Value
of water draws sugar beet growers
By PATRICIA
R. MCCOY Idaho Staff Writer
NAMPA, Idaho – One acre foot of water will
produce about two tons of alfalfa hay, making it worth about $200 to a
hay grower.
It will also produce $45,000 worth of milk, which will produce about
$250,000 worth of cheese. A grower can use it to produce 10 to 12 tons
of sugar beets, which in turn produce $10 million worth of sugar.
A cheese factory can’t make cheese without milk, and cows can’t
produce milk without hay. A sugar beet plant can’t produce sugar
without beets, and that means that growers have to have water, said Bill
Hazen, Gooding County extension agent.
The interrelationship of all these water uses makes it very difficult to
put a value on an acre foot of water, Hazen told growers in Nampa Jan.
14 during the Snake River sugar beet Conference.
The real value of water is a major topic in Idaho now. Buying water
rights and permanently retiring some lands from production is one part
of the proposed Nez Perce Settlement for tribal water claims in the
Snake River Basin Adjudication. It is also a proposed part of settling
differences between water and surface water rights holders in the
Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer.
The six south-central Idaho counties comprising Magic Valley contain
935,000 acres of irrigated land, less than 10 percent of the land area
within those counties, and 21.9 percent of the state’s harvested
cropland. The crops those lands within the six counties produce are
worth $522 million, 39 percent of Idaho’s $3.9 billion total worth of
crops, Hazen said.
“Crop sales average $558 an acre. Growers typically divert 5.45 acre
feet of surface water to grow them, making that water worth about $106
an acre foot. Processed food products are worth $1.9 billion, which adds
another $400 million to the value of agricultural products, and another
$81 to the value of each acre foot of water,” he said.
“Next, you look at the 41,000 jobs in the Magic Valley that are tied
to production agriculture, food processing or related jobs. That’s 51
percent of the jobs in the area. Divide that into the total number of
acre feet worth of water our south-central Idaho growers use, and each
job requires 120 acre feet of water,” he said.
Many of those jobs have already been lost to Idaho’s drought, which
some say has been going on since 1988. Farms have borne the brunt of the
resulting economic loss, Hazen said.
The extension worker hesitated to put an economic value on water in
relationship to fish or tourism.
“It’s hard to get a handle on what tourism really is. Since I’m
away from my home county today, chances are good I’ll buy a meal at
some restaurant, and perhaps even a motel room for the night. When I
live in-state, does that make me a tourist? I don’t know how to value
that,” he said.
Hazen’s presentation was part of the general session of the
conference, which followed the closed-door session of the Snake River
Sugar Co.’s annual meeting. Water was a major theme, with presenters
discussing the water supply outlook in Southern Idaho. Ron Carlson,
regional manager for the Idaho Department of Water Resources, Idaho
Falls, and Rick Wells, water operations manager for the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation, Boise, both said it’s too early to project what supplies
might be for next summer, but described various scenarios that could
result if supplies are above, at or below average.
Other speakers discussed whole farm revenue insurance and the
Conservation Security Program available from the Natural Resources
Conservation Service. |
