Water for Western Agriculture

Kenneth D. Frederick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317334309
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This title, originally published in 1982, examines the importance of western irrigation to U.S. agriculture and the impacts of the changing water supply situation on the development of western irrigation. Past trends, water supply conditions, water institutions, economic forces, technological alternatives, and environmental factors are examined for their impacts on the course of western irrigation. Water for Western Agriculture will be of particular interest for students studying environmental issues.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Irrigation has been an important factor in the impressive performance of U.S. agriculture in recent decades. Irrigated acreage tripled from 1940 to 1977 and doubled from 1950 to 1977, periods of great increases in agricultural productivity but virtually no change in total cropland use. Average yields are greater on irrigated than on nonirrigated farms, and within the arid and semiarid areas technolo gical change has been higher on irrigated farms.¹ Thus, while irrigated land currently accounts for only one-seventh of the nation’s cropland, it accounts for more than one-fourth of the value of the² cropland, it ace nation’s crops.

Western Irrigation in Transition

Since rainfall in much of the West is either insufficient or too unreliable to support a highly productive agriculture, irrigation is more important to agriculture in the West than it is in the rest of the country. About 83 percent of the nationfs irrigated acreage is in the seventeen western states, where irrigation accounts for nearly one-fourth of the cropland and more than one-half of the crop value. The future course of western irrigation is the subject of some doubt, however, since it is in a state of transition stemming largely from changes in the availability and cost of water. These changes in water supply conditions are altering the pace and nature of irrigation investments, and the resulting changes in the growth of western irrigation could have important implications for the overall performance of U.S. agriculture. Accordingly, this study focuses on these seventeen states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

The availability of relatively inexpensive water spurred the growth of irrigated agriculture in the West. Water was initially treated as a free good; the original users not only were allowed to use the water without charge but were granted the rights to use similar quantities in perpetuity. The only costs to the users were those associated with capturing and transporting water from its source to point of use. Until recently low energy prices helped keep down the costs of transporting water, and farmers accounting for about one-fifth of the West’s irrigated acreage continue to benefit from large federal subsidies on irrigation projects.

Even though the last several decades have provided evidence of water’s increasing scarcity and value in much of the West, water continues to be treated essentially as a free good. In the absence of market allocations, current demands on western surface waters commonly exceed available supplies. Indeed, in at least one important case, the rights that have been granted for use of western waters exceed the long-term expected supply. Furthermore, extensive groundwater mining (that is, withdrawing groundwater faster than it is replenished) has placed current users in conflict with potential future users. In many areas these “future” impacts already are being felt by farmers.

Western water use and development have become issues of growing national concern and debate--often pitting one region of the country against another, or western farmers, conservationists, and developers against each other. Development of western energy resources, expansion of western urban and rural areas, preservation of the West’s natural resources, continuation of federal subsidies for western water development, Indian water rights, as well as the role of western irrigation in U.S. agriculture, are at issue in the resolution of these conflicts.

Irrigation is the activity most acutely affected by the rising cost of water in the West. Agriculture, which accounts for about 88 percent of western water consumption, is not only the largest but also the marginal user of western water. That is, irrigators would be least able to compete for scarce supplies if water were allocated through a market mechanism. The prospect of sharply higher water costs not only threatens expansion but also endangers the viability of many current irrigators.

On the other hand, the forces affecting the role of irrigated agriculture in the West are not all negative. Developments which will tend to counter the impact of rising water costs include more efficient irrigation systems, new crop varieties requiring less water, and improved knowledge of the relation between plant growth and water stress. Such developments will enable less water to be applied with little or no decline in yields. Furthermore, most water is not allocated through markets, and farmers who have been irrigating with surface water enjoy a very favorable position in the future allocation of western surface waters. Irrigators possess most of the senior rights to these waters, many are insulated from the pressures pushing up water costs, and in most states a myriad of laws and institutions make it difficult to transfer these rights to nonagricultural uses.

The transition under way in the factors affecting western irrigation clearly will have major impacts on western development. Also it seems likely that the performance of western irrigated agriculture will have significant implications for the nation’s ability to meet future demands for food and fiber. But on this latter point there is considerable uncertainty stemming from widely differing views as to both irrigation’s importance to the nation’s agriculture and the impacts of the transition on western irrigation. This study is an attempt to narrow these sources of uncertainty.

