Groundwater concerns underpin Mesilla Valley farming
Kent Paterson/Special to the Digie Zone Network
![]() |
La Semilla Center's year-round farming. La Semilla courtesy photo. |
MESILLA VALLEY, NEW MEXICO - Every year, fresh produce from southern New
Mexico's Mesilla Valley is sold at the Farmers Market at Ardovino's Desert
Crossing in Sunland Park. Zach Cook and
George Pouy are two of the longtime vendors that offer their harvest to
borderlanders. Though the men differ in age and background, one thing they have
in common is that both draw water from New Mexico's Elephant Butte Irrigation
District (EBID), the Las Cruces-based agency which supplies irrigation surface
water from the Rio Grande and monitors water usage from the aquifers below the
ground.
"We've been using our well a lot more than
having irrigation water," said Cook, a lifelong family farmer who farms
corn, peaches, pecans, squash and cotton in La Mesa, New Mexico, a small
Mesilla Valley community on Highway 28 that leads to Las Cruces. "If it
grows around here, we grow it," he added. But in an interview earlier this
harvest season, Cook said reliance on groundwater is a pricey endeavor, costing
him $15,000 last year alone.
A retired accountant who operates a seven-acre
farm in the small valley community of Chamberino, Pouy produces about six
cuttings a year of alfalfa, vegetables, meat and eggs. He has a greenhouse,
hoop house and grows lettuce, spinach and other cold season crops that make his
operation a year-round endeavor. "I'll have greens all winter," he
said. "So I'm living the dream. Sometimes it's a nightmare, though,"
he said, cracking a smile.
"I guess you can technically call me
retired," Pouy quipped. "But
what am I going to do, sit around on my ass and watch television?" Pouy
has two wells: a residential one and another for commercial purposes that draws
water from a depth of about 200 feet.
When he started farming back in 2009, Pouy found
that Rio Grande water was sufficient. "I didn't have a well and there was
enough water for Sudan Grass and cotton," he recalled. But that situation
didn't last long as drought descended on the land, and in 2012 he spent more
than $33,000 putting in the commercial well.
According to Pouy's records, he spent $518.00
last year on the well, basically in electric bills to El Paso Electric Company
for the cost of pumping the water out of the ground. Farmers with greater
acreage than Pouy, like Cook or those bigger than him, spend far more.
In addition, Pouy said he pays an annual fee of
$600.00 to EBID and is required to file quarterly reports of his well water
meterings to the agency that manages Rio Grande water deliveries to farmers in
the Hatch and Mesilla Valleys.
Although a decent northern snowpack that melted
into the Rio Grande allowed Elephant Butte Reservoir (where water for delivery
to users south of the huge manmade lake is stored) to fill halfway this year
and permitted EBID to distribute 14 inches to its users, as opposed to less in
recent years of drought, Pouy discovered that this allocation wasn't enough.
The Anthony grower didn't have precise numbers at hand yet for the growing
year, but he calculated that "we used a lot more groundwater than
EBID" in 2019.
In the aftermath of a dud monsoon year and with
the specter of drought once again hovering over the long term viability of Rio
Grande water supplies for farmers, the economic and environmental issues of
groundwater usage for agriculture loom ever larger in New Mexico.
"As we go through the drought years,
agriculturalists really rely on groundwater." said Holly Brause, research
scientist at New Mexico State University's Water Resources Research Institute.
"It's affected farms, because now when they have to rely on groundwater,
it's more expensive for them to pump."
Brause is part of a relatively new academic field
known as social hydrology, a discipline that contemplates "human and
environmental systems as one system." She's also a member of an Oregon
farm family that practices organic agriculture. Currently, the University of New Mexico doctoral student is researching farming values and
how they fit into water consumption and crop choice, as well as looking at the
crucial matter of stakeholder engagement in aquifer management.
"A lot of farms in the area are thinking
about how they can conserve water, and they're interested in using less
chemicals," the UNM doctoral candidate said.
"Even if they aren't interested in organics, they're thinking about the
impact on the environment, the chemical use, water use."
As with surface water, groundwater availability
is not the only factor affecting New Mexico farms. Quality, too, figures as a crucial
component of the water portfolio.
"Salty" is how Krysten Aguilar,
co-executive director of the Anthony-based La Semilla Food Center describes the
well water at the non-profit organization's small Mesilla Valley farm. Plunging to a depth of approximately 330
feet, La Semilla's well sucks out water with a high salinity content- a not
uncommon occurrence in the valley- which negatively affects yields.
But La Semilla's leaders view water consumption
as one piece of an overall farming strategy and philosophy that includes soil
health, appropriate plant choice and organic methods.
"We've been doing a lot of things to attract
native pollinators," said La Semilla's other executive co-director and
founder, Cristina Dominguez Eshelman. By incorporating native Chihuahuan desert
plants on the farm, more beneficial insects that prey on pests are attracted to
the farm, she said.
Now 10 years old, La Semilla does year-round
farming, producing greens in the winter. "We've been doing continuous
vegetable production for the last five years," Dominguez Eshelman added.
To aid in growing, the Mesilla Valley farm uses row covers and sometimes a hoop
house.
La Semilla's farming practices are guided by the
concept of agroecology. Concretely, that means "landscape approach, crop
diversity, and rotation, integrating crops and livestock (manure) and cover
crops," according to the organization. Viewing actual farming as just one
part of the food system, La Semilla is also involved in community education,
"edible" education, food policy advocacy and much more.
"La Semilla Community Farm provides
opportunities to grow farmers and support local farms in historically
underserved areas, but also supports a generation of producers that are
adapting innovative practices and system, re-defining what a healthy farm in
the Chihuahuan desert looks like," the Mesilla Valley food center notes.
But hanging over the futures of Mesilla Valley
farmers is a pending Supreme Court case that pits Texas against New Mexico over
Rio Grande water and the alleged over pumping of groundwater in the Mesilla
Valley. The conflict is rooted in decades of differences stemming from the
geographic flow of the river and the hydrology surrounding it; national and
international water sharing compacts; environmental impacts from crop choices;
the sweeping influence of the global agricultural market and, increasingly,
climate change.
"We don't get enough of it," Cook said
of the irrigation water supply and controversies with Texas downriver. "We
need it to rain, and it would be nice for EBID to get us more water and if we
didn't have to send more water down to Texas because of that lovely
agreement."
For La Semilla's Krysten Aguilar, the lawsuit is
"concerning" but a somewhat distant matter for the moment. "I
know it's there and it's crazy but it's not here yet," in the same way as
problems like climate change, she said.
In her conversations with farmers, Brause has
found concern about the lawsuit's possible consequences, but more immediate
worries including the performance of markets, weather, prices, disease, and
labor availability. "Every day
there is something that is imminent that can end their business," she
said.
Author-journalist Kent Paterson is a regular contributor to the Digie Zone Network.
Editor's note: This story is the first in a
series on water issues in the Paso del Norte borderland of southern New Mexico,
El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico. The series is made possible in part by a
grant from the McCune Charitable Foundation.