{Photograph} by Meg Bernhard.

Alfalfa smells heat and earthy and form of candy, like socks after an extended hike, however not in a foul method. It’s delicate, with rectangular inexperienced leaves the dimensions of a pinkie nail. I do know this as a result of on a cold February afternoon I drove 100 and forty miles to the Imperial Valley, one of many state’s largest farming areas, pulled over to an unattended subject, and ripped up a clump. It was a brown day; the wind generators in Palm Springs have been spinning and a mud storm was brewing. The air was extra humid than regular. Alfalfa grows all over the place across the West, however it’s peculiar to see huge inexperienced fields on this place—a low, dry desert the place vegetation is scarce and water even scarcer. However the Imperial Valley, dwelling to an unintentional salt lake and a mountain made from multicolored painted adobe clay, is considered one of California’s weirder locations. The Salton Sea’s gunky shoreline takes off-road autos prisoner. A roving mud puddle eats on the freeway. Roughly 100 and fifty thousand acres of alfalfa develop in a spot that sees fewer than three inches of rain a 12 months.

Individuals like to hate alfalfa. It’s grow to be the Southwest’s boogeyman, chief offender within the megadrought. Farmers use alfalfa for cattle feed as a result of it’s excessive in protein, however the crop, a perennial, requires numerous water—by one estimate 5 acre-feet per acre within the Imperial Valley. By comparability, Imperial Valley lettuce makes use of about three acre-feet per acre, whereas, on common, grapes throughout the state use about 2.85. (An acre-foot is about sufficient to cowl a soccer subject in water a foot deep; alfalfa, then, requires 5 of these per acre.)

I take into consideration alfalfa loads, however solely within the summary, as a crop that makes use of an excessive amount of water and permits the existence of extra cows, which burp methane and make the local weather disaster worse. I wished to see it up shut, and I additionally wished to talk with one of many West’s most fervent college students, and defenders, of alfalfa. His title is John Brooks Hamby, and he’s the vice chairman of the board of administrators for the Colorado River’s largest single person, the Imperial Irrigation District, additionally referred to as IID. In contrast to alfalfa farther north, which can see a few harvests a 12 months, Imperial Valley alfalfa enjoys an extended season, he advised me after I arrived at a sterile IID workplace in El Centro embellished with photographs of canals and footbridges. “We are able to get ten-plus cuttings right here,” he mentioned. “Actually thick, dense stands.” Alfalfa just isn’t the valley’s solely crop; after I was visiting, lettuce was in season, as was celery. I’d apparently simply missed the carrot competition in Holtville, the place sixteen-year-old Ailenna Salorio was named the 2025 carrot queen. There are dates and lemons and broccoli and spinach and onions too. However alfalfa is king.

John Brooks calls himself JB. JB grew up within the Imperial Valley city of Brawley. There, as he tells it, his great-grandfather had come from Texas to dig irrigation ditches. His grandfather labored in land leveling, and his father went away for school however returned to develop and promote produce. At his mother and father’ wedding ceremony, company ate his father’s asparagus, which he needed to stop rising, JB advised me, after NAFTA lower into California farmers’ asparagus income. JB grew up tagging alongside as his dad checked fields and irrigated crops late at evening. Water formed the political and financial panorama of the Imperial Valley, whose water district has a few of the oldest, most senior rights to the Colorado River. 

JB is twenty-nine. He’s bookish and talkative, keen on bolo ties and Navajo concho belt buckles, comfortable with cattle ranchers and water students. He’s additionally California’s lead negotiator on the Colorado River, which serves forty million individuals throughout seven Western states, thirty tribes, and two Mexican states. Every of the American states that the river feeds—together with Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, thought of the “higher basin,” in addition to Nevada, Arizona, and California, “the decrease basin”—appoints a principal negotiator to hash out what water utilization throughout the river must appear to be. The decrease and higher basin negotiators all the time struggle over who has to chop again on water. Alfalfa, because the image of California’s extra in a time of drought, is a straightforward goal. This irritates JB. “You go into the grocery retailer, go into the entire dairy part. You’ve gotten Fage or Yoplait, Horizon grass-fed milk, otherwise you’re having any of the nonvegan ice lotions. Beef. All of that comes from alfalfa,” he mentioned. “It’s a foundational a part of the meals provide for each people and animals.” Alfalfa earned $269.7 million for Imperial County in 2022. That 12 months it bought for $325 a ton.

{Photograph} by Meg Bernhard.

 ***

I first met JB through the Colorado River Water Customers Affiliation convention—affectionately referred to as CRWUA (pronounced “crew-uh”)—on the Paris On line casino in Las Vegas final December. It was, at first look, like another Vegas convention: morning registration a number of ft away from individuals who’d been up all evening enjoying slot machines, panels held in windowless ballrooms, attendees milling round in lanyards, with a number of casino-specific particulars like pretend French boulevards, to not point out “toilettes” as an alternative of restrooms. The Colorado River people wore their western put on: cowboy boots, turquoise. Some wore cowboy hats, although the nationwide finals rodeo was additionally occurring in Vegas that week and it was arduous to distinguish the cattle individuals from water individuals.

