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Can eating less beef and dairy help save the Colorado River?
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Western states and the federal government face a looming 2026 deadline to divvy up falling water levels in the Colorado River basin. As overuse and climate change stretch the river thin, research suggests relatively small shifts in global eating patterns could save enough water to fend off steeper cuts for cities and agriculture — and help reduce climate pollution.
Nearly half — 46% — of all the water drawn from the Colorado River goes to growing feed for beef and dairy cows, according to a recent study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. It’s the most detailed analysis yet of how the river’s water is used.
That’s nearly twice as much water as the combined use of every city that relies on the river, including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
“We could wipe all of the cities off the map that are using Colorado River water, and we would just barely be balancing the water budget,” says Brian Richter, lead author of the study.
That means as states wrestle over how to share the basin’s dwindling water supplies, major cuts will have to come from irrigation for agriculture, Richter says.
The seven Western states that rely on the river — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, California, Arizona and Nevada — are in negotiations over how to make those needed cuts. The current rules for the river, first established more than 100 years ago, expire in 2026.
Currently, the biggest users of Colorado River water are farmers in the Imperial Valley in Southern California.
The region is an agricultural powerhouse. Almost all of the leafy greens and vegetables like broccoli that Americans eat in the winter are grown in the Imperial Valley and next door in Yuma, Ariz.
But for much of the year, the region’s primary crops are alfalfa and other hay crops, which have one primary purpose: feeding beef and dairy cows in the U.S. and around the world. The valley is also home to cattle ranches with hundreds of thousands of cows.
So as the Colorado River becomes increasingly stressed due to all that demand, plus the worsening impacts of climate change, could it be saved if Americans — and the world — ate less beef, cheese and yogurt?
“We advertise ‘take short showers, remove your lawn to save water,’ but we’re not quite advocating diets as a society to save water yet,” says Bill Hasencamp, Colorado River resources manager for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies water from the river to cities across the region.
Individual choices may not have a direct impact on the Colorado River in the short term, because the food system is so complex and global, Hasencamp says. But small changes can add up in the long term.
Farmers in the region are already making changes, largely driven by stricter water regulations. But long-term change, experts say, will also require consumers to change how they eat.
“One person removes one lawn, it doesn't make a difference, but a thousand people starts to make a difference, and a million people makes a huge difference,” Hasencamp says. “It's the same thing with the diet.”
How alfalfa became king
Many farmers in California’s Imperial Valley are already considering the switch from cattle-feed crops to less-water-intensive vegetables and upgrading to equipment that helps them use less water. But making the change is complicated and expensive.
Trevor Tagg, 38, runs his family’s 3,200-acre farm in El Centro in Imperial County with his father and brother. He’s trying to set up the farm for the future at a moment of increasing uncertainty.
“Essentially, we're taking a 40-year-old company that was fairly beat up and trying to put it back in a position that will support my brother and I,” Tagg says.
Like most farmers in the area, the Taggs grow alfalfa and other hay crops, which are sold to dairies and beef operations across the U.S. He also exports about 30% of his hay to countries such as China and Saudi Arabia. That’s a trend across the valley and the Colorado River basin. Exports of alfalfa to Asia and the Middle East have tripled in the past two decades because of rising demand for beef and dairy.
Tagg also grows onions. The Imperial Valley, he notes, is the “winter vegetable capital” of America.
Vegetables require less water to grow than alfalfa and may ultimately sell at a higher price point. But alfalfa and other types of hay are a more reliable cash crop for farmers.
That’s in part because vegetables require more human labor to harvest. Higher labor costs in California are one reason why vegetable growing has shifted from the Imperial Valley to Arizona and Mexico, says Bart Fisher, a Southern California farmer and former lead negotiator representing California on the Colorado River board. And farmers can’t turn a profit on vegetables until months or nearly a year later because they take more time to grow before they’re ready for harvest.
Alfalfa, on the other hand, is largely harvested by machine. It’s more resilient to drought. And it can be sold pretty much year-round.
But the Imperial Valley is a desert. Farming alfalfa here requires about as much water as the entire state of Arizona is allocated per year from the Colorado River.
It may sound counterintuitive to farm in the desert, says Paul Brierley, director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture and former director of the University of Arizona’s Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture.
But he says the soil in this part of the Colorado River basin is very fertile. Before the river was diverted to cities and farms, it flooded this region for thousands of years on its way to the sea, building up layers of nutrient-rich sediment.
Plus, with year-round sunshine and little rain, it’s possible to grow more food and there are fewer variables that could ruin a crop.
“I like to say we farm in the desert not in spite of the desert, but because of the desert,” Brierley says. “It turns out that we have, in most crops, really the highest productivity per acre and per acre-foot of water that you get anywhere — even alfalfa.”
Tagg and his neighbors are intimately aware of changes on the Colorado River.
“We're probably more conscientious than anybody because we're directly related to the river, as opposed to, with all due respect, someone who just turns on a tap or waters their lawn,” Tagg says.
But the way farmers receive water in the Imperial Valley, through a system of canals drawing from the Colorado River, is more like turning on the tap than in other regions. Higher up in the river’s basin, like in Colorado, farmers and ranchers go out of business if streams and wells run dry.
