What Do Farmers Know?

A lot, it turns out. The Atalaya Institute commissioned a qualitative study [PDF] of New Mexican farmers' thoughts on water. It's very anthropological and gives you a good feel for the balanced views of people who have farmed the same place for centuries. Here are some excerpts:

The environmentalist, born in the back of a limousine, they don’t know what you are going through. 50 years ago everybody had a farm in their family. They had a grandfather or an uncle or somebody somewhere. And now when I go to the city and people say what do you do? And they look at you like you are the first one they ever met. They are completely out of touch. An a lot of people, I get a little offended, a lot of people watch TV and have got the idea that farming is bad. And I say “what are you talking about – all the birds that come and eat, and the coyotes eat the birds”... I think most farmers love their land. That’s why they are doing it. How you could take somebody like that and decide that they are bad for the environment. I love the environment, but you have to be realistic. It needs to be managed.

from a farmer and these are from the report:

The separation of water from the land seems like a crime against the land--an unnatural act. But it is interesting that it is a crime against the land and not a crime against water, almost as if the land holds our ethical responsibility but water does not. In this context an argument for the conservation of land makes sense. But if there is an ethical responsibly that these farmers have towards water it is simply to use it--not waste it. This “ethic” may be reinforced by the OSE’s “use it or loose it” policy. Within this construct it is hard to imagine what water conservation is or could be to farmers. Other than some talk about recharging the aquifer, there was little mention of water conservation at all.

[snip]

Most farmers are absolutely certain that their water and livelihoods can and most likely will be snatched away some day by some distant power no matter how senior their rights are proven to be. The needs of many will always trump the rights of a few. In most cases the water rights being sold are used to support the development that may ultimately represent the threat of eminent domain from the municipalities they are so concerned about. Yet this conflict of interest regarding water transfers to development was rarely mentioned.

[snip]

Strategic Observation: Farmers seem to have a different relationship with nature than non-farmers. They view it through a very specific lens and many have a sense of almost righteous entitlement about it – especially relative to non-farmers. This is understandable when considering how much time these people spend outside working on the land. Farmers have a very pragmatic and experientially based understanding of nature—what works and what doesn’t work. The purview of nature seen through the broader lenses of sciences like ecology and biology are too abstract and lack relevance if the ideas aren’t easily applicable to farming. The impact of environmentalism and environmental causes seems to have taken everything to a very tense and highly reactive place. The impact of this is that to dialogue around nature, the environment or even the river as an ecological entity is extremely difficult. Great care and creativity needs to go into framing the whole issue of nature and the river right now.

I also learned that farmers may grow low-value crops because they cannot afford the labor for high value crops. Interestingly, tighter border security may be shifting production of food back to Mexico. Because labor has to stay there, they grow the food -- and US farmers are out of business. Like that unintended consequence?

Bottom Line: Read this if you care about agricultural water allocation.