Alternative Forages for Drought Resilience
Alternative Forage: The challenges and opportunities
This article was featured in "On Land" by Western Landowners Alliance | July 5, 2024 | By Jake Lebsack | Article has been condensed.
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On June 28th, Western Landowners Alliance convened the second webinar in our ongoing Summer Water Webinar Series. The program covered the challenges and opportunities associated with growing alternative forages and experimenting with drought-resilient crops.
Alternative Forage and Why it Matters to the West
With over 50% of the water in the Colorado River Basin dedicated to growing forage for livestock, the potential impact of alternative crops on the region’s drought resilience is immense. As western lands grapple with ongoing drought, it becomes increasingly clear that solutions must focus on doing more with less water.
Drought Resiliency Projects in Colorado
Greg Peterson, executive director of CAWA, opened the webinar by highlighting their recent work in distributing funds to farmers and ranchers to explore innovative agricultural practices, including those related to growing drought-resilient crops.
One notable example is the work being done in Grand County, where local irrigators are combating the dominance of smooth brome grass in high- elevation meadows. By using heavy equipment to disrupt the sod layer, they are planting warm-season grasses and other crops on a large scale, demonstrating a proactive approach to enhancing species diversity and improving forage quality. Read about the Grand County study in the next section.
Watch the YouTube video
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Intermountain West Alternative Forages Project – Phase I
Irrigation of forage crops, primarily alfalfa and grass hay and pasture, consumes most of the water used in Western Colorado and much of the rest of the Upper Colorado River Basin. Agricultural water conservation efforts to date have primarily focused on temporary fallowing and reduced irrigation of these forage crops. While this work is important to address short-term water shortages, it has limitations as a long-term adaptation to water scarcity. There is a growing interest in understanding the potential of alternative forage crops to use less water while supporting the vitality of agriculture over the long term.
This project is targeting three crops: Kernza® varieties of intermediate wheatgrass (IWG; (Thinopyrum intermedium), sainfoin (Onybrychis viciifolia), and silflower (Silphium integrifolium). Current research indicates these crops could require less water and be economically viable alternatives to alfalfa and grass hay.
Phase 1
Phase I of this project will primarily address the first question: what sequence of practices are needed to establish these crops on lands formerly used for hay production and grazing in the Upper Colorado Basin? In order to address this question we will:
- Conduct an in-depth review and assessment of existing work relevant to the Colorado River Basin for IWG varieties and sainfoin (NOTE: Funding has already been secured for this task, which will inform our 2023 field trials)
- Conduct field trials for all three crops at 6 on- farm sites at different elevation zones in the Upper Colorado River Basin, pairing them with more controlled sites at university research stations, and
- Support for the field trials through hiring an agronomist to advise cooperators, collect samples and data, and assess results.
In addition, we are laying the groundwork for a larger scale assessment of water use by these crops across the intermountain West by adding additional information, effectively “teaching” the USDA Cropscape system. This system provides a raster, geo-referenced, crop-specific land cover map for the continental United States using satellite imagery. This will enable a coarse-level estimation of the extent to which these crops are being grown in the intermountain West and, through other remote sensing tools, estimate their consumptive water use and compare it to more traditional forage crops grown in the region.