Colorado State University’s crop-testing station near Akron grows varieties of black-eyed peas, testing for drought tolerance, fertilizer needs and more. (Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun)
Editor’s noteWhere Colorado will find the water it needs to thrive is a more urgent question than ever amid historic drought, undeniable climate change and unprecedented interstate conflicts over limited river supplies.
The Colorado Sun is embarking on a “solutions journalism” series asking who in the state is doing their share to save precious water. Our solutions-oriented reporting will assess whether specific water conservation projects can free up water at a large scale, or whether local conservation is always overwhelmed by uncontrollable natural conditions or immovable market realities.
The Colorado Sun series “Can Colorado do more with less water?” will create a body of work showcasing what may or may not be possible in creating water solutions across the state. From Akron to Aspen, we’re looking for signs of success or failure that will help lead us to water security.
AKRON
Surveying miles of sprouting Eastern Plains farm fields, the logic around Colorado’s deepening water crisis might sound simple.
Colorado each year sinks deeper and deeper into a crisis of water shortages.
Up to 90% of the water available in the state each year is used for agriculture.
It takes 44 inches of water a year in Burlington to grow alfalfa. Only about 10 inches of water drops on Burlington in a year.
It only takes 15 inches of water to grow a healthy crop of black-eyed peas in Burlington.
So.
The numbers point to seemingly obvious questions: Why couldn’t a lot of eastern Colorado farmers switch crops to black-eyed peas, and sell their saved irrigation water to thirsty Front Range cities, or get paid to leave it in the Colorado and South Platte rivers for others to use?
Could that help calm the intensifying interstate and urban-rural wars over shrinking water supplies?
Expand the questions across Colorado: Could Mesa County farmers leave more water in the Gunnison River by growing obscure but nutritious sainfoin as cattle forage? Would San Luis Valley farmers try easily quenched rye grass to help the dwindling Rio Grande and hold the soil against unhealthy winter dust storms? Can they grow camelina for bio jet fuel in Fruita? Take advantage of oil-producing sunflower varieties that thrive like weeds in Lincoln County?
Yes.
But.
Colorado’s farmers can and do grow anything and everything across the state’s wide range of climate and precipitation. They will experiment with any crop and adapt on the fly.
But they need a market come fall. A farmer adventuring with black-eyed peas in April needs to know that a bumper crop from one farm won’t blow the whole limited market for the nutritious legume most popular in the American South and Middle East. Dairy farmers in Texas want more alfalfa than sainfoin. Some Colorado farmers still have unwanted hemp bales sitting in barns from a years-ago fad.
“These folks are ready, they’re hungry for a solution, because using less water and recovering our aquifers in the San Luis Valley, it’s required, but it’s also our future. We don’t have a future if we can’t recover these aquifers,” said Heather Dutton, manager of the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District and a fifth-generation farm kid who grew up in the valley. “So there’s no fighting alternate crops down here. It’s just waiting for these markets to be developed. We need them faster, we need them right now rather than tomorrow.”
It’s not magic — it’s weather and agronomy and cash flow, Dutton said. Colorado’s water solutions lie with alternative crops, and irrigation nozzles that save 2% of flows, and welcoming local food markets … all of the above.
“There’s no silver bullet, it’s all silver BBs,” Dutton said. “We’re going to have to do all of this. That’s the long game.”
The Colorado Sun’s Solutions Journalism project is launching today with the state farm economy because that’s where the water is. That does not mean we are asking only farmers what their solution or sacrifice will be — far from it. In this series, we are heading to Aspen, Aurora, Akron, Alamosa and Adams County. Who is doing their part to save Colorado water? What are luxury homes doing? What are data centers doing? What are landscapers doing?
This story first appeared in Colorado Sunday, a premium magazine newsletter for members. Experience the best in Colorado news at a slower pace, with thoughtful articles, unique adventures and a reading list that’s perfect for Sunday morning.
SUBSCRIBEWe start with farms because one of the most common reader questions goes like this: If we need to use less water, and farms are using up to 90% of the water, can’t we just grow something else?
Colorado farmers, ranchers, researchers and economists are more than happy to discuss the answers, in detail, right after they point out an important fact: 100% of Coloradans eat food. It’s a shared responsibility.
