How Farmers Are Growing Food in the Fearsome Phoenix Heat appeared first on Modern Farmer.

On a cold January morning, Wivholm drives the dirt roads between farms in Sheridan County, where he’s lived for all his 63 years, with practiced ease, pointing out different plots of land by who owns them. And if he doesn’t know the family name, Amy Yoder with the Sheridan County Conservation District or Brooke Johns with the Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge — both sitting in the backseat of his truck — can supply it.

If you look to the right there, Wivholm says, you can see the valley created by the aquifer. Maybe he can, his eyes accustomed to seeing dips and crevasses in, to an unfamiliar eye, a starkly flat landscape. He laughs and says it takes some getting used to.

That aquifer isn’t unique in Montana. There are 12 principal aquifers running like underground rivers throughout the state. But the way Sheridan County uses the water is.

Montana is in relatively good shape as far as its groundwater supply goes, something uncommon across much of the country, geologist John LaFave with the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology says. State politicians initiated a groundwater study over 30 years ago after years of intense drought and fires and a lack of data.

But Sheridan County was ahead of the game: The county’s conservation district started studying its groundwater in 1978, before state monitoring began.

In 1996, the district was granted a water reservation, or water allocated for future uses, from the state, which meant it could take a certain share of water from the Clear Lake Aquifer. Because of all the data it gathered through studying its groundwater, the district developed a unique way of using and distributing that water.

What’s unusual is how intentional the collaboration was and how extensive the groundwater monitoring was and continues to be. The district does this by working with farmers, tribes and the US Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) to ensure water can be used by those who need it — those who would be most affected by any degradation to the water — without negatively impacting the environment.

And it’s worked. The conservation district has been using its geologically special aquifer — a gift granted to this area by the last Ice Age — to irrigate crops, provide jobs for the region and keep agriculture dollars within the community for almost 30 years while fielding few complaints.

“To me, this represents the way groundwater development should occur,” LaFave says.

The Big Muddy Creek flows through dams and diversions, pictured on the right, that are managed by the Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge to fill the lake as needed. Credit: Keely Larson, RTBC

Sheridan County is extremely rural, home to about 3,500 people across its 1,706 square miles. Agriculture is a big economic driver. Bird hunting is an attraction for locals and visitors. The Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge, located in both Sheridan and Roosevelt Counties and managed by the USFWS, is home to many migratory bird species. It’s the largest pelican breeding ground in Montana and the third-largest in the country.

This early January morning, it’s about five degrees, but there isn’t a lot of snow on the ground. Over coffee and breakfast in Plentywood — the county seat — Yoder and Wivholm say this winter has been warmer and drier than usual.

Dry weather is not uncommon here. Droughts in the 1930s and ’80s were particularly rough. Also in the ’80s, irrigation technology was becoming more common and efficient, Wivholm says, and people began to pay more attention to the possibility of an aquifer as a way to ensure water would be available for irrigation.

“There are several nicknames for much of this property, but it was basically ‘poverty flats,’” Jon Reiten, hydrogeologist with the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, says. The soil is sandy, gravelly and drought-prone. Not great for dry-land farming.

Marlowe Onstead was the first farmer in Sheridan County to use the aquifer for his pivot irrigation in 1976.

“Couldn’t raise the crop on it before,” Onstead says. After irrigation, he was able to grow alfalfa.

According to Reiten, the aquifer ranges from a mile to six miles wide and two to three hundred feet deep. The ancestral Missouri River channel, discovered in Sheridan County in 1983 as monitoring began, flowed north into Canada and east into Hudson Bay. That channel was dammed by glaciers in the last Ice Age and left behind a reservoir that was buried as glaciers melted, creating the Clear Lake Aquifer. Since the materials left behind were coarse and varied, water could move easily and be stored in great depths. A downside is that these glacial aquifers can take a long time to refill.

The vertical white cylinder is one of many that Amy Yoder with the Sheridan County Conservation District checks throughout the growing season. She opens up the top, connects the data logger inside to a laptop and collects information on the aquifer water level and how much water has been used for irrigation. Credit: Keely Larson, RTBC

As drought dragged on in the ’80s, locals and county and state authorities set about figuring out the best way to distribute the aquifer’s water. Medicine Lake lies on top of some of the aquifer, and the Big Muddy Creek — where the Fort Peck Tribes require a minimum in-stream flow to promote ecosystem health — is at its southwestern border.

The Fort Peck Tribes and the USFWS were concerned about their respective water levels and how they’d be impacted by irrigation. Reiten says the USFWS was objecting to just about every water rights case that went to the state at the time, and all that litigation ended up in water court.

“That’s a lot to put on a producer, to have to go up against the federal government,” Reiten says.

Negotiations with the USFWS and the Fort Peck Tribes led to the formation of an advisory committee and the transfer of the water reservation on the aquifer from the state to the conservation district. (Per Montana water law, all water belongs to the state and individuals are required to get a water right to use it in a particular way — in this case, for irrigation.) Since then, Sheridan County Conservation District has had the authority to give water allocations from the Clear Lake Aquifer to producers without the producers having to appeal to the state.

The maximum amount of water that can be pulled from the aquifer is just over 15,000 acre feet total, a number set by the state’s Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Currently, the district is using about 10,000 acre feet. Increases are allowed as long as monitoring shows the aquifer isn’t being overly impacted by irrigation.

“We were basically forced to monitor it, but it only makes good sense,” Wivholm, who has been on the conservation district board since 1994, explains. The district wouldn’t want to grant someone a right only to find out in five years that there’s not enough water.

From left to right, Jeff Wivholm, Marlowe Onstead and Amy Yoder look through maps of irrigation pivots and aquifer allocations inside the Sheridan County Conservation District office in Plentywood. Credit: Keely Larson, RTBC

Once a year, the committee meets to assess new water rights. The committee includes the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, representatives from the Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge, county commissioners, a county planner, the Fort Peck Tribes and a representative with the United States Geological Survey.

If a farmer wants an irrigation pivot, they have to “pump it hard for 72 hours,” Wivholm says, to make sure there is enough water for their request, and understand how that pumping affects other wells nearby.

Data comes from Yoder’s efforts. She collects readings from data loggers placed in the ground throughout the county from April through October. For the first and last collections, she visits 201 wells and it takes her three 12-hour days to get to them all. Driving around in Wivholm’s truck, she points out some of her data loggers sticking up from the ground every few minutes.

Through monitoring, Sheridan County Conservation District and the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology have been able to map the entire aquifer. They take note of the water levels, monitor each irrigation pivot and can see seasonal fluctuations.

“It’s kind of a hidden resource, but the amount of crops that we can get off of the poor ground that is above the aquifer is amazing,” Yoder says. She lists corn, wheat, chickpeas, lentils, canola, mustard and alfalfa.

