Will Texas continue supporting agricultural water conservation?

The challenge is immense and never-ending. We have to produce more food on less land using less water.

In Texas, our rapid population growth that began decades ago and continues unabated means that every year more fertile farm and ranch land is covered with houses, apartments, businesses, roads and parking lots. An average of more than 100,000 acres of agricultural land is lost per year to development in Texas. And each year, our expanding population requires a larger share of the available water for homes and businesses.

Agricultural producers in Texas have been meeting this challenge by making huge investments in highly efficient irrigation technology, implementing practices that retain more soil moisture and planting new drought-tolerant crop varieties. These strategies enable farmers to produce more crops per acre using half as much water as they did 20 years ago.

New irrigation technology is expensive with one of the most efficient systems, subsurface drip irrigation, costing upwards of $2,500 per acre to install.

The USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has provided significant support to Texas agricultural producers with technical assistance in developing conservation plans on agricultural lands and a program that pays part of the cost for conservation equipment and measures. Over the past five years in Texas, this NRCS cost-sharing program has amounted to $433 million¹ with an equal or larger contribution from Texas farmers and ranchers.

For its part, the State of Texas has supported agricultural water conservation through a program of grants and low-interest loans created by the Texas Legislature in 1985. Since its beginning, the Agricultural Water Conservation Fund administered by the Texas Water Development Board has provided over $113 million in agricultural grants and low interest loans. It is estimated that since 2004 the program has funded projects that have resulted in over 923,019 acre-feet of water saved. The grants and loans are awarded mostly to groundwater conservation districts, irrigation districts and universities for conservation research, education and demonstration projects that help agricultural producers grow more food and fiber while reducing water usage.

However, the state’s Agricultural Water Conservation Fund is nearing depletion after 37 years of supporting conservation projects. The questions for the current legislative session are whether lawmakers will renew funding for the program and at what level. TWDB has requested an increase in the program’s annual funding from $1.2 million to $1.5 million and an infusion of $15 million into the fund to pay for the next 10 years. In light of the state’s $30 billion surplus, the requested funds are a relatively small investment to help ensure Texas has adequate water supplies in the future for agricultural production and to serve the needs of the state’s rapidly growing population.

As the largest user of water, agricultural irrigation presents the state’s best opportunity to achieve significant water use savings through conservation. If conservation produced a 2.5% reduction in irrigation water use, the savings (187,000 acre-feet) would exceed the estimated annual municipal use in Travis County with a population of more than 1.3 million. And a 5% reduction (375,000 acre-feet) would far exceed the annual municipal use in Bexar County.

These percentage reductions in agricultural water use are clearly realistic and achievable. Recent research in Texas found that irrigation scheduling, which allows for the efficient allocation of irrigation water according to crop requirements based on meteorological demands and field conditions, can produce water savings of 10%.

Conservation is the least expensive way to make more water available for the future. Agricultural water conservation can make a major contribution toward achieving our water supply goals if the state continues to support it.

For more information about agricultural water conservation, go to WaterGrows.org.

^{1 A View of the Farm Bill Through Policy Design, Part 1: EQIP, Jonathan Coppess and Aleksi Knepp}