New Mexico's agriculture sector uses more than 80% of its fresh water. An activist group is calling for limitations on industry growth.

A Washington, D.C.,-based activist group is calling for New Mexico to limit the expansion of the pecan, dairy and alfalfa farming industries to conserve water for residential use.

The report from Food & Water Watch also advocates for more funding to collect data on water usage in the state, so that New Mexico can plan for a future where water continues to be scarce.

“We’ve already seen damages to aquifers and wells running dry and communities losing access to water,” said Amanda Starbuck, Food & Water Watch research director. “There’s a lot more that the state can do both to kind of transition the cultural sector into more sustainable farming as well as gathering data on water supply so they can be ready for the future.”

Over 80% of the state’s fresh water goes toward agriculture, the report states, citing a Bureau of Land Management document that describes the state’s water use by category. The report argues that the agriculture industry receives an outsized water allocation for the economic benefit it produces.

The report recommends updating the New Mexico Drought Plan to include response actions that are specific to “the threat that mega-dairies and other industrial agriculture, particularly alfalfa and pecan farms, pose to water supply and quality.”

It also recommends that the Office of the State Engineer prioritize residential and drinking water uses over industrial agricultural uses and deny water permit applications for new or expanding alfalfa, pecan and mega-dairy farms.

It advocates for increasing funding for the 2019 Water Data Act. Starbuck said that without specific data, it’s difficult to understand how many community water wells may be at risk and to plan for the future.

Some farmers are critical of the recommendations.

Alfalfa farmer Travis Harris said that water rights attached to farmland are already being sold for non-farm uses in his area, reducing the number of farms, while pecan farmer Greg Daviet believes the market should determine how farming industries grow or shrink, instead of government policy.

Local associations for the dairy and hay industries did not respond to requests for comments.

Dairies and alfalfa

The report recommends that the New Mexico Environment Department deny new groundwater discharge permits and permit renewals for mega-dairies that discharge polluted wastewater over aquifers that are already contaminated beyond state or federal safety standards; issue stronger discharge permits that prevent dairies from contaminating groundwater; and revoke permits when dairies repeatedly violate groundwater quality standards.

The report is critical of mega-dairy operations, defined as 500 cows and more.

Manure from dairies can be a valuable fertilizer, but if too much is spread in an area that is too small, manure can run-off in water and cause pollution.

“When you overapply manure, then it ends up running off,” Starbuck said. “It can reach the soil areas, it can reach the aquifer, and that poses a real public health threat. There are nutrients such as nitrate that ends up in the drinking water, and that causes a whole host of human health problems.”

The report estimates that alfalfa production required 85 billion gallons of water in 2021. Alfalfa is the dominant crop in the state, and typically flood irrigation is used to water the crop.

“Alfalfa is one of the biggest crops in New Mexico, very profitable and that goes to feed livestock, so it’s not going to feed people directly,” Starbuck said. “The problem is a lot of it gets exported out of the state.”

Harris, a Socorro County alfalfa farmer, said he sees limiting the growth of alfalfa farming as a non-issue, because many parcels of farmland along the Middle Rio Grande Valley where he farms, or the water rights attached to those parcels of land, are already being sold to companies and municipalities for development. Harris is also the second vice president of the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau.

“It’s so cost prohibitive to bring water rights back to the farm because the municipalities and large industries that use these waters are willing and able to pay a high rate per acre foot of water that we as farmers, our farms don’t generate enough funds to buy those water rights,” Harris said.

In some ways, Harris’ farm is not like the large farms critiqued in the report for exporting a crop grown in New Mexico to feed livestock outside of the state or country. His farm is 250 acres, and the alfalfa he grows stays within the state of New Mexico. A lot of it goes to feed horses, some to cattle and some to sheep, he said.

“I want to see things productive,” Harris said. “I want to see things growing. It’s just like the sticker that I see ... ‘Keep the valley green.’ You can’t keep the valley green without irrigation water. That’s the heritage of New Mexico farms and ranches.”

Over half of the farms in the state are less than 50 acres in size, Harris said, and a third of the farms are one to nine acres in size. But the report points out that the number of New Mexico alfalfa farms over 1,000 acres in size doubled between 1997 and 2017, from nine to 19.

Pecan production

“One of the things that we found is the enormous amount of water being used by just a couple of industries,” Starbuck said. “So, looking at pecans for example, that’s a very water-thirsty crop. It’s really not suited for a desert climate and takes an enormous amount of water to irrigate. And we’re seeing expansion of the acreage. It’s not just, farms are being maintained, but there’s actually new planting, growing.”

New Mexico produces a third of the country’s pecans, the report states, and global demand for the nut has grown.

Greg Daviet’s great-grandfather homesteaded a farm in Doña Ana County in 1905 and started growing alfalfa and cotton. In the ‘60s the Dixie Ranch planted pecan trees, and when Daviet became farm manager in the ‘90s, pecans became their primary crop. The hot dry climate in the Mesilla Valley is a good match for pecan trees and there are many reasons for increasing pecan demand, Daviet said, including their health benefits and the increasing popularity of the Mediterranean diet.

“Pecans as it turns out are difficult to grow, so the supply for them has at times difficulty meeting demands, and it requires a fairly specific climate, which we have in the Rio Grande Valley,” Daviet said. “We can use our mix of resources and, specifically our water, to maximize the benefit to our region and maximize the benefit to New Mexico by growing those things that produce the most per unit of water.”

The report criticizes flood irrigation, the method typically used to water pecan trees and alfalfa in New Mexico as wasteful in an area where water is so scarce, but Daviet sees flood irrigation as a good method for closed canopy crops, especially when, as on his farm, the groundwater source is nearby and can be recharged by water that isn’t taken up by the trees.

“The mix of crops we grow change, but the amount of water we use has not and I expect will not,” Daviet said. “Now, there will be other water uses that have demands as well. My expectation is that over time, we will see a shift in water from agriculture to other demands. I believe that the best way to allocate those resources is through free market efforts, because they allocate the resources to the demands of the citizens, as opposed to policymakers where they often move inefficiently.”

Daviet’s farm has committed significant technology to efficient water use, including electronic soil water monitoring probes, drone flyovers to monitor tree health and laser leveling the ground to avoid water run-off.

Starbuck believes pecans are not a good crop choice for the state’s future water resources.

“Even if pecans might be profitable right now, they’re not going to be when there’s not enough water to sustain them,” she said. “We’re really on borrowed time and borrowed water. It’s not a long term, sustainable way of growing food here.”