Another farmer in the area, Rodney Smith, has been irrigating from the Clear Lake Aquifer for over 35 years and has the biggest pivot connected to the aquifer.

Smith says irrigating has been economically beneficial: His farm isn’t as dependent on the weather, and it’s taken the risk out of production. Smith Farms Incorporated produces hay for livestock and sells it to other ranchers in the area. Smith also leases land out to other farmers who grow potatoes and sugar beets.

From an aerial view, his circular pivot plots show different colors of green and brown, indicating a variety of crops grown.

Smith had an early contested pivot case with the state of Montana, before the water reservation was transferred to the conservation district, which went to the state water court.

The gist of the case was that Smith Farms wanted to change their method of irrigation and the USFWS was concerned it might impact the Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Data and monitoring done by the conservation district backed up Smith’s case.

“When you start irrigating, you wonder what is the capacity, or how much can you irrigate,” Smith says. “It’s always interesting to know what it’s doing.”

Rodney Smith’s pivot is the largest connected to the aquifer. The structure in the foreground remains stationary, while the rest on wheels moves around — pivots around — the fixed structure. Credit: Keely Larson, RTBC

Johns, with the wildlife refuge, says the refuge has a water reservation on Medicine Lake and is allowed to keep the lake filled for the protection of migratory birds. The refuge operates dams and diversions to maintain this need. Making sure any irrigation wouldn’t draw down the level of the lake has been a goal from the beginning, Johns says, and so far, that hasn’t been an issue.

There haven’t been any other contested cases on aquifer irrigation, and many, including Smith, see this as a success in having local control over a local resource.

“Water rights are such a contentious thing,” Johns notes. “And without the data, had they not started this years ago, it would be hard to start it today and get the same momentum they did.”

The post An Ancestral River Runs Through It appeared first on Modern Farmer.

The heat dome was not typical for the region, to be sure, but high temperatures are becoming ever more normalized due to climate change. Other parts of the country see birds dealing with heat stress more often. Earlier this year, the Arizona Republic reported notable incidences of bird stress in Tucson. In California’s Central Valley, drought can endanger migratory birds who look for water sources and find scarcity instead. These heat-related catastrophes are especially frightening in context: Over the last 50 years, the number of birds in the US and Canada has dropped by a startling 29 percent.

These occurrences in urban areas are scary, but heat stress can affect birds in more rural spaces, too, and farmland is no exception. Two recent studies looked at how birds interact with agricultural lands and how changes in water, heat or aridity can throw off the balance in this delicate equation. 

Raptors and water tanks

Many ranchers are familiar with making sure their livestock have access to water sources—whether that be stock tanks, overflow areas or earthen tanks. But it turns out that birds, specifically raptors, depend on these water sources, too.

“Certainly the livestock use them, but the overflow areas, you have all kinds of small mammals come in and use them,” says Clint Boal, PhD, professor of wildlife biology at Texas Tech University. “And so they kind of function as de facto oases in this very arid landscape.”

Boal was interested in how raptors interacted with water sources, because it is a common assumption that raptors—birds of prey including hawks, falcons and barn owls—don’t need to drink water to survive because they can get their water from their prey. They may use these water sources to cool off, but they aren’t necessarily there to drink it. Using cameras that had been set up at these ranch water sources across west Texas for another study, Boal and his team began their work, which was later published in BioOne.

Livestock stand near a water tank. (Photo: Shutterstock)

They found that the raptors increased their visits to water sources when it was either exceptionally hot or exceptionally dry. (Sometimes, in the winter, the temperatures are lower but it’s still arid.)

Eggs and juveniles are particularly vulnerable, due to their dependency on their parents for temperature regulation.

“Even if we have water resources that adults can access, if heat continues [in] the direction it’s going, and aridity—probably even more importantly—continues [in] the direction it’s going, those nestlings cannot survive,” says Boal.

For every raptor you see, there are countless other species also benefitting from these water sources. A lot of migrating birds, such as songbirds, use them as well. 

Aboveground tanks have a drowning risk—animals and birds sometimes have trouble getting out. But this risk can be mitigated by installing simple escape ramps. Shallow water sources low to the ground can be particularly beneficial for birds.

“From a wildlife perspective, having these earthen tanks, or seeps that they set up, or just overflow areas where enough water is overflowing out of the tank, to be accessible to wildlife … can be really beneficial to virtually every species out there,” says Boal.

Stress in the nest

Birds nesting near agricultural lands may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of heat, says Katherine Lauck, a doctoral candidate in ecology at UC Davis and the lead author of a paper published in Science that examined the effects of heat stress on birds. Lauck used 23 years of data from NestWatch, a bird camera program from Cornell University, to retrieve information about bird fledgling success from 58 species across the country. This abundance of data allowed them to trace trends across time and space.

One of Lauck’s biggest findings was that fledgling success was lower near agricultural lands. Fledgling success is how many birds make it to adulthood. While this study didn’t investigate why this is, Lauck hypothesizes that it has something to do with lesser canopy cover—the amount of shade the birds could access—in agricultural areas.

“We were really excited to be able to key in on reproductive success as a proxy for fitness,” says Lauck. “And the lower the fitness of a population of birds is, the more likely that population is going to decline and eventually go extinct.”

Reproductive success is closely tied to whether a population of birds is going to be able to persist in agriculture, more so than simply looking at the abundance of birds in agriculture, says Lauck.

Temperature stress can affect fledgling success in the egg and chick stages. Adult birds thermoregulate their eggs by keeping them warm, but it’s harder to keep them cool. Once a chick hatches, all of their water is obtained through food, because they cannot yet fly to a water source. If it’s too hot to survive without supplementary water, the chicks may not make it to adulthood.

Baby birds depend on their parents for sustenance and thermoregulation. (Photography: Shutterstock)

“A huge important factor for thermoregulation in birds is water availability,” says Lauck. This is significant for birds in agricultural areas that are also water-stressed, such as California and along the Colorado River.

Heat can decrease the fledgling success of birds, and Lauck’s next research project will look into how this happens. 

“If we figure out what the mechanisms are, that leads us directly to concrete conservation interventions,” says Lauck.

At the farm level, Lauck recommends certain actions that can help birds deal with this heat stress. Maintain existing trees, even if they’re isolated. Allow for riparian buffers between fields—anything to foster shade. “We think that even small patches of forest are useful for providing these microclimate refuges for birds living in agricultural landscapes. It can allow birds to access a little bit of that extra water that seeps from your land,” says Lauck.

It should also be noted that climate change is the reason these warm conditions get warmer, and mitigation must be viewed from that perspective, too.

