In future water-supply battles between agriculture and cities, cities are always going to win. Later this century, when greater Phoenix is likely to really feel the squeeze, the city will allocate so that agriculture suffers first.

“That’s the broader tradeoff we’re going to face in the Western U.S.,” says Fleck. “We have 80 percent of water in big systems that’s going to agricultural use. It’s just a tiny fraction of the economies of these places.” On top of this imbalance (one also facing cities like San Diego, Los Angeles, Denver, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque), Arizona is small in the greater algebra of who feeds the nation. When Phoenix comes to need water, it will be routed away from farms.

“How we come to terms with that really ugly reality will play out over the next century,” says Fleck. “When the choice is abandoning Phoenix or growing less alfalfa in the West, I just don’t see how you can grow alfalfa.”

With wild mint fragrant in the sun on her dashboard, Velvet Button, who is Akimel O’odham and Tohono O’odham, drives across her family farm in the Gila River Indian Community. Her truck plumes dust over the Arrakeen land just southeast of Metro Phoenix, in Pinal County, where many farmers beyond the reservation are dependent on Colorado River water and would face rationing with the first DCP cuts. Ramona Farms stretches in patches over 4,000 acres and 27 miles of the reservation, a quilt of verdant fields and deeply cracked soil in a bowl of Sonoran mountains, which frame the dusty bed of the Gila River. These days, there is no Gila River in these parts. It is among the area’s dead or near-dead rivers, a list that includes the Salt, San Pedro, and Santa Cruz.

The reservation is home to Akimel O’odham, which means “river people.” Just a few generations ago, Button says, one of the tribe’s main proteins was fresh fish.

“We will never have the water, the river back,” she says, surveying the drylands. “It’s not possible.”

Button crosses the dry riverbed giving farm tours, transporting food, and speaking about indigenous crops. Her family grows four kinds of indigenous corn, three heirloom wheats, and three varieties of tepary bean. Ramona Farms is best known for tepary beans, the low-water bean that, according to Tohono O’odham belief, forms the stars of the night sky. Button’s parents, Ramona and Terry, even selected a new varietal, the black tepary (s-chuuk bavi). Like the others, the black tepary thrives in arid places.



Though drip irrigation is more efficient, irrigating by canal is an ancient practice in these parts. The Button family has modernized it by creating a computer program to monitor the water they flood into their fields. “They’ve all been laser-leveled and concrete-ditched, so we have the most efficient water use and cropping,” Velvet says. “A properly lasered field is flatter than a pool table, with just enough fall to pull the water to the end.”