June 2, 2000

Vegetable producers plagued
by water woes and low prices

By Mike Barnett
Editor

Acres and acres of onions and carrots have been abandoned and lay rotting in the fields of the Lower Rio Grande Valley as low prices and an ongoing drought have farmers facing a critical situation.

Fingers here are pointing South across the Rio Grande River as the cause of part of the problem.

Valley farmer and Hidalgo County Farm Bureau President Russell Vos says LRGV farmers are having a hard time competing with their Mexican counterparts.

“When you have a country right adjacent to you that can grow vegetables without any restraints or restrictions—pesticide restrictions, labor restrictions, so on and so forth—and can hire a day laborer for a full day’s work for what you pay for one hour’s work over here, it doesn’t take anyone with a lot of brains to see that it’s going to cost you. They can market the vegetables cheaper than here,” he says.

Jimmie Steidinger, a citrus producer who leases land for vegetable production, agrees.

“They’re hurting our market. There’s no question about it,” he says. “They’re flooding our market on the vegetable end of it. And in time, I think you’ll see 90 percent of the vegetables being raised in Mexico.”

Of particular concern after four years of drought is the lack of irrigation water. According to Jo Jo White, general manager of Hidalgo and Cameron County Irrigation District No. 9, Mexico has not honored treaty provisions with the United States that would release water from the Rio Grande River for irrigation purposes.

That treaty, signed in 1944, basically divvied up the water on the Rio Grande River and on the Colorado River as it enters into Mexico between California and Arizona. The treaty obligated each nation to furnish the other nation a minimum amount of water.

On the Colorado River, for example, the United States is obligated to furnish Mexico a minimum of 1.5 million acre feet of water per year. On the Rio Grande, Mexico is supposed to provide a minimum of 350,000 acre feet of water as an average yearly made during five-year cycles. The United States has never failed to honor their water obligation. The same’s not true for Mexico.

“The treaty has a provision that says that if Mexico suffers extraordinary drought, and a deficit occurs, they have the next five-year cycle to pay that water back,” White said. “The treaty does not define extraordinary drought, unfortunately.”

As a result, Mexico owes Texas over 1 million acre feet of water from the 1992-1997 time period. Now in the middle of this next five-year cycle, Mexico owes over 400,000 additional acre feet. Evidence, White says, shows that Mexico has plenty of water stored behind the dams on the Rio Conchos River, which is the single biggest river out of Mexico feeding into the Rio Grande, to honor its obligations.

Because of the withheld water, Texas farmers in many cases are operating on half of the normal irrigation allocation. And on heavily irrigated crops such as citrus, sugar cane and vegetables, they are having to cut production and shift production strategies to make ends meet.

“They’ve (farmers) been hammered,” White says. “They’ve had to make on-farm decisions on what little water they had allocated, where they were going to use it. They have to steal from one block of land to save that water to transfer to something else.”

For example, one of Steidinger’s lessees is Valley Onions, who has had to cut back 50 percent on their vegetables because of the water crisis.
“What they’re doing, they’re laying out 50 percent on their vegetable part because of the water situation,” he says. “With that they hope to have enough water to make a crop.”

Cotton and grain farmers are also being hurt, especially if they also raise water intensive crops such as citrus, vegetables or sugar cane.

As a citrus grower, Steidinger is worried about running out of water—essential for grapefruit size (which is a must for the Texas grapefruit market).

“It’s critical. It’s very critical,” he says. When you don’t get water on your citrus, you don’t get size. Our biggest customer is California. They like large fruit and that’s going to kill us on account of this drought and the water we’re not getting.”

What particularly steams vegetable producers is that Mexico is using water meant for irrigation in Texas to grow vegetables that compete directly for Texas markets.

“Not only are they holding the water, but they’re using our water to raise vegetables and marketing them over here in the United States with less cost and labor,” Steidinger says.

White says Valley growers have received a lot of state support from Gov. George W. Bush, Lt. Gov. Rick Perry and Ag Commissioner Susan Combs. Unfortunately, this is a federal issue.

“It’s basically going to take the hallowed halls of Washington to address the issue,” he says. “We did have a contingent of Valley people that did go to Washington, urging them to respond to our dilemma down here. So far we’ve been disappointed in our federal State Department for not addressing this issue adequately.”

President Clinton will meet with Mexico President Zedillo in June. White said the water issue is on the agenda.