Spatio-temporal patterns of irrigation adoption and water use in Alabama

Abstract:

Alabama experiences one of the highest poverty rates in the nation, and agricultural communities are particularly hard hit. Alabama has lost over 12 million acres of row crop agriculture since 1950 linked to improvements in cross-state transportation and investments in irrigation infrastructure in Midwestern and Western production regions. Despite receiving more than 1,200 mm of precipitation annually, many agricultural regions in Alabama experience seasonal drought that reduces crop yields. Although irrigated acres are on the rise in Alabama, irrigated cropland represents less than 4% (188,970 irrigated acres in 2015) of the state’s total cropland (6,041,639 acres in 2017). Expansion of irrigated agriculture is a potential avenue for increasing agricultural productivity, farm revenue, and regional competitiveness of the state’s agricultural sector. However, there are numerous challenges to expanded irrigation including riparian rights only access to surface water, potential future regulations, and public perception of potential impacts on the environment. All of these challenges present barriers (real or perceived) to broader adoption of irrigated agriculture. The work presented here is part of a broader project to explore the potential agricultural productivity and rural economic benefits of a rain-fed to irrigation-fed (RFtoIF) agricultural transition in Alabama. Spatially-explicit and historical irrigation data is needed to link observable farming practices with survey information on the perceptions of and barriers to the use of irrigation among Alabama farmers. However, as is common in food-energy-water systems studies, existing data represents only a small sample of all farmers, is biased towards large farms, and includes both qualitative and quantitative data. We synthesize remote sensing and field-verified locations of center pivot agriculture, spatio-temporal cropland data, and survey responses of Alabama farmers to assess the multidimensional patterns of irrigation adoption and land-use change. This study contributes to mixed-methods approaches to elucidating social, economic, and biophysical linkages within the food-energy-water nexus.