CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — State Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says the Texas is running out of water, and it's impacting farmers who are getting out of the growing business.
Former San Patricio Farm Bureau board member Bobby Nedbalek said we aren't losing farmers like they do in the Rio Grande Valley because we don't rely on irrigation to water crops.
"We're built on a dry land farm operation here," he said.
Miller told 3NEWS we lose a farmer a week elsewhere in Texas.
"We've got plenty of land," he said. "We're not going to run out of land anytime soon, but we're out of water. That's the problem is, is water availability. We're up to 30 million people now and, we're maxed out, we're out of water."
Miller says there are lots of examples of the diminished farming industry in the state of Texas.
"If the irrigation district loses 40, the city loses 30, we're wasting 70 percent of our water," he said. "We can't do that. I've got money in my agency for infrastructure improvements. There's federal dollars, this Texas Water Development Board has money. We've got money to fix this problem, we're just not doing it."
Nedbalek said we can collect rainwater but not enough for farmers to use in their fields.
"Well, you can catch rainwater for your domestic use; you can catch it for your livestock, and store it in tanks, but you're not going to catch it and you're not going to be able to manage that catch for dry land farming," Nedbalek said. "You know, we do deep plowing to break the soil up to let it store as much moisture as possible."
Miller said we can't wait for Mexico to honor an old water agreement or for the federal government to come to the rescue.
"We got to do something about it ourselves," he said. "We've got to recycle our water, our farmers would love to irrigate with that."
The commissioner said he wants consumers and lawmakers to know his predictions so work can begin as soon as possible.