Click the link to read the article on The Durango Herald website (Reuben M. Schafir). Here’s an excerpt:
March 27, 2024
As state negotiators haggle over who will reduce their use of the over-allocated Colorado River, the farmers who ultimately have to implement the inevitable cuts to water consumption are strategizing how to meet that challenge. Why aren’t farmers just planting crops that use less water? That’s what Greg Peterson, executive director of the Colorado Agriculture Water Alliance called “the big question” during a panel on innovative solutions for agriculture Wednesday at the Southwestern Water Conservation District’s 40th annual water seminar…
But large-scale crop-switching “ain’t pretty.” New crops demand new labor skills, expensive new equipment and different processing facilities. And the market for new, water-efficient crops might be small or nonexistent.
“(It’s a) misconception that farmers are market-makers,” said Perry Cabot, a research and extension leader with Colorado State University. “Farmers are market-takers.”
Greg Vlaming runs a soil health consulting business in Lewis, north of Cortez, and works with farmers to take advantage of some of the state’s incentives. Farmers who install soil moisture sensors see the water-saving benefits of improved soil health, he said. The programs help purchase new equipment that minimize the number of passes a farmer must make over a field, or introduce diverse crops with different rooting characteristics…
“You’re wasting everybody’s time if you’re saying, ‘Hey all of you, let’s go grow some Kernza,’” he said.
Instead, the entities pushing for the adoption of more drought-resistant crops need to teach farmers how to farm them. Peterson points to Colorado Mills in Lamar as an example. The company struggled for five years to teach producers to grow sunflowers for sunflower oil before the operation really succeeded.