Large Subsidies to Corporate Farms in West Depleting Vital Water Supplies

FRESNO, Calif. – As drought forces families in the West to shorten their showers and let their lawns turn brown, two Depression-era government programs have been paying some of the nation’s biggest farms hundreds of millions of dollars to grow water-thirsty crops in what was once desert. Records obtained by The Associated Press show that the federal government handed out more than $687 million in subsidies over the past two years to hundreds of farmers in California and Arizona, the most seriously drought-stricken states in the West. One program pays farmers for planting water-needy crops such as cotton and rice, which are largely grown by flooding the fields. The other provides cut-rate water for irrigation. Farmers and government officials strongly defend the double-dip subsidies, saying they produce an abundance of food and jobs. But now, with the West booming in population and the region gripped by both recession and a dry spell, environmentalists, city dwellers and members of Congress are demanding the government end or scale back this decades-old practice that essentially rewards farms for using water, not conserving it. “With our weather patterns, with climate change, and our population growth, we’ve got to look at how we use every drop,” said Rep. George Miller, a Democrat who represents part of the San Francisco Bay area. “We need to take a serious look at policies that encourage economically inefficient and unsustainable uses of our limited clean water supplies.” Since the drought began in 2007, the government has steered about $79 million in water subsidies to California farms, according to an AP analysis of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation records. California cotton and rice farmers received an additional $439 million in subsidies doled out for commodity crops, according to an AP examination of U.S. Department of Agriculture data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Exactly how much California farmers will get in subsidies in 2009 is unclear, but it could be significantly less. Facing a third dry year and record-low reservoirs, the Bureau of Reclamation, which manages many dams and reservoirs in the West, announced major water cutbacks last month in California. For now, hundreds of farmers will get no irrigation water from the federal government, although they could get some later this year. The cutbacks are leading some farmers to switch to less-thirsty crops or leave their fields fallow. East of the Rockies, other rice- and cotton-growing states, such as Texas and Louisiana, get federal crop subsidies, too, but not cheap water through the Bureau of Reclamation, which operates only in the West. Also, the tug-of-war over water between the cities and the countryside is far more intense in booming California and Arizona. President Obama recently called some of the nation’s crop programs unnecessary, and proposed cutting or capping them. Over the past quarter-century, Congress has considered eight bills that would bar the double dipping practiced by California and Arizona. And federal budget analysts in 2006 questioned whether the government should be sending farms so much cheap water when endangered species and city dwellers need it, too. Each year, agriculture takes up to 80 percent of federally controlled surface water in California – and the price many farmers have been paying is less than half what some cities do.