Trees adjacent to farmland can provide critical canopy to wild birds. (Photo: Shutterstock)

There are almost three billion fewer birds in the wild in the US and Canada now than there were in the 1970s. Besides this being tragic just for the sake of the birds, Lauck says this also impacts humans.

“We’re losing the value that those birds bring to our working landscapes,” says Lauck. “They inspire us, they drive this massive bird-watching industry, but they can also benefit farmers by eating pests and pollinating crops. And so I think people can see that there is value in birds. And they just need to know ‘what do I do?’”

Farmers have an important role to play, says Lauck. Across the globe, nearly half of all habitable land is used for farming. But this paper can provide some insight into how to co-manage agricultural land for bird species that are trying to live on despite climate change and habitat destruction.

“If we want to maintain a resilient, biodiverse biological community that will continue to provide us with ecosystem services … but also the sense of a connection to the natural world and the sense of belonging you feel when you see a familiar organism living around you,” says Lauck, “we need to manage agriculture for more than just production.” 

***

Learn more about the benefits of birds on farms: We’ve written about this before. Check out this story about how birds help out agricultural lands.

Want to make your farm more bird-friendly? The National Audubon Society has some ideas. Check out its Conservation Ranching program for more information.

If you live in an urban area, then we’d recommend reading this piece in the Arizona Republic, which offers some guidance on what to do if you see a young bird that’s fled the nest due to heat.

The post Birds are Vulnerable to Heat Stress, Even on Farms appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“Haw River watershed is beautiful,” says Emily Sutton, Haw Riverkeeper for the Haw River Assembly. “It’s really rocky. There’s some high bluffs and fun rapids to paddle and lots of hikes—it’s [a] very accessible river.”

The river is undeniably beautiful. But per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly abbreviated as PFAS, are not visible to the naked eye. PFAS are chemicals that have been linked to debilitating health effects in high concentrations, and they are now so widespread that they are found in the blood of 97 percent of Americans.

This year, the EPA issued a proposed rule that public drinking water systems should not have more than four parts per trillion of two PFAS compounds, PFOS and PFOA. Back in 2019, Sutton and the Haw River Assembly detected 30,000 parts per trillion of total PFAS coming into the Haw from the city of Burlington—7,500 times the maximum concentration in the proposed new guidelines. For communities downstream that get their drinking water from the Haw, such as the town of Pittsboro, this invisible danger was a direct threat. The drinking water technically met all state quality standards, but only because there weren’t any for PFAS. The Haw River Assembly, the Southern Environmental Law Center and community members sprang into action.

A global pollution problem, communities such as those along the Haw River are having to deal with the reality of PFAS. While some states, such as Maine and New York, have passed laws beginning to regulate PFAS, federal oversight remains very light on these chemicals. Meanwhile, a new report from Food & Water Watch digs into why exactly these substances remain largely unregulated.

The Haw River. (Photography by Emily Sutton)

What are PFAS and when did they become a problem?

PFAS are chemicals that have been used commercially since the 1940s. They all contain a bond between the chemical elements carbon and fluorine, the strength of which keeps them from breaking down, giving them the nickname “forever chemicals.” Because these chemicals are so hardy, they bioaccumulate, meaning they grow in concentration over time. They are so widespread that they are found around the world. They are in Teflon pans, rain gear and mascara. They are in firefighting foam, electronics and hand sanitizer. They are in our blood.

The term PFAS refers to a class of chemicals that includes thousands of substances—as many as 14,000 or 15,000. “Part of the problem is that we can only test for about 70 of these 14,000,” said Kyla Bennett, director of Science Policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), in a recent Food & Water Watch webinar. “So, we don’t even know the chemical formulas of the vast number of these PFAS that are out there.”

PFAS are not naturally occurring—they have historically been made by a few key corporations, such as DuPont and 3M. 

The industry has known of the chemicals’ toxicity since very early in their use, said Natalie Balbuena, researcher for Food & Water Watch, in the webinar. The public didn’t know about PFAS until 1999, when a case was brought to the courts arguing that a farmer who lived near a DuPont plant noticed his cattle were dying.

“From there, all the information came out, and people started to really pay attention,” said Balbuena. Since then, high-profile cases have been brought against PFAS manufacturers, including one that resulted in a $671-million settlement in 2017 on behalf of West Virginians near the DuPont Washington Works plant, who were experiencing a myriad of health problems, from birth defects to cancer.

[RELATED: You’ve Already Been Exposed to Toxic PFAS. But You Can Take Steps to Minimize Future Exposure]

When it comes to agriculture, the cattle farmer near the DuPont plant was not a PFAS anomaly. A report from FoodPrint says that agricultural land across the country could be compromised. PFAS from contaminated water and topically applied biosolids, or “sludge,” can result in PFAS uptake for both animal agriculture and produce. This means that PFAS is also a growing concern for the food system—both for consumers and for farmworkers who work on contaminated land.

“‘Biosolids’ is just a euphemism for human sewage sludge,” said Bennett. Once wastewater passes through a treatment plant, the substance left over has commonly been applied to agricultural fields as fertilizer. “Turns out, the biosolids or the sewage sludge has a ton of PFAS in it, and farmers all across the country have been applying the sewage sludge to their farms and their fields.”

The resulting contamination has shut down farms across the country. Fortunately, there are some mechanisms for farm recovery. Even so, PFAS remains a concern at every level of the food system, from agriculture to cooking in the kitchen.

The public has now known about PFAS for more than 20 years, but it’s taken until this year for the EPA to propose drinking water standards. In 2023, the EPA proposed regulated maximum contaminant levels (MCLs) for a small handful of PFAS in public drinking water. This means public drinking water systems would be regularly tested for compliance. A decision on this proposed rule is expected soon.

“Is it enough?” said Bennett. “Absolutely not.”

In the Haw Rivershed

When Emily Sutton of the Haw River Assembly samples for PFAS in her watershed, she identifies potential sources of pollution on maps and how she can get to them without trespassing. 

“Oftentimes, that means we’re in boats paddling up the river to make sure that we can get as close to the pipe as possible,” says Sutton.

Wearing waders and gloves, Sutton will take sample jars over to the effluent pipe outfall and collect a sample directly from the source. She sends the samples to a lab and awaits the results.

In 2019, when the Haw River Assembly detected startlingly high levels of PFAS in an effluent pipe flowing into the Haw River, they immediately began alerting the public. The Haw River Assembly, along with the Southern Environmental Law Center, filed an intent to sue the city of Burlington. They also sent out mailers and calls to residents and held community meetings. They were able to negotiate a settlement with the city that targeted the industrial sources of PFAS, and got them to change their practices by phasing out PFAS elements or reducing their use.

“So, what used to be 30,000 parts per trillion coming from their wastewater effluent into the Haw is now consistently under 500,” says Sutton. “And it’s getting lower as that minimization plan is carried out.”