First, the problem:
Long-term climate change, shorter-term drought and continued growth in the Western U.S. are combining for a growing mismatch between our water demands and our annual water supply. Lake Powell, a key to the clean water plumbing system for 40 million people in seven states, will catch only 13% of its usual runoff this year. U.S. officials plan to release only 6 million acre-feet from Lake Powell for downstream states in 2026, down from 7 million to 9.25 million in prior years. Annual flows in the San Luis Valley’s streams are down an average of 18% from 20 years ago.
(An acre-foot covers nearly a football field-size piece of land in 12 inches of water. It’s nearly the equivalent of a year of natural precipitation on the Eastern Plains, or the consumption of two to four urban households for a year.)
Meanwhile, cities like Aurora, Thornton, Colorado Springs and other growing Front Range cities, buy up farm water and spend years arguing with rural communities over whether taking that water will dry up local economies and irreparably alter a way of life.
Colorado officials have tried a number of grant and mitigation programs to shift water from farm use to virtual water banks that could satisfy federal compacts with Lower Basin states. They’ve also tried alternatives to traditional farm irrigation that would capture water savings to be used by willing city buyers while not permanently drying up the land.
“Growing something different” remains at the heart of many of those efforts.
LEFT: Michael Jones, owner of Jones Family Organics farm, monitors sifting of harvested rye berries on Sept. 6 in Alamosa County. RIGHT: Harvested rye berries sit in a sifter at Jones Organics farm. (Jeremy Sparig, Special to The Colorado Sun)
Catching an answer in the rye
The San Luis Valley is the southernmost snow-driven irrigation system in the Western Hemisphere, Dutton notes. Anyone making long-term economic plans in the valley needs to know how perilous that fact is, given how climate change has already cut into Colorado’s snowpack. Meanwhile, the state engineer periodically shuts down wells in the valley in order to meet interstate compacts to raise depleted aquifer levels.
Many farmers are well aware that a cereal grain like rye uses only a third to a half of the irrigation water required for other popular valley grains. Dutton joined forces with Sarah Jones of Jones Farms Organics in Hooper after a 2023 spring dust storm eroded topsoil and blanketed the valley. Jones Farms was trying rye as a winter cover crop that could hold down and enrich soil meant for potatoes in other seasons.
Add in Alamosa-based Colorado Malting Company, supplying grains to distillers and brewers, and now there was a team of experts who could apply to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for a water-saving grant. The board provided about $400,000 for education, marketing and other support.
“We set out to work with 10 farmers and have them plant 1,200 acres of rye for the water savings, and the improvement to soil health and wind erosion,” Dutton said. “Of that, we said, we’ll commit to selling 300 acres of harvest. And we will use some of the grant to grow the market.”
Marketing rye means expanding possibilities beyond the tang of an intense marble rye soaking up mustard and pastrami at your local deli. Rye can be mixed with wheat flour to lighten the blend in bread, become the base flour for cookies and pastries, be distilled into whiskey, and more. Dutton and partners found 100 potential customers for a new local rye supply.
“And farmers being farmers, the first year, right out of the gate, they grew over 4,000 acres, because they’re like, wait a minute, this makes a ton of sense,” Dutton said.
Valley farmers were able to produce a healthy rye crop using about a third of the water usually applied to other popular crops. And when the Rye Resurgence Project went out to sell its committed share of the acreage, they averaged 62 cents a pound, when rye historically has sold at 30 to 40 cents a pound.
Nonfarm citizens of the valley have also reaped some of the benefits of the slight change in mindset. They hear about water shortages and climate change in a sea of other world problems, Dutton said, and they wonder what to do. Buying a muffin made in Alamosa made from local rye flour is not everything, but it’s more than nothing.
“On the larger stage in this country, there’s so much going on, and people feel overwhelmed in a lot of different ways,” Dutton said. “And so to recognize that as an individual we can make a difference. … It’s really complicated, but it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible.”
Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies made from low-water rye flour at Moon Raccoon Baking Co. on June 3 in Denver. Bakery owner Zoe Deutsch says the rye flour adds a nutty and earthy flavor to the cookies. (Kathryn Scott, Special to The Colorado Sun)Yes, they do know beans about it
For all the recent political and social drama about the urban/rural divide, city and country Coloradans still have a few things in common when it comes to water and the land.
When it rains over the city, a homeowner looks gratefully at the sky and thinks, “I can turn off my sprinklers for a week.”
