The California Farm Water... coalition's analysis shows that while agricultural water use is almost unchanged during the past 40 years, crop production figures have increased dramatically.Farmers will spend money to increase efficiency when water becomes too precious to waste. That's happening NOW because of man-made shortages (price too low --> Demand exceeds Supply), which are set to get worse. The next step is to reduce the cost of shortages (in fact end shortages) with markets that will give farmers accurate signals of what water is worth AND allow them to reallocate water so that additional conservation investments can be avoided, and losses from shortages and rationing are minimized.
In 1967, the state's farmers applied 31.2 million acre-feet of water on their irrigated cropland. In 2000, that figure was 34.2 million acre-feet, an increase of 9.6 percent. During the same period, acres planted increased about 8 percent.
But production volume for field crops, fruit and nut crops, and vegetable and melon crops jumped from 35.8 million tons to 67.7 million tons, an increase of 89 percent.
A coalition survey of irrigation companies and suppliers shows that between 2003 and 2008, California farmers invested more than $1.5 billion on drip and microsprinkler irrigation technology. About 1.3 million acres had high technology irrigation systems installed during the period.
In addition to installing on-farm irrigation technology, many farmers engage in other kinds of conservation practices, for example use of cover crops, minimum tillage, water recycling and mulching.
"Let me put the decision this way," said farmer Ted Sheely of Lemoore. "When we converted to underground drip tape we saved about a tenth of an acre-foot of water per acre, but we also increased crop yield more than 20 percent. That's were the business economics come in."
Sheely says a farmer can make the conversion and pay for the cost of installing the system in four or five years.
"The high cost of water, however, isn't something we can escape. We use drip on tomatoes and all our permanent crops, pistachios and winegrapes. We provide the precise amount of water we want," he said. "On the other hand, it doesn't matter how much drip equipment you put in, if you don't have water to send down the line. Right now we don't have enough water to supply all the high-tech irrigation systems that are out there."
Bottom Line: Farmers will conserve water when it makes sense to do so, and market prices give the most accurate feedback on what's sensible. More markets, please!