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Show Western Resources Limitations on farm growth in the Mountain west By HfU-ne C. MoiiImth rVashinsrton Land, as well as water, ;"of soon will be, a limiting Factor0 in landing agriculture in the Mountain st,' with land available Tor new ir-ation ir-ation mainly in Idaho, Montana and oming, according to Neil Sampson, oil conservation specialist, ome of the best land in the Mountain st that has been available for icultural use in the past has been iverted to other uses in the last ;ade, mainly for subdivisions. Loss agricultural land to other uses totall-almost totall-almost a half million acres in that riod. "These losses were most ongly felt in Arizona, Colorado, New xico, Utah and Wyoming," accor-ig accor-ig to Sampson. ie is including the states of Arizona, lorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, w Mexico, Utah and Wyoming in the mntain West. 'The farmers in the Mountain Region b already farming most of the prime mland" available to them outside of ieral ownership. "Nearly two-thirds it is in irrigated cropland, and only 21 rcent is in pasture and range or her' use. There may be other acres, her in private or federal ownership lere the addition of irrigation water mid move the soil from non-prime to ime quality, but we don't have any ta that would give us that estimate" curately, Sampson said. The U.S. Department of Agriculture !SDA), whose data Sampson used for is backgrounder in large part, defines ime farmland as land actually ailable for farming and ranching; it ust not already be committed per-anently per-anently to a non-agricultural use, ch as urban development. And it ust meet two key tests. It must have e best combination of physical and emical characteristics to produce 3d, feed, forage, fiber and oilseed ops. And it must have adequate oisture to grow crops in seven or ore years out of 10 years. In the Moun-in Moun-in West most of the land requires ir-lation ir-lation in order to meet that require-snt. require-snt. In general, this means that less an area has an average annual infall of around 20 inches, even the st soils won't meet the USDA criteria prime farmland wfthouCsupVlemerf- ' ' irrigation. FEDERAL, FOREST ' LAND NOT AVAILABLE !3ampson calls the Mountain West "a .rdship case from the standpoint of -"id resources. ..Much of the land is in ieral ownership," he observed, and i":e land which is not federally owned I: largely marginal for agricultural -Dduction." Wo point at this time in looking to the e of the West's federal lands for 'iculturaj production, he counseled. -Slight now the political climate is such fit there will be little, if any, federal "id brought into agriculture in the Ear future," Sampson said in a classic I ;derstatement. The trend in the West cito put more land into federal owner-ijp, owner-ijp, not the reverse. es for clearing Western forest land '' new cropland, there would be no ifint in doing so. "While there may still & forest land in the region that can be ftared for cropland, it is not high fcality land and will not meet the Iriteria for prime farmland after it has ;xn converted. This, plus the in-"easingly in-"easingly high value of forest products iid the high costs of land clearing, OTUld sussgest that the clearing of rest land for new cropland will be ry minor," Sampson stated. ia"It goes without saying," Sampson )!served, "that the future of loiriculture in the (Mountain) region is j?htly tied to the future of irrigation," ei irrigation is clearly the staple of the ,e gion. Only one percent of the prime ,ermland which is not irrigated is in the iiountain West, mainly in northern veaho, he said. About one third of the oplands which are irrigated in the gDuntain West produce about two-irds two-irds of the dollar value of farm output ld annually by the region. ,iBut irrigation in the nation as a whole ciiS increased almost twice as fast as it lis in the Mountain West, so there is revarly a limit on the amount of addi-d addi-d nal irrigation to come on stream in ifi region, according to Sampson. He I rh-ibuted the irrigation slowdown in ldB Mountain West as due to two fac-jjjis, fac-jjjis, land constraints and "limited Wjiter supplies and the rising cost of veloping the more marginal water ((jpplies that remain." jjeiPnly three states in the Mountain est have good enough non-federal jjjids to support new irrigation in asonably large blocks of land Idaho, rJontana and Wyoming, according to ,0rts sou expert. "Wyoming has by far - greatest amount, over 1.5 million jfes. In that state water limits may be - re important than land limits, lire ;ej, OTHER PROBLEMS LIMITING EXPANSION n addition to limitations on available II Ad and water, there are other factors ii ich appear to have a negative impact ast- agriculture in the Mountain West, Sampson asserted. This is one of the regions of the nation where overdraft of ground water is a problem, particularly in eastern Colorado, Col-orado, eastern New Mexico, central and southern Arizona and southwestern Utah, according to the Water Resources Council. "Political controversies over water rights, inter-basin transfers and new dam projects forecast problems for any new water developments," Sampson stated. "The President's new water policy stresses water conservation, and there is much benefit that could be gained from such efforts in the Mountain Moun-tain West. But water conservation doesn't create new water, and in those areas where the avilable supply is be: ing used and reused for the full length of the stream, there would be little new land irrigated even if maximum water conservation techniques were installed. "Water quality is a problem as well, particularly in regard to salinity," Sampson continued. "Much of the irrigation ir-rigation water of the Mountain Region contains enough salt so that improper irrigation techniques can result in increasing in-creasing soil salinization on valuable irrigated ir-rigated land. Preventing this from becoming a serious problem," as it already is in the Colorado River Basin, "concerns conservationists and ir- rigators alike," he said. Sampson noted that irrigated agricultural systems have been fragile historically. Those in Egypt and Mesopotania failed in ancient an-cient time "not because of a lack of water or skill in its management, but because of overgrazing in the mountain watersheds." This is also a problem in the Mountain West, he observed. "Energy costs are another negative factor that affect water avilability. Much of the new irrigation in the past decade has come from pumped water lifted from wells or river canyons. As the costs of electricity and natural gas have increased, the costs of pumping water from deep wells or canyons have been getting higher and higher," Sampson Samp-son said. "Only a strong agricultural economy can justify these pumping costs and it is likely some irrigation" in this region "will not survive the next period of depressed farm prices," he stated. Due to energy costs and other factors, input costs have been rising somewhat faster and productivity has risen somewhat slower in the Mountain West than nationally, he said. Finally, he asserted, soil erosion is a major problem. Sampson estimated 24 million acres of cropland in the region are "deteriorating at a rapid rate, with at least 8 million acres losing soil at the rate of 10 tons per acre per year or more." |