Less may be known about the impact of irrigation on the overall performance of U.S. agriculture than is known about the impact of any of the other principal inputs. Studies and models taking an overall view of U.S. agriculture either ignore differences between irrigated and dryland production or make limited analyses of past, current, and future impacts of irrigation.³ On the other hand, there is no lack of detailed micro-oriented studies examining irrigation and the forces affecting its growth. But taken alone these studies also are of limited use for analyzing the overall role of irrigation on U.S. agriculture since they focus on farms or localities.

There is a wide divergence of views on irrigation’s importance to U.S. agriculture and the implications of a major reduction in irrigated acreage. On one extreme, research done at Iowa State University in the 1970s downplays the importance of irrigation. For example, projections to the year 2000 suggest that if “allowed to be distributed in terms of competitive conditions and interregional comparative advantage (no supply control), the nation’s domestic and export food demands could be met more economically by using less water in agriculture and by a wide redistribution of crop acreage."⁴

Not surprisingly, this view is not shared by many, especially, those whose livelihood depends on the output of irrigated lands. For instance, great national and global benefits in the form of abundant and cheap food and fiber have been attributed to the spread of irrigation within the High Plains; dire warnings have been raised as to the consequences of allowing that area to revert to dryland farming.⁵ Self-interest undoubtedly underlies some of the concern for the national implications of having irrigated acreage decline in areas where groundwater stocks are being depleted. But the disparity of views persists in part because of the inconsistency among the data describing the extent of irrigation, the lack of reliable data describing the impact of irrigation on yields and production, and the absence of analysis differentiating between the roles of irrigated and dryland farming.

Plan of the Book

This study, as. indicated above, examines the importance of western irrigation to U.S. agriculture and the impacts of the changing water supply situation on the development of western irrigation. Past trends, water supply conditions, water institutions, economic forces, technological alternatives, and environmental factors are examined for their impacts on the course of western irrigation over the next two to three decades. The influence of these institutions and economic forces on resource use and the environment also are considered along with the broad policy implications of the analysis.

The analysis is primarily a synthesis of work done elsewhere, supplemented and updated by interviews with agricultural and water experts in the West. But original research was undertaken when the literature was inadequate for the purposes of this study. This approach in part was necessitated by the broad scope of the research and the limited resources available to it. But, in the author’s judgment, a synthesis also offers the most promising way of assessing the role of irrigation and its future course. Although no effort has been made to generate original data, major inconsistencies among the various sources of irrigation data have been identified and analyzed. This examination involved both a comparison of alternative sources as well as an investigation of the methods used to collect the data.

By focusing on the overall role of western irrigation, variations among and within different regions often are obscured. Countless factors--such as soil type; the cost, availability, and quality of water; the availability and cost of energy; climate; and management capability--are crucial determinants of what crops are grown, what irrigation techniques are used, and what physical and monetary returns are achieved. While the impacts of many of these factors on irrigation are examined, there is nothing in the analysis to suggest how an individual farmer will fare or how the combination of these factors determine the potential of irrigation in a region. On the other hand, an effort is made to isolate and analyze the principal factors affecting the overall level and nature of western irrigation. And for some purposes the analysis is regionalized to farm production regions or more homogeneous irrigation areas. But no systematic attempt has been made to describe either the conditions affecting irrigation in any one region or the full range of conditions affecting western irrigation.

Each of the next five chapters analyzes in some detail one of the principal factors affecting the growth and performance of irrigated agriculture in the West. Chapter 2 examines the current role of western irrigation--that is, the acreage irrigated and its location, the crops grown, the yields, and the importance of this acreage to the national production of major crops--and how it has been achieved. Past trends and the changes in those trends, as well as the impacts of irrigation on past changes in the production and yields of corn, sorghum, wheat, and cotton are analyzed. As noted above, determining current and past levels of irrigation proved to be much more difficult than had been anticipated, and it was necessary to analyze the data sources. A detailed discussion of the data can be found in appendix 2-A at the end of chapter 2.

