Michael Jones ducked under an idle sprinkler and strode across the sandy soil where he planned to plant drought-resistant crops, hoping to save water amid the driest period in more than 1,200 years.
For the fourth-generation grower, sowing fewer, higher-value plants on this tiny organic farm was borne out of necessity: In 2018, his irrigation ditches ran dry. Farmers in Colorado’s San Luis Valley rely on such ditches, which are fed by snowmelt and rain that run into cottonwood lined creeks that flow out of two towering mountain ranges, the Sangre de Cristos and the San Juans. But that snowmelt dropped by 40 percent over the last four decades. The six-county region is now among the harshest places to farm in the West. Federal officials designated it a disaster area in April due to its extremely arid conditions