Southern Utah bears little resemblance to conventional farming regions. In this arid zone, striking red rock formations dominate the landscape, overshadowing sparse green farmlands.
Agricultural operations in this harsh environment rely entirely on the few waterways that traverse the parched terrain. Rancher Andy Rice runs a goat and sheep farm in the tiny town of Boulder, home to just 227 residents and situated on the edge of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, embodying this local farming reality.
Rice has spent years curating a diverse mix of grasses, clovers and wildflowers across a lush green meadow on his property, a deliberate planting strategy designed to bolster the ranch’s ecological resilience and long-term sustainability. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” he said while holding up a handful of the native plant life. “Beyond all its ecological advantages, it’s simply a gorgeous sight to behold.” Yet the region’s arid climate remains unforgiving. The thriving irrigated meadow quickly fades into rugged sandstone ridges, making artificial irrigation an absolute necessity to sustain the ranch’s rich grazing vegetation.
The ranch’s water source is Boulder Creek, which feeds directly into Lake Powell — the nation’s second-largest reservoir and a critical pillar of the Colorado River water system. Confronted with persistent drought, accelerating climate change and intensifying competition for limited water resources, Rice is deeply aware of the precarious future facing agricultural producers across the American West.
“Water supplies will continue to shrink permanently,” Rice emphasized. “We must accept this new reality and take proactive steps to boost our water use efficiency.”This forward-thinking outlook prompted him to apply for funding from Utah’s Agricultural Water Optimization Program , a $276 million push to help farmers and ranchers modernize their irrigation systems.
Agriculture accounts for 70% to 80% of all Colorado River water usage, meaning basin-wide water conservation efforts heavily depend on cutting agricultural water consumption. Utah’s subsidy program covers half the cost of modern high-efficiency irrigation equipment, offering a replicable drought mitigation model for other Western states. Even so, experts question whether scattered on-farm upgrades can deliver meaningful, large-scale water savings for the entire river basin.
Rice stood beside the automated center-pivot sprinkler system funded by the state program, showcasing the dozens of spray nozzles suspended just above the ground. He noted that the new equipment delivers a night-and-day improvement in efficiency compared to the old system it replaced.
“This single small ranch saves millions of gallons of water every year,” Rice stated. “We’ve drastically cut our water consumption, and we’re just one tiny operation in this remote part of the state.” This lies at the heart of Utah’s water optimization initiative. By offsetting farmers’ equipment upgrade costs with state funding, the program lowers financial barriers to modernization, with cumulative on-farm water reductions helping the state maximize its limited water reserves.
Program manager Hannah Freeze confirms that over 551 agricultural water-saving projects have received official approval across Utah since the program launched in 2019. The state legislature allocated $276 million for the initiative, with $108 million disbursed for various projects by late 2024. Most of the funding has been dedicated to Great Salt Lake restoration, while only $23 million has funded 112 conservation projects within Utah’s portion of the Colorado River Basin.
Freeze acknowledges these early outcomes are encouraging but insufficient to resolve the basin’s worsening water crisis. “To achieve widespread, impactful water conservation and support the majority of local farmers, we would need approximately $2 billion in funding and 30 years of consistent, sustained implementation,” she explained.
Scaling the program to this necessary scope faces substantial hurdles. Many producers are reluctant to abandon generations-old farming practices, and even with state subsidies, modern irrigation equipment remains financially out of reach for some. A critical additional barrier is the widespread lack of awareness surrounding state and federal conservation grant programs.
Many also don’t know that government incentives like the optimization program exist. A 2023 survey of irrigators across the Colorado River Basin by the Western Landowners Alliance and the University of Wyoming found a "stark lack of awareness" about state and federal funding meant to help them conserve water.
Freeze emphasizes that mandatory agricultural water reductions are inevitable in the near future. “Producers will have to cut their water use,” she said. “Our program allows us to upgrade irrigation systems for farmers proactively, enabling them to keep their operations running amid shrinking water supplies.”
Utah’s program provides a viable framework for state-backed agricultural water conservation transitions. However, emerging scientific research casts doubt on whether irrigation system modernization delivers genuine, basin-wide water preservation benefits for the Colorado River. Some science, however, contradicts the idea that installing new, more efficient irrigation systems automatically means saving water in the Colorado River.
New Mexico State University professor Frank Ward and his colleagues found in their research that applying less water is not the same thing as consuming less water
“Drip and center-pivot irrigation offer tangible advantages: lower food prices, higher crop yields and improved farm profitability,” Ward conceded. “But they cannot be categorized as true water conservation investments.”
To truly assess if a program like Utah’s is saving water for the Colorado River Basin, he said, you’d need to also calculate how much of the water applied to crops is lost to evapotranspiration, a measurement of the water that evaporates and is released into the air from plants.
In Ward’s view, there are more effective ways a state could spend its money to conserve water in agriculture. Government funds could pay farmers to switch to less thirsty crops or water their fields less than what the crops need for optimal growth. Another option would be to pay growers to temporarily leave some land empty or switch sprinkler-fed farmland to a rain-fed ranching pasture.
Ward notes that many of these alternative methods may constrain agricultural economic output, yet such trade-offs are essential if the core policy objective is long-term river basin water protection.
The state is just beginning to quantify how much water it saves, so comprehensive data isn’t available. A legislative audit in 2023 criticized the program for not collecting detailed reports on the impact of its projects.
Even so, early success cases such as Rice’s ranch illustrate the potential of irrigation modernization across the Western U.S. Rice invested $250,000 in his farm’s sprinkler upgrades — a prohibitive cost for small family farms that rely on operational funds to sustain daily business and household expenses.
Rice believes statewide expansion of subsidized irrigation upgrades could deliver transformative basin-wide outcomes. “If hundreds of farms each save millions of gallons of water, we can collectively resolve this crisis,” he said. “I truly believe we have a responsibility to do so.”
This story is part of ongoing coverage of the Colorado River, produced by KUER in Utah, distributed by KUNC in Colorado, and supported by the Walton Family Foundation. It was also produced as part of the Colorado River Collaborative. KSL TV photographer Mark Wetzel contributed to this story.