Haw Riverkeeper Emily Sutton samples water in the Haw Rivershed. (Photography by Liz McLaughlin)

Blocking legislation

Bennett said in the weinar that the EPA needs to define PFAS broadly, regulate them as a class and then ban all non-essential uses. 

“Unless you can define something, you can’t regulate it,” says Bennett. “We don’t need PFAS in our mascara. That’s a convenience, not a necessity.”

It’s not for lack of trying. In the new report for Food & Water Watch, Balbuena analyzes the attempts at regulation. Between 2021 and 2022, more than  70 bills that addressed PFAS were introduced to the US Congress. But the industry has so much influence, says Balbuena, that lobbying on behalf of PFAS has been very effective at keeping legislation at bay. Only four of the bills mentioning PFAS between 2019 and 2022 ever became law.

Lobbyists against PFAS regulation represent major PFAS manufacturers, oil and petroleum companies and the American Chemistry Council. For example, for eight current and historic major PFAS manufacturers between 2019 and 2022, lobbying reports totaling $55.7 million included content on PFAS and related bills, among other issues. 

These lobbyists target bills that would regulate PFAS, such as the PFAS Action Act, introduced in both 2019 and 2021. The report looked at eight PFAS manufacturers and noted that those companies employed 28 lobbyists to fight against the bill in 2019.

Additionally, Food & Water Watch found that in the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works—the same committee that failed to pass the PFAS Action Act—PFAS manufacturers contributed funds to the campaigns of two-thirds of the committee members. Committee members also received financial support from oil and gas companies and from the American Chemistry Council, all of which have an interest in PFAS remaining unregulated.

“There’s a lot of things here that tell us just how much influence the industry has with its money,” says Balbuena.

PFAS work on the ground

Across the country, communities are becoming more aware of PFAS and taking steps to address contamination. Several states, including Vermont and Michigan, have sued PFAS manufacturers. Many states have also passed their own regulations, in lieu of federal standards. River and waterkeepers across the country, as well as other advocacy groups, keep an eye on local communities, staying vigilant.

As it flows downstream, the Haw River eventually joins the Cape Fear River and carries on until it empties into the Atlantic Ocean near the southern tip of the state. The Cape Fear River basin supplies drinking water for nearly one million people. 

The Cape Fear River in Wilmington, NC. (Photo: Shutterstock)

In 2017, Wilmington’s StarNews broke the story about contamination from a PFAS called GenX in the Cape Fear River from the company Chemours.

“That was kind of the beginning of all of our knowledge-seeking on what GenX is, number one, and what PFAS is and what it means to us,” says Dana Sargent, executive director at Cape Fear River Watch.

Sargent has been heavily involved in PFAS work. Since there are no official regulations for PFAS in public drinking water systems in North Carolina, CFRW and the Southern Environmental Law Center sued Chemours and the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. This resulted in a consent order among the three entities. Under the consent order, Chemours has to find standards for the more than 250 types of PFAS coming from its plant. It’s a long and slow process, but, she says, the impact is hugely important.

The best-case scenario, says Sargent, is a world where we no longer produce PFAS. But the amount of money the chemical industry makes off of PFAS prevents meaningful steps toward alternatives.

“We need to find a better way,” says Sargent. “We need to do better science, to stop putting PFAS out into the environment, because we know once it’s out there, it doesn’t go away.”

***

Read the full report: You can read Food & Water Watch’s full report here.

Watch to learn: If you want to learn more, the documentary “The Devil We Know,” about how PFAS contamination has rocked communities in West Virginia, is a good place to start. Then, watch “Dark Waters,” a film based on the true story of Robert Bilott, the lawyer who went up against chemical company DuPont.

Decrease your exposure: We solicited insights from those interviewed for this story about what people can do to decrease their risk of exposure to PFAS. Read some of their recommendations here.

The post Toxic PFAS are Everywhere, and Remain Largely Unregulated appeared first on Modern Farmer.

“When faced with that immensity of a problem, you’ve got to really focus on, ‘Well, what can I control?’” said Natalie Balbuena, researcher with Food & Water Watch, in a recent webinar. “There are a lot of key tools that I think begin with awareness.”

You can take steps to limit your PFAS exposure, even in your home. (Photography by Shutterstock)

Educate yourself and your community

Although it sounds simple, educating yourself about PFAS can lead to real change. Dana Sargent, executive director of Cape Fear River Watch, has been working with community members to test home wells for PFAS. These conversations can be devastating, she says, when people with sickness in their families find out that the water they’ve been drinking is contaminated. For a lot of people who learn about their exposure, the next step is telling other people they know.

“A lot of these folks that have come to know about this are sharing with their neighbors,” says Sargent. “And that is vitally important, because education is the first step towards policy change.”

[RELATED: Toxic PFAS are Everywhere, and Remain Largely Unregulated]

Case in point: There have been a lot of restrictions on who qualifies to get their well water tested in North Carolina. Sargent has been pushing for a pullback on these restrictions, and as more community members learned about the issue, they began contacting the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ) as well to voice their concerns. 

Just this December, NCDEQ announced that it is pulling back restrictions, allowing thousands more people to get their well water tested—a big win, says Sargent.

“Action does effect change,” says Sargent. “We’ve got to beat it with a frickin’ heavy hammer in this town and in this state, but it does work.”

The documentary The Devil We Know is one good place to start. It provides a thorough look into the history of PFAS and how it affects human communities. 

Utilize your buying power, if possible

There’s no doubt about it—being able to be selective about where you spend money is an economic privilege. Systemic factors like this make certain communities disproportionately impacted by PFAS contamination. This is a justice issue, because non-contaminated products should not be accessible only to the wealthy.

“This is definitely an environmental justice issue,” says Balbuena of Food & Water Watch, “primarily because it really connects to a lot of the historical injustices when it comes to placing low-income communities of color next to certain chemical-producing, plastic-producing [and] fracking sites and just having them exposed to all these toxins and then being left with not only paying for the development of those things but also a lot of health effects.”

For those who are financially able, the Center for Environmental Health provides a list of PFAS-free products including textiles, foodware and more. Another accessible list that includes cosmetics, baby products and furniture is available here.

Voicing priorities to companies is also effective, even if you can’t use your dollars in a certain way. It can change company behavior.

“There are companies starting to respond and you can start to get some PFAS-free products,” said Kyla Bennett, director of science policy for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), in the Food & Water Watch webinar. Lowe’s took PFAS out of its indoor residential carpets. IKEA removed it from its processing. “I think those are some victories that we can take heart from.”

Limit plastics and other known dangers

Products containing PFAS won’t be labeled as such, and we do not yet have labeling requirements for products claiming to be free of PFAS. When it comes to products labeled PFAS-free, Bennett cautions that you have to be careful of greenwashing. Sometimes, one PFAS may be removed from a product just to be replaced with another. Look into the company’s verification process, if possible. 

