Click the link to read the article on The Land Desk website (Jonathan P. Thompson):
February 23, 2024
Happy Agricultural Census time! Last week, the USDA released the 2022 Census of Agriculture — a once-every-five-year event — and, as always, it’s chock full of data on the state of the nation’s farming. I like to peruse the numbers and compare them to those from previous censuses to try to get a sense of how the West’s agricultural landscape is changing, and to get answers to questions like: How are farmers responding to aridification? Is residential development really gobbling up all the farmland?
The report only offers numbers, without a lot of context. So drawing firm conclusions isn’t possible. But the data are interesting, and sometimes enlightening, nonetheless. Let’s start with an overview:
I gotta say, I had to double- then triple-check the numbers on this one. New Mexico has way more farmed acres than California — Say what!? But yeah, they do. Keep in mind that this is not cropland, but farm land, which can include sprawling ranches and just land that someone is calling agricultural for tax reasons. So take it with a grain of salt. Farm acreage is decreasing in all the states, which is hardly surprising.
But before you freak out about the death of American farming, consider this: The total number of farms has increased everywhere since 1997 except in California.
Other data suggest that small farms are making a big comeback, especially in Colorado (though there was a slight dip in farm numbers between 2017 and 2022).
Now let’s look at alfalfa, since hay is not only fodder for horses but also for fighting over these days, especially in the Colorado River Basin. We hear a lot about how much water alfalfa uses and about how the federal government is paying farmers in the Lower Colorado River Basin not to grow the stuff. And so, one might expect to see a big drop in alfalfa production in those places.
That didn’t happen. In fact, several places produced significantly more alfalfa in 2022 than in 2017. It seems weird, but there are a few things to consider. First, even though the Colorado River Crisis was well under way by 2022, most of the programs paying farmers to stop farming hadn’t yet kicked in in 2022. Also, farmers aren’t really being paid to stop farming or plow up their crops. They’re being paid to use less water. Or, another way to look at it: The feds are leasing the farmers’ water from them in order to keep it in the reservoirs. Which means farmers can keep growing if they want; they just can’t irrigate as much. And alfalfa, it turns out, is fairly drought tolerant, unlike, say, almonds or lettuce or broccoli. So it makes some sense to see alfalfa production hold steady or even climb during a drought.
Once again, Imperial County, California, is the West’s biggest alfalfa producer. And the Imperial Irrigation District remains the largest single water user on the Colorado River. Maricopa County, Arizona, is in second place for alfalfa tonnage, which just goes to show that Phoenix sprawl may be gobbling up farm- and desert-land, but the hayfields endure (and Maricopa County is ginormous). And alfalfa production increased substantially between 2017 and 2022 in those places, though it fell in most of the other counties surveyed.
And here’s something else that doesn’t show up on the graph: Eddy County, New Mexico’s alfalfa acreage and production fell by more than 50% between 1997 and 2022. I don’t know the reason, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had to do with the Permian Basin oil and gas drilling boom, some of which surely is taking place on farmland. Just a guess. It also might have to do with ongoing drought, I suppose.
Of course, most of that alfalfa is going to feed livestock, either in the U.S. or elsewhere. And a surprisingly (for me, at least) large percentage of that livestock in the West are dairy cattle. So eschewing beef, alone, in order to save water ain’t gonna be enough. You gotta ditch the whole enchilada, cheese and all! (Ain’t happening).
California, especially Tulare and Merced Counties, is dairy country. The state is home to nearly 1.7 million dairy cattle. Idaho runs a distant second for the West, with a mere 664,000. Nearly a half-million dairy cattle call New Mexico home, while Maricopa County has about 103,000 dairy cows. Montana is the West’s beef-cow leader, with California, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico rounding out the top five, in that order. Weld County, Colorado, (home of the Greeley stench) is the beefiest county in the West, with Fresno, Kern, and Tulare in California up there, too.
$36 million; $14 million; $45 million: Amount spent in 2018 on energy for on-farm irrigation-pumping in the Rio Grande; Upper Colorado; and Lower Colorado watersheds, respectively.
626,000; 1.4 million Acres of almond orchards in California in 2002 and 2022, respectively. (Aridification ain’t keeping these water hogs at bay, apparently!)
546; 1176 Number of farms in Colorado harvesting vegetables for sale in 1997; 2022, respectively. (A small-farm/farmers market revolution?)
$671,000; $2 million Average value of a Colorado farm’s land and buildings in 1997; 2022, respectively (That amounts to $618/acre then vs. $2,401/acre now, meaning it’s a lot more expensive to get into farming these days if you don’t already have any land).
37; 105 Number of farms in Nevada harvesting vegetables for sale in 1997; 2022, respectively.
85,446; 58,831 Acres of potatoes harvested in Colorado in 1997; 2022, respectively. (That’s a big drop. I plan to look into this one a bit more in a future dispatch).
2,038,456; 606,105 cwt (approx. 100 lbs) of dry beans harvested in Colorado in 1997; 2022, respectively (Ack! What’s going on?!)
6.8 million; 9.4 million Bushels of corn produced in Arizona in 1997; 2022, respectively. (Another counterintuitive one. Warrants further investigation!)
860,000; 313,000 Bales of cotton harvested in Arizona in 1997; 2022, respectively.
73,603; 58,492 Acres of land in orchards in Arizona in 1997; 2022, respectively. (Those citrus groves have been displaced by subdivisions, I’m afraid).
2.7 million; 4.1 million Acres of land in orchards in California in 1997; 2022, respectively. (Wow! A lot of these acres are planted with almonds, surely.)
2.6 million; 1.8 million Number of hogs and pigs sold by Utah operations in 2012; 2022, respectively. (Yes, Utah is hog-farm central. Smithfield Foods contracts with a bunch of factory hog farming operations in Beaver County. They are cutting back operations, however.)
And the most heartbreaking data point? Dove Creek isn’t even close to being the Pinto Bean Capital of the World anymore. Hell, it’s not even the bean capital of Colorado. Dolores and Montezuma Counties together produced about 25,000 cwt of dried beans in 2022. Yuma County, Colorado, harvested 270,000 cwt. Okay, granted, that’s for alldry beans, not just pintos (the census doesn’t break them out by variety). Still … How the mighty have fallen!
Are you curious about specific ag stats for your county or state? Drop the Land Desk a line or put your question in the comments below and we’ll try to track down an answer.
Alfalfaphobia?
SEPTEMBER 23, 2022
In recent weeks I’ve written a piece or Two about Alfalfa. My thesis: As the biggest single water user in the Colorado River Basin, the crop must plan an equally large role in contributing two the cuts necessary to keep the river from drying out. I know, it doesn’t seem like a hot-button topic. I mean, it’s just hay, after all.
A follow up
When I wrote earlier this week that federal regulators had nixed all of the still active proposals for pumped hydropower energy storage facilities on the Navajo Nation, I overlooked one: the proposed Big Canyon Pumped Storage Project on a tributary of the Little Colorado River. Seems that when the Phoenix-based company surrendered permits for two other Little Colorado projects back in 2021, it kept a third proposal alive. Since I hadn’t heard anything about it, I had assumed it had simply faded away. Not quite.
This week FERC issued a notice seeking public input on the Pumped Hydro Storage’s application for a preliminary permit for the project, which would be located on Navajo Nation lands.
So why didn’t FERC reject this project like it did the other proposals? Because back in 2020, when the application was initially submitted, the tribe intervened in the case, but didn’t express outright opposition. Now they have the chance to do so, which presumably would result in the permit’s rejection per FERC’s new policy. The Hopi Tribe has also weighed in on FERC policy and these projects.
Parting Shot
