by: Dr. Gabrielle Roech-McNally, Executive Director, Dry Farming Institute
According to the United Nations, we have entered a new era of global water bankruptcy. We are now living in a new water era, one that requires us to rebalance supply and demand under new conditions because the historical baseline is no longer our reality. Our past relationship to water can no longer guide our future relationship with this fundamental element.
This new era is shifting our relationship to water, driven in part by largely irreversible changes to groundwater and glaciers, the sources that provide much of the streamflow we rely on for everything from surface water uses, from irrigation to recreation and habitat protection. In the case of groundwater and glaciers, the declines are leaving us insolvent as we are unable to restore previous levels of water supply and ecosystem function on human time scales. Once we lose glaciers and their immense water banking potential, they are not easily brought back. Once we withdraw too much from groundwater reserves, we experience subsidence, salinization and other consequences of overuse, and we cannot restore those aquifers easily or quickly.
Managing this new condition requires that we use our water resources differently. Unfortunately, our infrastructure and institutions were built under historical conditions that no longer exist and will not return in our lifetime. In agriculture, this poses long term and potentially catastrophic consequences for the production of food, fiber and feed. Globally, agriculture is responsible for some 70% of freshwater withdrawals. Over 400 million acres of irrigated cropland are already experiencing water stress, including cropland here in the PNW.
Across Washington and Oregon, our agricultural industry has faced drought conditions. This summer, drastically reduced snowpack means less runoff to feed our rivers and lakes, creating real difficulties for agricultural producers and many others.
A New Era Requires New Tools
This year may indeed help prepare us for the consequences of a water bankrupt future. Now is the time to learn to manage water differently and work to rebalance our withdrawals based on a new understanding of supply and demand that meets the realities of our degraded carrying capacity.
In agriculture, we must reckon with the fact that if we are to keep farmers on the land and maintain food, feed, and fiber security.
Fruit and vegetable producers in the PNW are experimenting with growing food using dry farming techniques refined through years of participatory research and collaborative learning at DFI, building on traditional knowledge and our ongoing partnership with Oregon State University. Dry Farming is a strategy that helps farmers use water resources more efficiently. In its purest form, dry-farmed crops, such as fruits and vegetables. These methods have deep historical and varied cultural roots, as desert farmers and indigenous peoples around the world have developed techniques for farming with minimal irrigation or low rainfall. Dry farming is supported by other practices that improve soil health, adapt seeds and varietals for greater drought tolerance, and shift planting density and weed control to apply soil amendments such as biochar. The aim is to improve soil health and water-holding capacity while minimizing soil disturbance. In agriculture, our task is to embrace techniques such as these and build on them by creating a new, historically and culturally informed, agriculture that meets our water insecure future with proactive acceptance of living with less. are not irrigated, or are irrigated very minimally. The practice is part of a larger suite of practices that emphasize water resilience, focusing on low-input and place-based approaches to cope with less water available for irrigation.
Water bankruptcy is our new reality
This reality is likely to get worse, particularly here in the PNW, before it gets better. It will impact our agricultural industry and our collective food security. Now is the time to invest in tools that build capacity, confidence and community to support growers, and all of us, to thrive with less water. The Dry Farming Institute is uniquely positioned to help address this challenge and foster hope amidst our network of growers experimenting with and adapting dry farming and water resilience techniques to their context.
A shorter version of this piece was published as a Letter to the Editor in The Oregonian. Read it here →
The Dry Farming Institute is building the tools, knowledge, and community infrastructure to help growers navigate this new water era. If you believe in this work, please consider supporting it.