Still, there are some things that you can assume contain PFAS. Bennett recommends avoiding #2 plastics as much as possible. This could be food containers, shampoo bottles and the like. Waterproof items, such as mascara and rain gear, can also be sources of exposure.

Another known danger is nonstick cookware. “Get rid of your Teflon pans,” says Sargent. “Obviously, if you get rid of it, you’re putting it into a landfill, it’s going to end up back in the system in some way. But like, don’t cook on that garbage.”

Know where your drinking water comes from

About 20 percent of exposure to PFAS comes through drinking water. One thing you can do, says Bennett, is look for certified filters to reduce PFAS loads in your home. Under the sink reverse osmosis is effective, but can be costly to the individual household. It also requires maintenance by the homeowner, which can make it difficult for renters.

“Reverse osmosis is very expensive,” says Emily Sutton, Haw Riverkeeper for the Haw River Assembly. “And that’s an environmental justice issue to say that only the wealthiest of us can have safe drinking water.” 

Knowing where your water comes from is important, says Sutton. Last year, in response to the PFAS contamination in the Haw River that was contaminating Pittsboro’s drinking water, the town installed a granular activated carbon filtration system. This effectively removes the majority of the PFAS from the town’s drinking water. 

The Haw Rivershed. (Photography by Emily Sutton)

Be vocal

The EPA recently withdrew its conditional consent for the chemical company Chemours to import waste containing PFAS to its North Carolina location, stating that the agency initially received inaccurate data from the company. Sargent believes the reversal is largely thanks to the fact that local residents have become such strong voices on this topic.

“We pushed back hard and they’re like, ‘We can’t do this to that community. They’re paying attention,’” says Sargent. “That’s huge.”

***

This guide accompanies our reported story about the history of PFAs, why regulators have been slow to act, and how one community successfully reduced the amount of these chemicals in their water. Read that story here.

The post You’ve Already Been Exposed to Toxic PFAS. But You Can Take Steps to Minimize Future Exposure. appeared first on Modern Farmer.

For centuries, farmers have favored the rich soil of coastal areas during the growing season. “It’s very fertile soil, especially in some areas that are called the ‘black lands.’ These are really deep organic soils that formed on the coast over millennia,” says Michael Gavazzi, coordinator of the USDA Southeast Climate Hub coordinator and natural resource specialist. 

It’s a different story when the floods come in. Hurricanes and tropical storms bring torrential rain and powerful winds that cause storm surges—abnormally large waves that can tower up to 25 feet in height. The aftermath of such disasters is devastating. Crop damage and equipment loss can rack up to thousands of dollars for farmers, even with insurance. The spread of invasive species hinders future growing seasons of certain crops. And most of all, flooding risks long-term consequences to soil health and the geological makeup of farms that could force farmers to permanently abandon their land. 

Take, for instance, 2018’s Hurricane Florence. The slow-moving Category 4 giant ravaged southeast coasts, with wind gusts as high as 100 miles per hour, rainfall that exceeded 10 inches in most coastal regions (Swansboro reported 34 inches of total rainfall) and $24 billion in damages—more than Category 5 Hurricane Matthew and Category 4 Hurricane Floyd combined. The initial $1.1-billion damage cost calculation was conservative, and it didn’t account for damages from soil salinization. Even worse, climate scientists say that rainfall estimations were worsened by climate change, an indication that future storms could follow similar patterns. 

The storm rocked North Carolina’s agricultural industry to its core. Five of six top agricultural counties of the state were in the most storm-vulnerable areas. Most eastern farmers’ fields were obliterated; the storm came right before peak harvest season for tobacco, corn and cotton. Crop insurance didn’t cover all the damages incurred, especially not the long-term costs. 

“Fresh water [non-saline] flooding from intense rainfall events can [have] short- and long-term consequences,” says Gavazzi, “but the land will usually recover.” However, ocean-driven storm surge flooding is saltwater, and crop productivity can be negatively impacted. Repeated flooding can permanently reduce forest, range and agricultural production of these coastal areas. 

Soil salinization occurs when seawater from floods eventually evaporates but leaves behind its salt content, which accumulates over years in the soil. With enough flooding, the soil on farms could become so salinized that crops can no longer be grown on that land. 

More often known as saltwater intrusion, soil salinization can also impact local water quality; the salt eventually makes contact with freshwater aquifers, thus salinizing them. Many local communities source water from wells that draw from these aquifers. Aquifer salinization forces these communities to drill new wells deeper and further inland, which further depletes underground freshwater and creates a self-enforcing loop. 

This process isn’t immediately noticeable: One hurricane season isn’t enough for farmers to see the effects. But several years later, farmland productivity starts to plummet. Crop yields never return to previous rates, and there is only so much farmland owners can do to rid the salt before another hurricane comes along. 

The issue, although having long been a concern among agronomists, started to rapidly proliferate in the past couple of years, as hurricanes and natural disasters become more frequent and more severe as a result of human-caused climate change. While not solely to blame for extreme weather, scientists agree that the burning of fossil fuels is supercharging normal weather patterns.. “It seems like it’s become more of an important issue in the last five to 10 years as [soil salinization] started to impact more land,” says Gavazzi. 

“What they can do is hope for rain. Rain before a storm surge can fill up the soil pore space and prevent saltwater from entering the soil. Additional rain that occurs with a hurricane can also flush the standing saltwater off the land and kind of return it back to its previous non-saline state.” 

2018’s Hurricane Florence obliterated many farms in North Carolina’s coastal areas. (Photo: Shutterstock)

As sea level increases due to climate change, the difference between ocean water levels and soil elevation is decreasing, making post-storm water runoff more difficult. Although the rain can eventually help flush out salt content in soil, long-term accumulation of salt far exceeds what natural precipitation can remove. Small farmer owners can also use water to flush out salt on their own, but this solution is far from viable for medium to large farm owners. 

Another issue, which is essential to mitigating damage, is that salinization is harder to spot than expected. “[It’s] not always obvious on the surface,” explains Gavazzi. “Sometimes, it washes away, but the salinity of the soil can be increasing … There’s noticeable declines in productivity with that, but it’s kind of quiet after the event.” Farmers not equipped with the proper resources and knowledge to understand this are at particularly high risk of losing farmland. 

“We’ve talked to some farmers that have constructed dikes to try to keep the water out,” he says. But infrastructure also comes with certain drawbacks. “Dikes are good for keeping out some flooding, but when water gets behind them, they hold that water and it also changes the natural landscape [of the area].” 

