Amid Severe Drought, Arizona Turns to Sustainable Farming

The creation of forest gardens—the modern term for an ancient agroforestry model that mixes shrubs, herbs, vines, fruit and nut trees, and perennial vegetables—are helping supply communities in sub-Saharan Africa with food, medicine, and animal feed. The U.S.-based NGO TREES claims to have created 38,000 active forest gardens in five countries, each comprising about 4,000 trees. This has restored 99,743 acres of degraded land, having reached 56,273 farmers and their families across 174 community projects.

Residents of Napa, California, are replacing their lawns with native, low-water landscaping to use less water and save money on water bills. Many were incentivized by the city’s Cash for Grass rebate program that offers per-square-foot rebates for those who make the swap.

In Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin Ministerial Council was formed after a severe drought to bring together federal, state and regional governments and bridge parochial concerns. It was meant to manage the basin as a whole and end overuse and salinization of farm land, leveraging new technologies to adapt to new realities.

Oatman Flats Ranch has implemented regenerative organic farming practices—including cover cropping, drought-tolerant crops, indigenous agricultural knowledge, and rotational grazing—to successfully restore degraded desert farmland, significantly improving soil health, biodiversity, and water conservation in a climate-stressed region.

Large-scale wastewater recycling is emerging as a crucial response to water shortages in Southern California, exacerbated by the declining Colorado River. The Orange County Water District's Groundwater Replenishment System has successfully produced over 450 billion gallons of recycled water since 2008, creating a reliable, drought-resilient local water source, despite high costs and issues surrounding initial public perception.

A federally-funded water conservation program, the System Conservation Pilot Program, is paying farmers in the Upper Colorado River Basin to not use the river’s water during the irrigation season. Leaving their fields dry for the program can earn them more money than they would get from growing crops.

An Arizona farmer became the first organic regenerative certified farm in the southwest using practices that conserve water and improve soil health along the drought-stuck Gila River. His practices include growing arid-adapted crops, integrating livestock grazing, and planting cover crops.

Several years of collaboration and compromise between many stakeholders led to the creation of the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan to better manage the river's water supply over the next 30 years.

The Yurok Tribe, located in Northern California, depends on fishing to sustain a living. However, a severe drought, the COVID-19 pandemic, and a crumbling highway severely affected the tribe. So, leaders are turning towards new ways of making an income: a community garden.

A community gardening project growing the guajiro bean has allowed Wayuu farmers in the Colombian desert to achieve food security despite the effects of climate change and external pressures. While scaling this agricultural success to other Indigenous clans can be difficult, using a low-tech irrigation system and red earthworm compost has allowed one settlement to feed its community and make their soil fertile again.