CRWUA, as JB put it to me later, “is the promenade of the Colorado River.” “All people exhibits up. You’ve bought the exhibit corridor the place you are able to do no matter. There’s the drinks” he mentioned. The panels. “It’s the one time the complete basin comes collectively in a single place.” By the complete basin, he meant negotiators, attorneys, students, water managers, conservationists, tribal chairpeople, consultants, engineers, hydrologists, cloud seeders, photo voltaic panel entrepreneurs, Bureau of Reclamation bureaucrats, and folks with job titles like Colorado River Basin Salinity Management Discussion board director and Irrigation and Electrical Districts director.

I didn’t actually meet JB; he was venting concerning the higher basin to a reporter buddy of mine who was by some means nonetheless on good phrases with him despite the fact that he’d investigated the Imperial Irrigation District’s water utilization. My buddy and his colleagues had discovered that, in 2022, one farming household used extra Colorado River water than all of southern Nevada. JB argues that California, which has half the Colorado River basin’s inhabitants and the majority of its agricultural exercise, has been doing its half to be environment friendly with water, and different states must comply with its instance. Final summer season, Imperial Valley farmers agreed to go away their alfalfa fields fallow through the hottest a part of the 12 months, to preserve Colorado River water, in trade for federal cost. “California will get it carried out,” JB mentioned, on a public panel on the convention. He and the opposite decrease basin states need the higher basin to chop their water utilization if want be. He desires to keep away from litigation over the river, which, if historic lawsuits foretell something, might final the remainder of his life.

I stored a psychological checklist of phrases I’d by no means heard earlier than. Water masters and CRSP models and water-storage accounts and water credit. Water was purchased and bought and saved, claimed and reclaimed. There was helpful use to water, and abandonment of water, the doctrine of prior appropriation, in any other case often known as “first in time, first in proper.” The doctrine of public belief. The “virgin circulation” was what occurred when a river was allowed to run naturally. There was even water courtroom.

The Colorado River begins as snowmelt within the Rocky Mountains and winds 1,450 miles by means of the Southwest. Centuries in the past, it was a wild and muddy and biodiverse river, however as settlers got here to the arid west, they dammed and diverted it. It turned blue. In 1922, the federal authorities apportioned the seven states (not Mexico or tribal nations) fifteen million acre-feet of water to divide amongst themselves yearly; they believed the river carried as a lot as twenty million acre-feet of water. That 12 months had been unusually moist, and usually, the river averaged solely fourteen million acre-feet of water a 12 months. At the moment it’s extra like twelve million, and that preliminary water circulation miscalculation is on the root of the Colorado River’s disaster. The river ought to circulation into the Gulf of Mexico, however drought—plus a sequence of aqueducts, dams, and reservoirs meant to divert water for agricultural and concrete use—have prevented the river from reaching its terminus. Now by the point it will get inside 100 miles of the ocean, it’s lowered to a trickle.

A century after the unique Colorado River Compact was signed, Lake Mead, the nation’s largest man-made reservoir, reached its lowest degree ever. Vegas didn’t see rain for 200 and forty days. Our bodies, some many years outdated, beginning surfacing within the reservoir. Observers blamed the Mob. Lake Mead bought inside 200 ft of “deadpool”—the extent at which the reservoir can now not launch water downstream. In 2023, it lastly rained. Lake Mead was now not in essential situation, however the West continues to be dry.

On the time of CRWUA final December, Las Vegas hadn’t seen rain since July and the negotiators have been getting emotional. Usually, the seven of them maintain a public panel collectively, however river talks have been so tense that they held two separate panels, one for the decrease basin and one other for the higher. They nonetheless couldn’t come to an settlement on what river operations would appear to be when a lot of guidelines and laws expired in 2026. The higher basin claimed that their states suffered extra from local weather change; the decrease basin disagreed. All of them wished to develop their cities and farm, they usually thought the opposite facet ought to do much less. JB used the phrase propaganda to describe the higher basin’s handouts. Brandon Gebhart, Wyoming’s negotiator, implored the decrease basin to cease “saber-rattling.” Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s negotiator, referred to as the higher basin’s expertise of the river “the Starvation Video games.” She teared up.

{Photograph} by Meg Bernhard.

Apparently, some individuals referred to as the negotiators “water buffaloes.” “It’s an older phrase,” JB advised me, “traditionally used for these large gamers who have been titanic figures on large water initiatives or transferring water across the Colorado.” “I’ve been deemed one,” he mentioned, “however I don’t self-identify.”

