With Colorado River cutbacks starting, farmers will plant less
More than two decades of dry winters and drying Colorado River reservoirs will finally produce a long-feared landscape of drier farms in central Arizona starting this month. Desert farmers, especially the 900 or more in Pinal County, start the new year with massively reduced allocations from the canal that delivers water hundreds of miles from the river. Their irrigation districts are using state money to drill new wells to replace some of the losses with groundwater, another resource that’s at a premium in the fast-growing region.