To support coastal agriculture, the USDA, in partnership with regional and national organizations, provides financial and technical assistance to farmers in order to aid during recovery, post natural disaster. Research studies on future mitigation and resilience strategies are also well underway at universities. A research group formed jointly by scientists from Duke University and the University of Virginia recently published their findings mapping saltwater intrusion across the eastern coast in high-profile journal Nature. They found that between 2011 to 2017, “salty patches”, an indication of saltwater intrusion, have doubled in frequency across Delaware and in parts of Virginia and Maryland. Up to 93 percent of the farmlands analyzed were shown to be in proximity to the salinized areas. The economic implications of such changes were estimated to run as high as $107.50 million annually. 

Other research efforts that revolve around salt-tolerant crop development and cover crop planting practices are beginning to gain traction among farmers. Michelle Lovejoy, a climate resilience manager at the Environmental Defense Fund, says that today’s farmers are more willing to adapt such mitigation practices. 

“We are starting to see that shift as the next generation starts to take over the farm and as farmers are noticing ‘I’m getting more wet years,’” says Lovejoy. 

Lovejoy emphasizes that the impacts of flood damage reverberate throughout state-wide communities, as well as local agricultural ones. When flooding disrupts crop production, especially of staple crops such as corn, wheat or potatoes, grocery stores and farmers’ markets take a hit. 

She explains that, particularly in states that are responsible for producing large amounts of a staple crop, flooding can result in supply chain collapses. Food disappears off store shelves and already food-insecure communities are left to grapple with devastating food shortages. 

“That’s where, collectively as a nation, we need to make sure there’s redundancy in the system, but we, as a society, have made decisions historically that looked at efficiencies and cost,” says Lovejoy, referring to practices that ensure no singular agricultural community is responsible for producing the majority of a crop supply for the rest of the country. 

She draws a comparison to a similar occurrence during the pandemic. “During [COVID-19] when we watched the supply chains collapse, we made decisions that said, ‘We don’t need those redundancies,’” says Lovejoy. “But now we’re realizing [that] part of resilience is having redundancies in the system. That’s a local level conversation that needs to happen.”

The post ‘A Silent Killer’: How Saltwater Intrusion is Overtaking Coastal Farmland in the US  appeared first on Modern Farmer.

Alfalfa hay, the nutrient-rich backbone of the dairy, beef and horse industries in the West, produces more protein per acre than any other field crop. But it comes at a great cost to the region’s water supply. Alfalfa alone siphons off more than a third of that agricultural water usage.

But there’s a potential solution on the table that some ranchers and farmers have been slowly adopting over the past decade or so. Hydroponic fodder, young tender grass grown from cereal grains in indoor systems, can grow animal feed using up to 98 percent less water than it would take to grow a comparable amount of calories in a field. Although the design and water sustainability varies from system to system, these technologically advanced setups have the potential to grow far richer animal feed using just a fraction of the water supply, land, energy and labor needed for traditional hay crops while potentially cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Al Noorda of Cedar Fort, Utah started using fodder for his grass-fed beef cattle and horses in 2014, following years of drought at his mixed-use ranch. Although his 150 to 300 cows are turned out to graze on high-elevation native bromes, crested wheatgrass and kochia grasses during the warm weather grazing season, on dry years, he did not have enough water to grow alfalfa to feed them through the winter months. 

Now that he’s adopted the technology, the 2,000 pounds per day of fodder he grows takes about 1,000 gallons of water daily. To grow that much alfalfa would require about 100 acres of land with about 50,000 gallons of water every day, he estimates. “The water needed to grow fodder is far, far, far less,” says Noorda. 

Hydroponic fodder systems sow soaked grains, such as wheat or rye, into trays that are automatically watered. (Photo via FodderTech)

Noorda still grows some alfalfa to supplement his feed. And in wet years, he’s able to sell the portion that his fodder has replaced. This has significantly lowered the water use of his Spring Creek Livestock and Feed, while boosting his bottom line.

The water savings since he added the technology to his farm have been substantial, yet the benefits and cost savings have gone well beyond conserving an increasingly contentious natural resource in the West. 

Noorda feeds his cattle and horses a 70 percent fodder to 30 percent dry alfalfa hay ratio. The bulk of their nutrients come from the fodder, so the hay is used for fiber roughage and to keep the stomachs moving. Because fodder boasts a far higher digestibility rate, upwards of 80 percent compared to dry hay’s 30 percent, the nutrient value is yet another advantage. Noorda says his cattle require less doctoring and his vet bills have decreased due to fewer cases of pneumonia and scours (diarrhea) in calves, who are suckling from mothers consuming the nutrient-rich feed. Plus, his cattle actually continue to gain weight through the winter months, putting on 2.5 to 2.75 pounds per day—about the same as when they’re grazing the lush spring grass at the beginning of the season. “I’m getting an extra five months of weight gain I wouldn’t otherwise get,” says Noorda.

There’s a lot of science to back up many of hydroponic fodder’s benefits.

A case study on beef cattle by FodderTech found a 27 percent reduction in feeding costs per pound of weight gain using supplementary barley sprouts in its system, costing farmers $60 to $100 per ton for fresh, green feed. Other studies have shown that hydroponic fodder’s increased digestibility could increase milk production and milk fat content in dairy cows, enhance body weight of meat animals and improve the performance of a variety of livestock. Noorda and others have found that his horses have improved stamina and shinier coats since incorporating fodder into their diets.

The rancher, who has become a huge proponent of the technology, now also works in sales, design and development for FodderTech, the longest-running hydroponic fodder system purveyor in the United States.

Agriculture accounts for 80 percent of the Colorado River’s water usage every year, and growing alfalfa makes up more than a third of that. (Photo: Shutterstock)

These modular systems, which were designed in Australia following a long drought in the 1990s, take soaked grains, such as barley, wheat or rye, which are sown into trays that are automatically watered and fed for about a week before they’re ready to serve. It takes about an hour a day of labor to maintain and clean the systems to prevent mold growth— the greatest challenge for the technology. 

To keep fungus at bay, FodderTech systems must be kept inside a climate-controlled space and cleaned regularly. The water in these systems can be recirculated for maximum water efficiency; but to prevent mold growth in the sugars that are released from the sprouts, the company advises the water to be pumped out for cattle to drink or to irrigate crops. Even so, the water efficiency is far higher than traditional farming methods. “It uses somewhere between one to two percent of the water it takes to grow alfalfa hay,” says FodderTech majority owner Jon Baker. “That’s a huge water-saving potential.”

Mold aside, the other drawback to these commercial systems is the initial cost. A 200-pound-a-day system, which is enough to feed 10 horses or a just over a handful of beef cattle, starts at between $5,000 and $6,000, before even building out the climate-controlled space in which it will need to be housed. According to Baker, the cost savings of reducing increasingly expensive hay bills means these FodderTech systems tend to pay for themselves fairly quickly, somewhere between 12 and 18 months.

