Water as a crop effort growing
traditionally thought of as a crop, but Water As A Crop and its partners are hoping to change that. This organization promotes the idea that water falling on private, rural land can be effectively conserved and marketed in a manner similar to crops. In exchange for implementing conservation practices, rural landowners receive financial incentives to reimburse their costs. These conservation practices benefit investors and landowners and preserve water for rural and urban communities alike.
Water As A Crop was founded in 2009 by the Sand County Foundation, a private, nonprofit organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. The organization works nationwide to promote land and water stewardship.
Following the foundation’s mission “to advance the use of ethical and scientifically sound land management practices and partnerships for the benefit of people and the environment,” Water As A Crop bridges gaps between rural and urban, private and federal, and corporate and individual. The program brings together landowners, local partners and stakeholders interested in funding water conservation in water-stressed areas, said Craig Ficenec, Water As A Crop program director.
Water As A Crop connects watershed stakeholders, including corporations and various conservation groups, interested in providing financial incentives to landowners who implement best management practices (BMPs). These incentives are then used to mitigate the costs of implementing conservation practices.
“The concept is to just get urban investors to reinvest in their water supply by targeting land management practices that will enhance that water supply,” said Blake Alldredge, former Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service associate.
“The premise of Water As A Crop is that much of the land is privately owned, especially in the state of Texas, meaning that the majority of the rainfall falling on the land is on private land,” Ficenec said. Therefore, its quality and quantity is, in part, subject to the management practices of that land.
Water As A Crop bridges gaps between rural and urban, private and federal, and corporate and individual. The program brings together landowners, local partners and stakeholders interested in funding water conservation in water-stressed areas.
However, there are barriers to proper water stewardship. For instance, urban water users often recognize the importance of clean water but may not fully understand private, rural landowners’ critical role in helping produce a clean, plentiful water supply. Some landowners may not be aware of BMPs that help maintain high water quality, or they may not have the financial resources to implement them.
Water As A Crop emphasizes the responsibility and potential impact both urban and rural residents have in water conservation. By implementing strategies that reduce runoff and conserve water, rural landowners provide clean water for urban residents, Ficenec said. In turn, urban residents and corporations should recognize the contributions of private landowners by investing in these conservation strategies.
“The overall idea with Water As A Crop is that if I [a landowner] save the folks in Houston — downstream from the Trinity — money by not having to clean up the water so much, then how can those dollars and those savings find their way back to the landowners in the watershed to do more conservation work and do it faster? That’s the whole concept,” said Gary Price, owner of the 77 Ranch in Navarro County.
Using partnerships to protect Texas water
Although the Sand County Foundation and Water As A Crop have nationwide interests, the struggle for water in Texas drew the program here.
“Texas is facing a lot of water issues and is going to need to depend on private lands and how landowners manage their private lands as a major component of how Texas delivers its water needs sustainably into the future,” Ficenec said.
Currently, the state water plan does not include recommendations on land management strategies to improve water conservation. Therefore, Texas is a prime candidate for a program wanting to test conservation and management strategies.
The amount of private land ownership, commercial interest and cooperative landowners are the three elements that led to Water As A Crop’s work in Texas, Ficenec said.
Because commercial water users’ profit margins can be greatly affected by water quality and quantity, there is potential for investments in water stewardship by corporations and other organizations, sources said. Seeing this potential, Water As A Crop partners with companies, such as MillerCoors, which uses water from the Richland-Chambers Reservoir to manufacture and brew beer.
“We started working in Texas and in partnership with MillerCoors, a water user in Fort Worth, who had interest in the watershed, how land is managed in the watershed and how that affects the water quality and quantity in the Richland-Chambers Reservoir, which in turn affects the water supply for its operations,” Ficenec said.
Besides MillerCoors, Water As A Crop has also helped coordinate funding from organizations such as the Dixon Water Foundation, Meadows Foundation and Knobloch Family Foundation to support conservation efforts in the Trinity River basin. A significant amount of funding was also provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture–Natural Resources Conservation Service (USDA–NRCS) National Water Quality Initiative and Tarrant Regional Water District.
“Texas is facing a lot of water issues and is going to need to depend on private lands and how landowners manage their private lands as a major component of how Texas delivers its water needs sustainably into the future.”
Using this funding from collaborators, Sand County Foundation facilitated reimbursement to landowners for the costs of conservation practices such as building fences for rotational grazing and planting riparian buffers, sources said.
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