Chapter 3 considers the supply and demand for western water. The sources of water for the past expansion of irrigation, the adequacy of ground and surface water supplies for maintaining and expanding irrigation, the growing competition for western water, and the possibilities for augmenting supplies all are considered.

Chapter 4 looks at the institutions including the laws and water organizations affecting the allocation of western water. Institutional constraints on transferring water among alternative uses and impacts on farmerfs incentives to use water efficiently are examined.

Chapter 5 examines the impacts of rising energy costs and water scarcity on the profitability of irrigation under a variety of circumstances. The possibilities for reducing water costs through alternative irrigation technologies and water management practices and the impacts of higher water and energy costs and alternative crop prices on the relative profitability of irrigated and dryland farming in the semiarid West are assessed.

Chapter 6 focuses on the environmental impacts of irrigated agriculture. First, the nature and extent of the environmental impacts are described and then alternative ways to manage these problems, federal efforts to control irrigation runoff, and several other approaches to managing the environmental impacts of irrigation are examined.

Chapter 7 summarizes the principal conclusions of the previous five chapters. This summary is followed by an evaluation of projections of irrigated acreage which have been made as parts of several major water or agricultural studies. Then drawing on the prior analysis, alternative projections of irrigated acreage and anticipated changes in the nature of irrigated agriculture are presented. Finally, policy implications of the overall study are considered.

_____________________

Notes

1. Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Measuring the Effect of Irrigation on the Rate of Technological Changet , Agricul-tural Economic Report no. 125, November 1967, p. iv.

2. Data differentiating between the value of production on irrigated and nonirrigated lands are not available for 1977. Dallas Lea, using a combination of data from the 1969 Census of Agriculture and 1971–73 estimates of the Statistical Reporting Service, estimated that 27 percent of the value of U.S. crop production was produced on irrigated lands. (See Lea, “Irrigated Agriculture: Past Trends, Present State, and Problems of Future Expansion,” second review draft, August 1977, table 2.) Lea is with the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

3. For example, consider the shortcomings of the two principal models of U.S. agriculture from the perspective of analyzing the role of irrigation. Irrigation was not a principal concern in developing the National-Interregional Agricultural Projections (NIRAP) system although the model does provide estimates of irrigated crop production. Its insights into the role of irrigation are limited by reliance on data grossly understating recent irrigation and by the absence of any analysis of the factors likely to affect future levels. The other major model, developed at Iowa State University, is designed to analyze least-cost methods of producing alternative levels of output. Both current and future levels of irrigation projected by the model are well below recent actual levels. There is some controversy as to whether these results indicate that irrigation has been inappropriately handled in the model or that many irrigators are high-cost producers who would be eliminated under any socially efficient allocation of farm resources. But in either case, the model does not provide a good means for analyzing current or future irrigation levels. (Chapter 7 examines in more detail the limitations of these models for analyzing irrigation. The discussion of these models indicates their shortcomings as tools for fulfilling the objectives, of this study; the comments should not be interpreted as general criticisms of the modeling efforts which have different objectives than those of this study.)

4. Earl O. Heady, “U.S. Supply Situation for Food and Fiber and the Role of Irrigated Agriculture,” paper presented at Texas A&M Conference, March 25–26, 1976, College Station, Texas.

5. For example, see A. L. Black, “High Plains Ogallala Study” in Frank C. Baird, editor, The Multi-Faceted Water Crisis of West Texas , Proceedings of a symposium held November 8-9, 1978, Lubbock, Texas (Texas Tech University, n.d.) p. 147

Chapter 2

THE ROLE OF IRRIGATION

Current Irrigation Levels

By 1977 irrigation extended to over 60 million acres in the United States and accounted for nearly 14 percent of the nation’s total cropland use and 11 percent ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. The Role of Irrigation
• Chapter 3. Water as a Constraint on Western Irrigation
• Chapter 4. Water Laws and Institutions
• Chapter 5. The Changing Costs of Irrigation
• Chapter 6. Environmental Impacts of Irrigated Agriculture
• Chapter 7. Summary and Conclusions
• Index