No Snow, No Water: Southeast Colorado Farmers Brace for Tough Irrigation Season

~Anne Boswell

If you felt that winter never truly came to Southeast Colorado this year, you would not be alone. 

One local farmer is really concerned about what a lack of snow in the mountains would mean to the upcoming growing season.

Chuck Hanagan has been farming the Arkansas Valley a long time.  His family are fifth generation farmers and have cultivated the soil in Otero County since 1906. 

“They’ve had a history of almost every crop you can imagine from all the produce, truck farming, they ran packing sheds along the rail line many, many years ago, and my brother runs a fruit stand, Mary’s fruit stand just outside of Swink, he and his wife operate that, so we’ve got a little bit of agricultural history in the area.”

Hanagan explained that the family works 800 or a little more acres of irrigated farmland. 

“In Otero County, if you do not put water on that crop, you will not harvest a crop” he furthered because the area does not receive enough rain and other moisture to sustain a farming operation.  He compared it to counties in the North and even into Kansas who could function as dryland farms, meaning those that only rely on the weather to support them.  However, that is just not the case in Otero County. 

“You drive up to Eads, or western Kansas, there’s wheat, dryland corn, no supplemental irrigation is applied from either ground water or from a river or anything like that, here we’re one of the, with the exception of parts of Mesa County and the San Luis Valley, we’re one of the driest agricultural areas of the state.”

According to the averages of rainfall, only eight to ten inches of rain per year can be expected, so irrigated farming is a must for those in Southeast Colorado. 

Hanagan became very concerned this year as he watched what was happening in the mountains this year, and that was an extreme lack of snow.  It is important because farmers start to watch those numbers because it indicates how much snow melt runoff will be available to use in their irrigated farming operations.  Agricultural operations hope for snow in November and December because it lands in the trees does into the crevices and freezes up to ensure a good runoff in the spring.

So, if the skiing is good, so will be the growing season, or something like that, according to Hanagan.

“We love to see people come to Colorado to ski, and have a wonderful ski here, because if they had a good ski, then we’re probably going to have a good irrigation year.”

Late last year, Hanagan was not ready to call the gloom and doom just yet, after all, things could still change.

“Farmers are eternal optimists, we’ve still got time,” he mused.

But that did not turn around the way he had hoped and now he is concerned to say the least.

Hanagan predicts that a lack of rain not only will hurt the farmers but the ranchers too as the grazing lands are especially dry. 

A mild winter is going to have big impacts for sure Hanagan continued. 

“It could be huge, we’re stacking this on top of kind of a dicey agriculture economy anyway, expenses are through the rough, fertilizer follows oil.”

Can we get back to that “eternal optimist” feeling despite the bad news?  Not without being a little realistic about what's happening, if nothing else to just understand.

Hanagan warns that some of the numbers are painting a bleak future.

“In 2024, it was the first year the US became a food importer, we were importer more food than we exported.”

He said it should scare the American public.  Farmers responded. 

“We’ve always been the producers of the world, we’ll feed the….when the government hollered at farmers, hey you gotta do more, they plowed fence row to fence row and they raised crops.”

“You can tell them they can’t do something, and they’ll make a liar out of you,” Hanagan said with a chuckle.

The optimism remains.  Clearly noted in talking with this Otero County man.

“There’s not a better way to raise your kids,”

Hanagan still believes they are a vital part of the Valley.  Continuing a legacy, growing food to feed Southeast Colorado and beyond.

Hanagan urges us all to support local family farms and ranches as much as we can. 

Farmers and ranchers are human.  They will worry.  They will continue to watch the science, the weather, snow and the numbers, the expenses, the regulations while managing the stress they might experience. 

In the meantime, if you could say a prayer for some rain for the plains, Hanagan and the others growing our food would greatly appreciate it.

*see the US drought monitor for Colorado, here:

https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CO

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