Some handy farmers opt to build their own systems, but there are also other brands on the market including FarmTek, CropKing and Brianna Noble’s Urban Cowgirl Ranch. 

Noble has designed her systems specifically for the horses she keeps on her 40-acre Bay Area ranch, so there are some differences in the setup. Everything is automated and kept in a humidity- and temperature-controlled room that’s maintained at 68 and 72 degrees. To inhibit mold growth, Noble prefers removable trays that can be pressure washed with a mix of bleach and soap, which she has found easier to manage at her mostly volunteer-run facility. Noble also chose to forego grow lights for the sugar-sensitive equines she’s feeding. “Cattle aren’t sensitive to sugar the way horses are,” she says. 

Cattle eating hydroponically grown fodder. (Photo via FodderTech)

Nobles’ systems, which use recirculated reverse osmosis treated water that eventually gets sent to cattle, cost $4,500 per horse and, according to her estimates, take two to three years to pay for themselves when fodder is used as a third of the animal’s diet. Noble, too, claims she’s saved on vet bills, especially with her old horses who are prone to colic. Subbing out a chunk of the meadow hay she feeds at $29 a bale has significantly decreased the costs to run her business. While hay prices have increased across the United States—cheaper alfalfa skyrocketed from an average of $211 per ton in January 2022 to a record-breaking $281 per ton in October 2022—Noble says that hay prices have nearly doubled in California. 

Chances are that instability in the hay market isn’t changing any time soon. As part of California, Arizona and Nevada’s agreement to stop using 3 million acre-feet of the Colorado River—approximately a trillion gallons—as part of the Colorado River water deal signed in May, the states have agreed to pay farmers $1.2 billion to stop growing hay. 

Adoption of hydroponic fodder has been very slowly gaining steam among ranchers, but it may begin to pick up as states start to see the benefits of increasing incentives to save water and other natural resources. Earlier this year, the Utah legislature clarified an existing law to allow these systems to qualify for the Agriculture Resource Development Loan Program.

Whether or not other states will follow suit or begin to offer grants remains to be seen. But for the farmers who already have moved over, like Noble and Noorda, it has helped them to significantly reduce their water footprint while helping to weather the financial volatility that’s inherent in agriculture. “My general philosophy is it’s not how much money you make in farming, it’s how much you save,” says Noorda. “Fodder is a tool.”

The post Could Hydroponic Fodder Solve the West’s Water Woes? appeared first on Modern Farmer.

After a year of intense negotiations, the states along the Colorado River have reached a deal to solve one of the most complex water crises in US history. The solution to this byzantine conundrum is deceptive in its simplicity: pay farmers—who collectively use 80 percent of Colorado River deliveries—to give up their water.

Representatives from Arizona, Nevada, and California announced on Monday that they had agreed to reduce their states’ collective water usage by more than 3 million acre-feet over the next three years. That equals around a trillion gallons, or roughly 13 percent of the states’ total water usage. Under the terms of the deal, cities and irrigation districts in these so-called “Lower Basin” states will receive around $1.2 billion from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, in exchange for using less water. Most of the reductions are likely to come from farming operations.

Many had anticipated a more painful resolution to the crisis. Rather than taking mandatory cuts and losing out on billions of dollars from crop sales, irrigators in the southwest will get millions of dollars to reduce their water usage for just three years—and will cut their usage by less than half of what federal officials demanded last year.

This rosy outcome is only possible because of a wet winter that blanketed the river basin with snow and stabilized water levels in its two main reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead. Thanks to the ample runoff, the states could lower their target enough that the federal government could afford to compensate them for almost all of it.

This deal also resolves a key dispute between Arizona and California, the two largest water users on the river, which have clashed over how to respond to the water shortage. California has argued that Arizona should take the most cuts as the most junior user on the river, while Arizona argued that the cuts should be spread more evenly between all the states. The disagreement caused negotiations to drag out for months, and it’s only thanks to the payout from the federal government that they reached an accord.

These compensated cuts are larger than anything the river states have ever implemented before, but they are temporary, a Band-Aid for a crisis that is not going away any time soon. When the three-year agreement expires in 2026, the states will have to come back to the table again and address the elephant in the room: If water use is growing, and the river’s size is shrinking, some people are going to have to make do with less—not temporarily, but for good.

“This is a step in the right direction but a temporary solution,” said Dave White, a professor at Arizona State University who studies sustainability policy. “This deal does not address the long-term water sustainability challenges in the region.”

The basic blueprint of the deal is not new. Federal and state agencies in the Colorado River basin have tried to pay farmers to use less water before, but they have had difficulty scaling up these compensation measures. That’s in part because many farmers view the measures as an affront to their industry, even when they’re compensated. When a group of states in the river’s Upper Basin relaunched a dormant conservation program earlier this year, offering farmers money to leave their fields unplanted, just 88 water users across four states ended up participating.

The other issue is that conserving water is expensive. In order to convince farmers to plant fewer acres, officials need to give them more money per acre-foot of water than they would have made from selling crops on a given field. In California’s Imperial Valley, the “salad bowl” region that grows almost all the nation’s winter vegetables, irrigation officials have paid growers to invest in technology that makes their farms more efficient. But farmers in the valley have balked at the idea of taking money to leave their fields unplanted, especially as vegetable prices have remained high.

“Water is a valuable asset, and I think people are nervous about parting with it, because it kind of suggests that you don’t really need it after all,” said George Frisvold, an extension specialist at the University of Arizona who studies agricultural policy. “I think there’s real concern that this is voluntary now, but it could come back and bite you.”

The Biden administration has resolved those issues for the moment by offering a very generous price for conservation under the new deal. The compensation arrangement in the new deal works out to about $521 an acre-foot on average—three times the price in the Upper Basin pilot program and almost twice the conservation rate in the Imperial Valley’s program.

Frisvold says these payments will be hard to maintain over the long term.

“We have a bunch of IRA money to pay for this right now,” he told Grist. “But is this going to be an ongoing thing? It’s kind of up in the air.”

Until recently, these experimental conservation programs were just that—experiments. But over the past two years, as a once-in-a-millennium drought has all but emptied out the river’s two main reservoirs, the river states have scrambled to cut their water usage and stop draining the river. It is all but impossible to do that without using less water for agriculture.

The Biden administration kicked off the scramble last summer by delivering an ultimatum to the river states. While testifying before Congress in June, a senior official from the US Bureau of Reclamation ordered the states to cut their water consumption by between 2 and 4 million acre-feet, or as much as a third of the river’s normal annual flow. The administration threatened to impose unilateral water cuts if the states couldn’t reach a deal on their own.