***

In a convention room for distributors, JB’s IID sales space stood close to a conservation group passing out Swedish fish to warn about invasive species on the Virgin River and a United States Geological Survey sales space presenting the company’s newest drone know-how. The exhibition corridor was the place individuals went to drink espresso and eat pastries, sip wine within the night, take cellphone calls, and speak across the watercooler, which solely generally had water. (Multiple particular person made a drought joke.) To embellish, JB had requested a farmer/water district colleague for 2 of her “greatest, most stunning bales” of Imperial Valley alfalfa. He set them on the carpet alongside a placard that learn “Wonderful Alfalfa,” with the subtitle: “Extra Than Simply Hay—This Bale Powers Your On a regular basis!” He listed forty-four totally different cow merchandise in alphabetical order. Anti-aging cream. Beef bourguignon. Chewing gum. Crayons. Feta cheese. Footballs. Scorching chocolate. Lattes. Footwear. Brief ribs. Steak frites. Smash burgers. Tender serve. Whipped cream.

Farmers feed the necessity that exists, JB advised me. Individuals need their lattes. Their burgers. In the event that they wished rainbow chard, we’d be rising extra rainbow chard. As a substitute, we develop alfalfa to feed the cows that individuals wish to eat. Furthermore, alfalfa fixes nitrogen, he mentioned. It’s important for crop rotation. Wholesome soil.

{Photograph} by Luke Runyon.

After JB created the IID sales space, he was impressed to make beef bourguignon, which he’d included on his checklist of merchandise to show that beef might be elegant. It took him eight hours to make the dish, and he was happy with the end result, however he ate it for too many days in a row. “I used to be form of delay by beef for a bit of bit, despite the fact that I did a tremendous job making it,” he advised me later, within the IID workplace in El Centro. “Since then, I’ve been wholesome. I’ve been consuming numerous fish and greens. And so I really feel higher.” He continued. “Even if it’s not probably the most wholesome factor,” he mentioned, “individuals eat it.”

It was potential to chop down on consumption, he advised me. Have a look at his personal beef pause.

There have been extra panels. An HDR-sponsored wine tasting. A retirement get together in somebody’s lodge room. A rumor about star-crossed lovers throughout the basin divide (unfounded). Invocations of drought as enemy. Opaque references to local weather change. (CRWUA president and Utah negotiator: “The hydrology of the river is unsure.”) A Colorado-based marketing consultant advised me he as soon as frolicked with the author Edward Abbey on a ship. The higher basin held a last-minute press convention asking the decrease states to acknowledge their ache. Which was extra painful: the higher basin’s low snowpack or the decrease basin’s excessive evaporation? A Colorado State College water scholar tried to make use of an prolonged metaphor about Alice in Wonderland to elucidate the river. Nobody adopted. “Manner too lengthy,” the person sitting subsequent to me texted somebody. “Horrible,” his correspondent replied.

I took a bus with a number of dozen conferencegoers to see the Hoover Dam, which holds again Lake Mead. We placed on arduous hats and descended right into a diversion tunnel. There have been gasps. Exclamations. “That is a tremendous quantity of concrete,” mentioned one particular person. “I train an structure class,” mentioned one other. “I wish to train them how to do that, construct a dam like this.” A former U.S. consultant from Colorado leaned over to me. “Apparently,” he mentioned, “the primary particular person to die constructing the Hoover Dam was the daddy of the final particular person to die.”

***

Inside two months, river talks would enhance. The negotiators had modified their seating preparations for in-person conferences and have been discussing the best desk form to facilitate dialogue. In January, JB reached out to different basin states to have free-flowing, casual conversations with out the stress of everybody being in the identical room. By early February they nonetheless hadn’t arrived at a deal, however they have been assembly each different week in a distinct state and seemed to be getting nearer. “Issues have been actually dangerous in 2024. Twenty-five is off to begin,” JB advised me in El Centro. “However issues are nonetheless fragile and delicate.” Nobody, he mentioned, desires to go to courtroom over the river. Arizona’s proposed state finances, nevertheless, now consists of a number of million for Colorado River litigation. (One in all Trump’s early govt orders has halted funds to customers who preserve Colorado River water, making the river’s standing much more unsure.)

Driving by means of the Imperial Valley, I made a pit cease on the roving mud puddle, which was much more attention-grabbing to me than alfalfa. Scientists have no idea why the puddle, referred to as the Niland Geyser, propels ahead; it’s moved sixty ft over the previous few years. The puddle is effervescent and smells like sulfur. It dissolves all rock and highway that stands in its method. The California Division of Transportation needed to divert a freeway round it, and now it’s inching towards the Union Pacific practice tracks. After I noticed the pile of rocks surrounding the puddle, I laughed. Railroad officers constructed a seventy-five-foot underground wall to lure it. Engineers dug wells. However nothing can cease the water.