The future of water and agriculture

A conversation with water expert Dave White and agriculture expert Kathleen Merrigan.

Kathleen Merrigan is an expert in food and agriculture, currently serving as the executive director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University. She is known for authoring the law establishing national standards for organic food and the federal definition of sustainable agriculture.

Dave White serves as associate vice president of research advancement and director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at ASU. He is internationally recognized for his contributions to science in support of sustainability, particularly as it relates to water resources.

Issues of water and agriculture are closely intertwined in the conversation about climate change and the health of our planet. The Colorado River water shortage, constraints on fossil fuels, land management issues and more are among the pressure points for our society. But as the demand for resources greatly outpaces our ability to react accordingly, it raises questions about how we can propel the necessary discussions and implement policy to not only keep up, but also get ahead of the scarcity to come. In this conversation, water expert Dave White and food systems expert Kathleen Merrigan, point to the most critical topics of concern and potential solutions for the next 5–10 years.

Merrigan: Well, I’m relatively new to Arizona. I’m from the East Coast, and water law is different in my part of the world. On the East Coast, we think about water as a riparian system. So whoever’s upstream is sort of the boss of the water. The western part of the world is a prior-appropriation situation. So first in time, first in right. It’s very different and has its pros and cons. But what stands out to me particularly is that in Arizona, nearly 59% of our farmers and ranchers are Native American. When you think about first in time, first in right, there were definitely people here before the large-scale industrial farmers that are dependent upon what’s becoming a very scarce resource in our state.

We know that agriculture is a big claimant for water globally. It varies depending upon where in the world you are, but let’s just say, on average, 70%. So when we think about water in the era of climate change, agriculture is central to the discussion. And I think what we’ll see at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) that’s coming up in Glasgow is that perhaps for the first time, agriculture will be a center-stage issue in climate change talks. Not just a recognition of water issues, but carbon, soil health and so on.

White: Yeah, I think the story of water in agriculture in Arizona really exemplifies many of the trends and challenges that we see in global agriculture. First and foremost is the issue of the water demand for agriculture, which communities and individuals both benefit from. And we know that the primary signals of climate change are visible through water and water resources. Climate change impacts global temperature and precipitation patterns, both of which have an impact on water resources, which then directly affect agricultural productivity.

And then as you noted, in Arizona about 70% of water demands in the state can be attributed to the agricultural industry. And our agriculture sector includes a wide variety of producers, ranging from Native American communities, to smaller family farms, to larger multinational corporations. So Arizona, in my mind, offers both a blueprint for many of the challenges that we face in understanding the synergies and the relationships between water and agriculture, and opportunities for finding successful solutions to become more resilient in the face of all of these challenges. We have all of the ingredients necessary here to create a new kind of future for agriculture.

I’ll be participating in COP26 as part of the ASU delegation, so I am also very curious to see how agriculture and water are brought in as part of that global dialogue. And I want to ask you, Kathleen, from your vantage point in dealing with agriculturalists, how do they evaluate the risks, uncertainties and challenges when thinking about the security and availability of water? How do these different groups make decisions about what, where and how to grow crops in the context of uncertainty about the availability of future water, whether it be from the Colorado River or from groundwater?

Merrigan: That’s a great question, Dave, and there are a lot of answers to it. I think when you say the word “risk,” it brings up a few thoughts. One being, if you’re down in Yuma County, you’ve always had an irrigated crop. But where I’m from in New England, people didn’t irrigate at all. Now, because of the erratic nature of our climate, farmers are putting in irrigation systems because they need to control that risk. This also means it makes their operations more expensive and they may be relying on water that they might not have otherwise used.

And then there’s the other question you posed, what kind of crops are grown? Well, it’s a complex calculation. And one of the things that I know is that when you have invested in farm machinery and you have markets developed, it’s really hard to pivot to do something else. I think a lot of people say when looking at Arizona crops, well, you have a lot of fruits and vegetables, and those are thirsty crops. And there’s this whole issue of embedded water. Since Arizona is such a powerhouse in lettuce production, we ship a lot of water out of the state in the form of lettuce. Some people look and say it’s crazy that cotton is grown in Arizona. But on the other hand, cotton can deal with salinized water in a way that some other crops can’t. Some people say we shouldn’t grow almond trees or alfalfa in a really thirsty, water-starved area. But as we look at sustainability in its entirety, we have to factor in the costs and repercussions of then having to haul in alfalfa from other places to feed the cattle and the dairy cows that we have here. It’s a complicated network of systems that are deeply intertwined with one another.

But while it is true that a large portion of the water goes to agriculture, the industry has made a lot of changes over the last few years that have decreased their overall intake of water, while urban water intake has actually increased. A lot of the time this conversation is so focused on what farmers are doing to negatively impact the environment, but we have people in suburban areas watering their massive lawns in the middle of the day and using Roundup to deal with weeds in their yard. There is tension there that is only going to increase as the scarcity becomes more obvious over time.

White: One of the things that I often think about is how we can foster productive state- and community-level dialogues around these issues. Because many of the decisions are simply aggregates of multiple individual decisions, right? Farmers are business owners reacting to a variety of different factors, including global market demands, the changes in the prices of commodities and their investments into production. They’re attempting to balance these factors, so the compilation of all of those individual decisions sort of creates the landscape that we see.