The states tangled for months over who should shoulder the burden of reducing water usage. The so-called Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico pointed the finger at Arizona and California, which together consume the majority of the river’s water. Meanwhile, representatives from California insisted that legal precedent shields the Golden State from taking cuts and that Arizona should bear the pain. (It isn’t clear whether the other four states on the river’s Upper Basin will make any corresponding reductions.)

In the end it was a very wet winter rather than a diplomatic breakthrough that helped ease tension between the states. Thanks to historic snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, it’s likely that water levels at Lake Powell and Lake Mead will stabilize this summer, even if just for a few months. This plentiful runoff has made the worst-case outcomes for the river much less likely and has given the states some breathing room to negotiate smaller cuts.

The new target was just small enough to make voluntary conservation feasible with the money from the Inflation Reduction Act: In the final hours of the debate over the bill last year, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona negotiated a $4 billion tranche of funding for “drought response.” That money will anchor the deal for the next three years, but it’s unclear whether payments will continue after that.

The big question now is what happens at the end of 2026, when the conservation deal will expire and when states and tribes will gather to negotiate the river’s long-term future. At that point, the river’s water users will once again debate the big questions that this deal has allowed them to punt on: How much water use can a shrinking river support? Who should use less water to account for the river’s decline? How can the government make whole the tribal nations that still don’t have their water?

Even amid the relief surrounding Monday’s deal, some water officials were already looking ahead.

“This proposal protects the system in the short term so we can dedicate our energy and resources to a longer-term solution,” said Brenda Burman, the manager of the Central Arizona Project water authority, which delivers water to Phoenix and Tucson, in a press release. “There’s a lot to do and it’s time to focus.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

The post At Last, States Reach a Colorado River Deal: Pay Farmers Not to Farm appeared first on Modern Farmer.

A $30-billion global industry, salt is a crucial food preservative, a keystone mineral in manufacturing and a common de-icing agent in chilly climes such as New York, Ohio and Illinois. Before industrial mining became widely available in the 20th century, “all salt was made from sea,” says Icelandic salt farmer Björn Steiner Jónsson. But today, most of the salt Americans use comes from underground deposits harvested in two energy-intensive ways: mining salt like a mineral and injecting water into salt deposits to create a brine that is then evaporated—a more expensive process, notes Jónsson. 

For some farmers, lower humidity and higher temperatures have increased evaporation, creating a boon in the salt pans of northwest France, with the 2022 harvest reportedly nearly doubling the previous year’s yield. For others, warmer weather is decreasing production. Anna Lee, who farms salt with her husband Dave along Virginia’s Eastern Shore, says their company already halts production in the hottest months of the year when toxic algae blooms and increased microbial activity make harvesting unsafe. 

Lurking in the background, too, is the knowledge that Barrier Islands Salt Co.’s shoreline solar evaporative pans, made from repurposed aquaculture infrastructure, could be rendered inoperable under rising seas. Today, “at high, high tides, our actual ground floor location can flood,” says Lee. Years from now, Barrier Islands Salt Co. might have to modify its operations significantly or relocate, “so that’s concerning,” she adds. 

Piles of salt for road de-icing sit on Toronto’s waterfront. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Even salt trapped in underground veins isn’t immune to rising temperatures. Rock salt makes up the bulk of the $2.5-billion US market, and Canada holds the title of greatest salt consumption per capita, mostly in the form of de-icer. Warmer global temperatures mean decreased demand for de-icing salt, forcing suppliers to adjust to new climate conditions. 

Concurrently, erratic precipitation patterns are forcing farmers in Ghana and Indonesia to erect seasonally resistant infrastructure that allows for production even under the most severe weather conditions. In India, the world’s third-largest salt producer, longer rainy seasons have reduced brine harvests, financially crippling the Agariya people who have farmed the salt marshes for five generations. The switch from propane to solar-powered pumps has the potential to help stabilize this fluctuating market and secure the livelihoods of these subsistence farmers—all while reducing the emissions associated with production. 

When atmospheric rivers swept through California in early 2023, salt farmer Carlo Overhulser spent days pumping thousands of gallons of fresh water out of his cliff-side cool saltwater pools. Not only did he lose time draining and refilling the pools with salt water, but the wetter weather also caused slower solar evaporation, substantially affecting Big Sur Salts’ annual harvest. “Normally, I can flip those ponds three times a year,” he says. “Now, I’m probably only going to be dealing with two.” 

A natural salt pond operated by Big Sur Salts. (Photo courtesy of Coline LeConte)

To stay in business, says Overhulser, farmers must be willing to adjust to fluctuating weather patterns and pivot accordingly. “In hotter, drier years, you have to produce more because you have to make up for the years that you’re not going to do that,” he says. He’s also bracing against the unpredictable nature of salt farming by expanding his offerings to include a host of salt-related activities: tours of the ponds, saltwater yoga classes and ocean-to-table dining experiences. 

In addition to solar-evaporated sea salt, Overhulser produces flake salt inside hoop greenhouses using propane-run evaporative pans. Burning gas, he laughs, “is not the Big Sur way to do it.” Still, given a future of weather irregularity, the cost efficiency of propane and a market hungry for these types of specialty salts, fossil fuels remain the best option for many flake salt farmers. Lee reluctantly agrees. “You can obviously make a fine-grain salt from start to finish with solar, but if you want flake salt, you have to be able to really, really control the environment.”

Barrier Island Salt Co. harvests its salt on the open waters of the Atlantic Ocean. (Photo credit: Corey Miller Photography)

Jónsson makes his salt in a controlled environment, but unlike other operations dependent on fossil fuels, Saltverk’s farm in the remote Westfjords uses “alternative ways of production where you’re able to do it in harmony with your ecosystem,” he says. The entire salt-making process is powered by emissions-free geothermal energy. Seawater from the North Arctic Ocean is pumped into open evaporative pans where it is pre-heated, boiled and dried, making Saltverk one of the world’s only fully sustainable flaky sea salt farms. The company is even investigating ways to produce salt with energy generated by geyser water previously used in industrial activity.

Whereas many salt farmers are strategizing ways to prevent or offset losses caused by the consequences of climate change, Saltverk’s carbon-free, weather-resilient production has prepared the company for expansion. Saltverk recently began exporting to the US, adding to the approximately 17,000 metric tons of salt imported annually. Jónsson plans to add more farms in Iceland and elsewhere in Europe.

The future of salt, according to Overhulser, will depend on the harvesters themselves. Salt farmers in the Anthropocene will have to transform their old ideas about both harvesting methods and revenue streams into new, more adaptable models as disruptions in climate patterns upend salt production and consumption around the world. Like Overhulser says, “It reminds you to not turn your back on the ocean.”

The post Climate Disruptions Force Salt Farmers to Reimagine Their Businesses appeared first on Modern Farmer.