When it rains over the plains, a farmer thinks the same.
Growing corn in Burlington takes 26.2 inches of water across a season. If it rains and snows the expected 8.1 inches by late summer, a farmer only has to add 18.1 inches of irrigation to raise a decent crop. Sugar beets, though, need a total of 33.7 inches.
Eastern Colorado farmers know corn if they know anything, said Joel Schneekloth, who retired this spring from his longtime job as a crop and water specialist for the northeast at the Colorado State University Water Center. Between demand for corn as feed and silage, and as an ethanol fuel stock for plants in Nebraska and Colorado, farmers know in the spring that they are likely to at least have cash flow in the fall to get them through another year.
So Schneekloth and his team face a bumper crop of questions when they suggest northeastern farmers try a less-thirsty, drought-resilient plant like black-eyed peas. Also known as cowpeas, the nutritious legume has been a staple in southern states, in Africa and in the dry Middle East.
Black-eyed peas get peak production with only 15 inches of total water in a season, Schneekloth’s charts show.
“It just does not show water stress like other crops do,” Schneekloth said. “They don’t wilt in the heat of the day. Part of that is the genetics. They’re a sub-Saharan crop.”
TOP: Jason Webb, associate director of CSU’s Eastern Plains agricultural research station near Akron, drops black-eyed pea seeds into a planter’s hoppers from the back of a GPS-guided tractor. ABOVE: CSU intern Hailey Loutzenhiser keeps the tractor on pace while Webb pours black-eyed pea seed packets into the hoppers. The tractor’s path over the small test plots is precision-guided and Loutzenhiser only needs to take over steering for turnarounds. VIDEO: Webb selects black-eyed pea varieties from around the world to pour into planting hoppers for trial plots. His clipboard shows him a grid the tractor follows, with numbered squares that match the numbers on the packets. (Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun)Not only did they take less of the precious local water supply, but in theory it should be easier to get vital crop insurance on black-eyed pea stands, he added. Premiums could be cheaper because it’s less likely a drought will force the farmer to cash in on the policy.
Saves water, smoother taste than pinto beans (in Schneekloth’s expert opinion), and gives farmers valuable risk options. … What’s the limitation?
For one, said Schneekloth’s colleague at the CSU Akron crop test station, Sally Jones-Diamond, the gears from hundreds of years of agriculture bureaucracy turn slowly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s risk management office doesn’t yet see black-eyed peas as a “common” crop, even though CSU is planting test patches of black-eyed peas from around the world right next to USDA experimental crops at their Akron shared station. Specialty crops require specialized written insurance agreements, Jones-Diamond said.
“One day if they get their act together, and they get black-eyed peas added, then yes,” she said, farmers could get a price break on their risk. “But not as of now.”
For another hindrance, look at equally slow-turning markets.
Many cultures have a tradition of a black-eyed pea stew for good luck on New Year’s Eve, but the other 364 days of the year can be brutal. Peru grows a lot of cowpeas and because of cheap rural labor can ship it all over the Western Hemisphere at prices lower than what U.S. farmers need.
There are 1.3 million acres of corn grown by Colorado farmers each year. If only a few thousand of those were switched to black-eyed peas, the small handful of buyers in Colorado and Kansas would be flooded.
“We could grow the heck out of them,” Schneekloth said. “As the old saying goes, one pickup load meets the market. One pickup load plus a 5-gallon bucket tanks the market.”
Healthy growth of kernza in a test plot for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which experiments alongside Colorado State University plots near Akron. Kernza is a low-water crop that produces both seeds for flour and grass for animal forage; on June 4. (Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun)Another farming wild card: Political whim
Troy Waters can talk about alfalfa and winter wheat seeds all day. But one of his favorite conversation pieces in the back pocket of his Carhartts is a humble Mediterranean plant called false flax, which grows well at his multigeneration family farm in Fruita.
The hierarchy at the Waters farm, which has long made a better living by growing crops for seeds to sell to other farmers, starts with water watchdogs’ favorite villain: alfalfa. The extremely nutritious and extremely thirsty bales can always raise welcome cash from local cattle ranchers or well-off dairy operations in Texas or Saudi Arabia. But Alfalfa can take up to 3 acre-feet of irrigation water in a season of multiple cuttings.
