Will Thelander and his family
have been farming in Pinal County for several decades,
beginning with his grandfather in the 1940s.
The Tempe Farming Company grows crops such as cotton,
alfalfa and corn.
- Been great.
Started off just helping out
then got more and more duties around the farm.
Eventually became a partner a few years back
and yeah, it's been going great.
Till these water cuts that we've been facing
and so it's gonna be a lot more difficult moving forward.
- [Tony] Thelander is referring to the Tier 1 cuts
along the Colorado River
approved by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
The Central Arizona Project or CAP is an expansive
and expensive system that won't be able to deliver
as much water as usual to the middle of the state.
- The Tier 1 cuts specifically our irrigations district,
their contract with the CAP,
we're getting cut back by a ton of it.
So now instead of getting surface water from the Colorado,
we're gonna have to do a lot more ground water pumping.
So that's what it means,
we're gonna have a lot less water.
- Any idea on the number of farmers in this area
that are going to be impacted by this Tier 1?
- Farms our size, there's about, I wanna say like eight,
really big farms that are gonna be
making massive decisions this year on how much to plant
and equipment and all that stuff.
(water lapping)
- During this monsoon
which has dropped record rainfall in cities like Tucson,
Thelander situation seemed surreal.
(water lapping)
On our way to his farm west of Casa Grande,
the raging Greene Wash adjacent to (indistinct)
kept us from reaching his property.
We detoured to his cousin's farm instead.
Does it seem ironic that we couldn't get to your farm
because of this wash
moving so heavily right now? - Yeah, yeah, it's
very ironic because
(chuckles)
wish I could just build a giant reservoir and catch it all,
so I'd have water for next year,
but life doesn't work that way.
I wish those monsoons would just wait until the winter
and go snow up in the rockies.
- [Tony] The Colorado is fed by that snow melt,
but this monsoon rain is a different story.
It is very much appreciated,
but unpredictable as a long-term solution.
- Well, yeah, everyone's just like,
"Oh it rains, so now we have water."
It's like, nope, there's reservoirs
have to be above the city,
so Phoenix, Tucson, reservoirs, water can flow down.
It doesn't,
we got a bunch of water raining right here
we can pump it once it sinks in,
but there's not a lot sinking in
when you got a river flowing, so,
yep unfortunately this doesn't help with Colorado.
The district's doing everything it can do drill wells
throughout the district
to try to move as much water as we can
to keep as much in production as we can.
- [Tony] Thelander has already stopped using
hundreds of acres on his farm in order to save water.
And he's also experimenting with plants that require
less irrigation.
Farmers, he says are trying their best
as a competition for this precious resource heats up.
- So every single thing we can do we're trying,
it's only so much you can do.
People are always gonna come first
and when there's only so much water development for people
makes a lot more money than agriculture
on a per acre or land basis.
So you're not gonna win money-wise
and you're not gonna win,
hey, tell people they can't have water.
And the amount of water agriculture uses
compared to the civilian population it's like,
I think it's 80% of all water goes to agriculture,
so we're gonna be the first cut.
One thing I hear from a lot of people online,
'cause some of the other interviews
is the fact that we shouldn't be farming
in the desert anyway.
And then I, my retort to that is all the farmers
and everyone built all the infrastructure
for all these people to move out here,
without us none of these people would be here.
And to that point, should we have people living in a desert?
Should we build a city in the middle of a desert?
I don't know.
These are all questions that everyone
could be asking themselves.
It is what it is.
And who am I gonna yell at?
The clouds for not dumping enough snow in the Colorado?
For them over allocating the Colorado River?
A while ago when we're in a wet period,
when the scientists even know we're in a wet period.
So, I mean, there's no one to be mad at.
It's just do everything you can and keep moving forward.