I think that’s true when you look at the urban fabric as well — the choices of individual landowners, homeowners, developers, et cetera. I think we need to focus more of our energy on conversations that look at the public benefits and goods that water and agriculture provide and how we make collective decisions about those resources. Now this is where it gets challenging, because it really is the intersection of public goods and private goods — we’re talking about private landowners, privatized water rights. We don’t have many great forums for discussions that look at balancing costs and benefits, and consider what’s best for a state, society or community.

Of course the primary arena for these conversations is within the legislature and the state governments. But as we have seen, that particular decision-making system has been largely paralyzed and ineffective. For example, we look at the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and see the inability to collectively address a critical social challenge in a way that doesn’t exacerbate the inequity in our society. It poses the question: What would a positive and constructive set of dialogues look like, and who leads that? And what role does ASU play in facilitating that kind of dialogue?

Merrigan: Well, I don’t see it happening in Washington, D.C. There has been pushback by our federal government, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in particular, on the European Farm to Fork Strategy. They had some really ambitious environmental goals, including increasing organic land in the EU from 8.5% to 25% by 2030. For comparison, in the U.S., it’s 0% to 2%. It’s at two-tenths of 1% currently. It’s ingrained in the American psyche that everything has to be market-driven. It has to be voluntary. It has to be incentive-based. We hate regulations. That’s the tough stuff.

So to your point, Dave, ASU has a prime opportunity to take on a leadership role here. I mean, certainly you yourself have played one, and we have a lot of great faculty contributing to innovations in water governance. That’s one of the benefits of being in academia, right? We have the ability to be movers and shakers in the way politicians may try but often fail.

White: Agreed. One of the things that you mentioned is that our current system is very market-driven. In a market economy, we tend to place a premium on individualism within our values and cultural ethos. There’s less appetite for regulatory approaches, but there tends to be wider consensus for incentive-based approaches. It makes me wonder, what might be some of the incentives for the agricultural community? I know people don’t like the word “subsidies,” but price supports, incentives or other investments to reduce water demand and increase efficiency. Is that something that should be on the table?

Merrigan: We like the term “cost share.” In the past, the USDA has provided a cost share for different environmental practices, such as putting a buffer strip near a stream to prevent erosion. You might have an incentive to retire some environmentally sensitive land or to protect a wetland. We have structures for that where a farmer might get up to 50% cost share. And if that person is socially disadvantaged or a new farmer, they could see an incentive of up to 90%. And I know that the Biden-Harris administration is incorporating more of these incentivebased programs into their climate plan.

That’s great because farmers need that help, but I don’t think it gets us out of the pickle of what we’re growing and where. I think on a larger scale, the challenge is with shifting crop hardiness zones based on the realities of the climate. It’s unproductive for each individual producer to make those decisions, it needs to be done in some sort of collective way which isn’t happening currently.

White: Some of our Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation centers, institutes and faculty are tackling that issue. For example, Rimjhim Aggarwal has been working on understanding irrigation districts as a collective to help to bring farmers and producers together to serve an important role in governance. In addition to strengthening the already existing farm bureaus and advocacy organizations, there are a lot of potential new models for collectives that could be explored to think about distributing costs and improving the way that farmers can communicate their values and interests to politicians and stakeholders.

Merrigan: We also have the conservation districts and irrigation districts. Almost every county in this country has a conservation district, so there’s sort of a collective there.

At the Swette Center, we work closely with the Arizona Association of Conservation Districts, so there are these existing partnerships that bring people together. There are no easy decisions ahead, but those difficult conversations need to happen.

White: One of those challenges, and an area that is ripe for innovation, is creating policy systems that are able to adapt and respond to match the pace of change in environmental systems that we’re seeing.

Another thing I want to touch on that you brought up earlier is the role of Native American communities. Tribal communities are both physical water rights holders and users. Many of them are becoming increasingly more politically active and politically powerful, in part because of successful assertions of their rights to water and land. I’m curious if there are any lessons that we may be able to adapt from Indigenous systems of agriculture or water management that can inform large-scale approaches to conservation?

Merrigan: Of course, and I think you taught me this Dave, we wouldn’t be in our homes in the Phoenix area had it not been for Native American farmers a long, long time ago, who developed the canal system for our area. There’s a lot of Indigenous wisdom to tap. I’ve visited tribal farming operations in Arizona where they’re really focused on techniques that build around natural processes, such as dry land farming. They place an emphasis on respecting what Mother Nature has to offer.

Another issue that crops up is that big businesses are making these carbon commitments — we’re going to be carbon neutral by 2050, reduce our carbon by 50% by 2030, etcetera. But what bothers me as a food systems person, and I imagine bothers you too as a sustainability person, is this myopic obsession with one value. I’m not hearing, “we’re going to make these commitments about water,” “we’re going to make these commitments about equity,” and so on. So Dave, I’m hoping in your travels and at COP26, you can kickstart the conversation around carbon commitments in the broader context of what we really need, which is our business leaders to be fostering a systems-based approach.

White: I agree. I think the emphasis on reducing and reversing greenhouse gas emissions is because of their obvious and numerous impacts on climate change that are so front and center to the discussion. It’s harder to communicate, especially at a corporate visionary level, something that says we need to focus on interconnected systems, because it’s a much more abstract concept.

I think more companies will start to take a comprehensive approach to sustainability and resilience that factors in all the different systems, as well as the equitable treatment of people.