And Imperial Valley farmers such as Tagg are first in line to get Colorado River water. They have senior legal rights to the river, so they get the biggest bucket of water — and they’re the last to face cuts.
But Tagg says stricter water limits are starting to change his business.
It’s one reason he’s prepping some of his land to grow less-water-intensive onions, instead of alfalfa.
“Obviously it's better for our ranch to have more diversification, different revenue streams, but we're also creating a way for us to conserve water,” Tagg says.
He’s also invested in pipe irrigation, which uses less water than traditional flood irrigation but is more expensive to install. He was able to recoup about half of the roughly $5 million he’s spent on pipes through state grants.
At times, Tagg sublets alfalfa plots to farmers who specialize in other vegetables that use less water, like carrots. That crop rotation makes for healthier soil, he says, which also needs less water. Such crop rotation partnerships are becoming more common in the area, Tagg says.
Federal policy is also making that bet more attractive.
Tagg plans to participate in a new program in the Imperial Valley, in which the federal government will pay him not to grow alfalfa and other hay crops during the driest months of the year. It’s part of a major deal recently struck with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Imperial Valley farmers agreed to cut their water use through 2026, with cuts adding up to more than twice as much as the entire state of Nevada uses in a year.
Meeting the demand for beef and dairy
The Imperial Valley isn’t just home to hay crops like alfalfa. There are also hundreds of thousands of cows.
Eric Brandt runs a 125-acre, grass-fed cattle ranch, raising some 250 beef cattle and selling mostly to high-end organic markets in the U.S. His brother grows alfalfa, and his dad runs a larger ranch nearby. The family is among the biggest users of Colorado River water in the valley.
The region’s cattle ranchers argue that as global demand for beef grows, it’s better to raise beef in places like the Imperial Valley than in parts of the world with more lax regulations, such as Brazil, where cattle ranching is a major driver of deforestation.
“You're not going to change demand, it's just going to come from other sources that you don't have the ability to regulate,” Brandt says.
He points to efforts to mitigate the environmental impact of farming in the Imperial Valley. On Brandt’s 125-acre ranch, the cows’ manure is used as compost on alfalfa fields, which helps lessen the use of fertilizers derived from fossil fuels and helps reduce water use. They recently received a permit to recycle water used at their beef processing plant to meet water restrictions.
“Would you rather consume beef or American products,” Brandt asked, “versus importing beef or produce from other countries that don't share the same values and don't have the same regulations, that might be deforesting land?”
Producers like Brandt and Tagg say that instead of pointing the finger at farmers, part of the solution is for consumers to better understand where their food comes from.
Small dietary changes, big impact
Climate scientists say the current global appetite for beef and dairy is unsustainable in the long term, but even modest changes could have a major impact.
Beef demand is rising around the world. In the U.S., per capita beef consumption has leveled off. But Americans’ growing demand for dairy products like yogurt and cheese is driving demand for more alfalfa in the Colorado River basin, says Brian Richter, the lead author of the study on Colorado River water use.
The rising global demand for beef and dairy products means there are now so many cows on the planet that they’ve become a major source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Through their burps, farts and manure, cows are the largest source of methane emissions in the U.S. and the the world. Methane is a greenhouse gas that’s heating up the planet even faster than carbon dioxide.
The U.S., which has the fourth-largest cattle population in the world, plays a role in reducing that demand, says Jessica Fanzo, director of the Food for Humanity Initiative and a professor who studies climate and diet at Columbia University.
“If you look at the countries who emit the most greenhouse gases from their food system, it's the United States, Brazil, China, Indonesia, the EU and India,” Fanzo says. “[Red meat] is quite cheap in the U.S. It's culturally normal. It's almost hard to not eat meat.”
Americans consume more meat and dairy than most people across the globe, and above the recommended amount for good health, Fanzo says.
“In places like the United States, we have a lot of room to move. We can reduce our meat consumption and still be very healthy,” she says.
Researchers stress that small changes in eating habits can add up and make a big impact.
In general, Fanzo says, a good rule of thumb for a climate-friendly diet is to eat more plants and plant-based foods and less red meat and dairy.
“I don't think everyone has to become a vegan or even vegetarian,” Fanzo says. “It's this reducing.”
One strategy is to skip beef at breakfast and lunch and instead get your protein in other ways, Fanzo says, such as with canned beans, oysters or sardines. She suggested making eating beef a special occasion.
Eating more vegetables would also help, says Brierley, the director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture.
If more Americans chose diets better aligned with federal health recommendations, he says, that could help shift the market to less-water-intensive and lower-emission vegetable crops.
“I've had produce growers say, even if people would get just a little bit closer to what they're supposed to as far as number of servings a day of vegetables, it would really spur demand and more people would switch to growing produce,” Brierley says.
Diets are personal — they’re connected to cultures, individual health and tastes, as well as how much money and time households have.
But when enough people make a few changes in their individual lives — and support policies and farmers that produce food more sustainably — experts say it can lead to significant large-scale shifts down the line.
“Climate change is daunting, but you can make changes that do matter,” Fanzo says. “As climate change continues to barrel down on us, and people learn about the connection that food is contributing to climate — and livestock is one of the big issues in the food space — I think more people will come to the table.”
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