Winter wheat takes significantly less water, and has added benefits of putting out roots to hold soil in damaging winds. But, like corn, it’s an enormous commodity crop with international competition and razor-thin profit margins in a good year.
False flax is scientifically known as camelina. Run a healthy camelina crop through a press, and you get cattle forage, plus oil that can be mixed at 50% with kerosene to make a biodegradable and sustainable jet fuel.
“In this valley, we could apply a little over an acre-foot of water less to camelina than we did to winter wheat,” Waters said.
Waters took a gamble in 2024 and planted 235 acres of camelina, to grow seed stock for a national renewable energy company called Vision Bioenergy Oilseeds, based in Idaho.
“I actually stuck my neck out. I did find out, we can raise it in this county, it yields really good, and I found out it takes a lot less water than winter wheat to raise a good crop,” Waters said. “The problem with it is, our current political climate changed a bit.” Fast-moving economic waves also rock the planning.
Major energy producers are now forming partnerships to grow camelina on large-scale farms, partly in response to growing demand from European nations mandating cleaner jet fuel mixes. But to plant camelina at scale, farmers need thousands of available acres, and expensive new equipment to handle camelina’s tiny seeds.
“The seed company needs at least 2,000 acres to send out a train, otherwise it’s not worth it,” said Greg Peterson, director of the Colorado Ag Water Alliance. “And OK, we need a weigh station in Fruita, we need storage in Fruita. You can’t even go to a bank to get a loan for a grain silo anywhere, they’re not interested in funding that.”
One of the primary biofuel seedoil companies is backed by ExxonMobil, and the other is backed by Shell, Waters noted. “You tell me, with the price of oil right now, where are these companies going to throw their money? Drilling for more oil, or for a seed crop they’re still trying to convince farmers to raise?”
“The company I contracted for was willing to come in here and contract for 5,000 acres, and that’s a lot of acres in this valley for seed production,” Waters said. “But the whole industry’s kind of pulled back its horns a bit, and they don’t need any more. They overproduced in 2024. It just doesn’t pay.”
LEFT: Colorado State University’s Sally Jones-Diamond shows the scale of a black-eyed pea seed planted in a row of test plots at the Akron agricultural station. RIGHT: Corn shoots in a center-pivot irrigation field near Wiggins. Corn yields grow with added irrigation water, and some farmers want alternative crops that use less water. (Michael Booth, The Colorado Sun)
Widespread solutions will require deeper partnerships
Short of a central, Soviet-style planned farm economy, Coloradans interested in saving agricultural water will have to continue seeking piecemeal demonstration projects and solutions.
A typical, marginal Colorado farm this spring is facing fuel prices up 25%, fertilizer prices up more than that if they can get it at all, volatile tariffs playing havoc with international demand, and drought water allotments as low as 10% of normal. They need risk partners to try for the kinds of water savings the public tends to demand, said Peterson..
“I don’t want to come off as doom and gloom,” Peterson said. “I’m finding money to do alternative crop projects all the time. It’s just that I need 10 more people like me helping.”
State agencies often have money for water experimentation, in $50,000 to $100,000 increments, Peterson noted. He helped a farmer in Conejos County find grant support to grow sainfoin as cattle forage in the southern end of the San Luis Valley instead of alfalfa.
That experiment happens to coincide with impacts of climate change mentioned in a recent Colorado School of Mines study, where higher spring temperatures mean snowpack runoff is happening earlier. That matches up well with when sainfoin needs its first water, Peterson said.
“But the saying with sainfoin is that year one, it sleeps; year two, it creeps; year three, it leaps,” he added. “Unless we figure out the economics right, you’re going to have to subsidize it until then.”
Colorado’s city water agencies have billions of dollars in revenue each year. Many Colorado counties facing buyups of their local agriculture water by cities are demanding more ethical treatment: Guarantees that dried-up land will be planted with sustainable local grasses, or requiring the city governments to backfill lost local tax revenues from unproductive land.
Those water agencies will likely become more involved in the kind of water-saving partnerships that could give farmers the assurances they need to experiment, Peterson said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next few years we’re ready to start making those asks,” Peterson said. “We have the data.”
In Fruita, Troy Waters and the son-in-law he hopes will continue the family farm are open to more options. What they are asking Front Range residents to understand is the basic economics of their lives.
“We farmers don’t farm just for the fun of it,” Waters said. “We’ve got to make a living. So we can farm the next year.”
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