Discussion with Stanley Crawford

Today I went up to Dixon, via the high road, for a discussion-cum-interview with Stanley Crawford, author of several works relevant to this blog (Mayordomo, A Garlic Testament, The River in Winter). As a former mayordomo for his acequia (del Bosque, in first photo), I wanted his take on how governance has changed on the ditch, if at all. While acequia bylaws are now de rigueur if the ditch seeks state and federal funding for projects and repairs, he called them a fallback set of rules. In other words, if you have to use them a lot, the ditch is in trouble. Most people don't bother to read the full set of bylaws.
So the good news, if one can call it that, is that governance has changed little over the last 30-40 years in Dixon, at least on his ditch. The typical, but occasional, lawsuit, and dealing with the alphabet suit of state and federal agencies responsible for water managment, were par for this acequia's course.

Unlike acequias living on the encroaching suburban fringe of Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and to a lesser extent Taos, Dixon is fairly removed from most population centers. People who do move there know what they're getting into, even if "farming" as a livelihood is no longer a goal for most. Yes, the ditch has seen a relative decline in the percentage of arable, irrigated land used on an annual basis. Yes, there was an upturn in the last decade or so due to regional markets, and Santa Fe's has been a boon for some. But there are several perverse reverse-incentives for farmers, or wanna-be farmers, principally centered on the price of entry into irrigated land...and subsidies. While ADM lives at the subsidy trough of the federal government, without "feeding the world" (just their investors), small farmers barely benefit from the massive programs at the national scale. But how many new, idealistic 18-25 year olds are ready or able to plunk down $50,000-100,000 an acre for irrigated land out here? They won't see that amount back as an income, in fact they'd be lucky to make 20-30% of that, even in Santa Fe selling dollar apples to tourists.

The Embudo valley is not fully adjudicated, there is no active metering or OSE flume activity, and it may well be "another twenty years" before resolution is found for these parciantes. I could find no direct link to the hydrographic surveys but presume it's been done, probably long ago. Crawford mentioned an aspect that I had not priced on an area basis, that of the costs of adjudication per acre. Some 20 years ago, the Aamodt case was running $10,000 per acre, in terms of the legal fees and costs, for the Pojoaque Valley alone. Back then, that was probably more than the cost (per acre) of irrigated land.

Crawford and his wife also have a place to rent out on the farm, a two-level adobe with a view of his drip-line irrigated field, still on the acequia but conserving water, and it looks like an idyllic place for a writer's retreat. Maybe next time, Stan.