Fallow ground: Farmers gamble on water as drought grips Greybull River Valley

Highway 14/16/20 split the little town of Emblem into two different landscapes last week: desert and farmland. Throughout the Greybull River Valley, fields were left unplanted this year, leaving barren soil where crops usually flourish. 

“I haven’t experienced anything like this, but I was working for guys when they were before in the 90s and early 2000s,” said Mike Neves of Burlington. Neves farms 1,200 acres; this year he did not plant 500 acres due to concerns about what water would be available to him come summer. 

This has been the dryest summer in recent memory for area farmers; 100% of the state of Wyoming faces drought conditions and Big Horn County ranges from severe drought in the north to extreme drought in the south. In the Greybull River Valley, farmers compared conditions to the early 2000s, when the fields were similarly bare and dry. Tino Mendez started Mendez Brothers farm with his brother Fidel Mendez in 2003. 

“In 2003 we were short on water, but we made it,” Tino Mendez said. The Mendezes typically farm 3,000 acres, 580 of which were left unplanted this year. With acres in Otto and Emblem, the brothers focused their planting in Otto, which has an earlier water right. 

Emblem, Otto and Burlington share their irrigation water, at least at its source. Individual properties own water rights off the Greybull River; many Otto farms have territorial water rights, as they were settled around 1892-93, and get first priority for water use. Emblem water rights were established around 1896. The town of Burlington came a little later, with the canal first dug around 1895. Anything settled after the early 1900s is generally considered a flood right, with river water available only when flow is at its highest. 

To supplement once river water rights are exhausted, Upper Sunshine, Lower Sunshine and Roach Gulch reservoirs outside Meeteetse offer additional water for area farmers. The reservoirs and the river are all largely fed by snowmelt from the Absaroka mountain range. As of April 1, snow water equivalent across the state sat at only 38% of the median, around the time farmers had to start planning what to put in their fields. In May, the Bighorn Basin’s snow water equivalent was around 46% of median. 

The decision not to plant is based largely on federal crop insurance. 

Garrett Horton, who began farming in Otto full-time with business partner Armando Rios in 2024, explained that in a typical crop loss scenario, when a planted field does not produce its yield, insurance pays a reduced value of the predicted yield, about 70%. However, it becomes difficult to make an effective claim should they run out of water partway through the growing season; farmers are expected to know what water will be available to them and plant accordingly. The payout for a preventative plan - not planting at all - is closer to 1/3 of predicted yield. It pays only the fixed costs: land payments, equipment costs and property taxes that remain consistent year-to-year. 

“It’s not ever as good as if you grew a crop,” Neves said of preventative planning. 

“We just gamble every year,” Mendez said, “That’s what one guy told me; ‘We don’t have to go to Las Vegas to gamble, we’re doing it here every year’...The way we figure, if we’ve got 40% of the water in the reservoir, we try to plant 40%.”

Neves reported the reservoir water last year was at 100%, this year, closer to 55%. On July 7, the total stored water for all three reservoirs was 58,465 acre-feet, last year at the same time it measured 101,649 acre-feet. 

“On a typical year I’d have 1,300 acre-feet of water to draw on out of those reservoirs,” Horton said, “This year I only had 650. Last year we had plenty of water. I used 670 acre-feet last year.” Irrigators pay a set amount towards the reservoirs, whether water is available to them or not. 

The Greybull River Valley typically produces sugar beets, beans, barley and corn. On Horton’s farm, beans got the axe this year, corn planting was cut by 100 acres and a hay cover crop has been planted where more profitable crops would be expected to compensate for a predicted lack of water. The cover crop will be sacrificed first if water runs out. Corn, Horton explained, takes a lot of water, but can still be chopped for silage if water runs out. If you run out of water with a bean crop, “all you’ve got is burnt beans.”

Sugar beets were still put in the ground this year, despite their high water requirement, due to contracts with local sugar companies. Horton plants for Wyoming Sugar Company in Worland, Neves plants for Western Sugar Cooperative out of Lovell. 

“From a management standpoint, we wouldn’t have planted the beets if we didn’t have to because they do take so much more water,” Horton said. “Thankfully water’s been fine, but if it gets tight in a month, then there’s still a chance that we don’t make it to the finish line with the beets.”

Neves reported he planted about 3/4 of his beets this year. 

Mark Bjornestad, senior agriculturist at Western Sugar Cooperative, recalled that in the early 2000s, when the area last had water issues, the company was able to balance the loss in Greybull River Valley by utilizing more beets from their Montana farmers; he anticipated there would be similar flexibility if needed this harvest. The company prepares each year to fulfill a set quantity of sugar production and needs the beets to do it. 

“It’s not a great situation for anybody, especially the farmers,” Bjornestad said “When mother nature is involved like that, there’s not much we can do.”

The good news is, late spring snow and a mild June have given irrigators a consistent river water supply thus far. 

“We probably should have planted more,” Neves said. “We’ve had more river water than we expected.”

Neves serves on the Bench Canal board, which services the Emblem Bench, and Horton serves on the Farmers Canal Company board, which provides water to areas of Otto, Burlington and east of Otto. The Bench Canal receives 40 feet and the Farmers Canal 60 feet of river water. 

“When that 100 feet of river disappears, then all we have to carry the water is reservoir orders, so it gets harder and harder to manage less and less water when you’ve got to move it,” Horton said. The irrigation system has to spread water about 20 miles down the ditch, and if river water depletes, the flow may be minimal. 

“I think that’s the biggest worry going forward, even by August, maybe I still have my reservoir water, and I’m ordering it, but they can’t get it to my head gate,” Horton said. 

Neves maintained the water situation has been better since Roach Gulch Reservoir was completed in 1999, allowing reservoir water to supplement fluctuating river water and maintain a more constant flow. 

“Our limitation is stored water,” Horton said. He stated that for the acreage the three reservoirs supply, there is not an overage of water available. 

Last month, the Greybull Valley Irrigation District announced its plans to drain Upper Sunshine Reservoir to perform repairs, with intentions for it to be completely empty by September 1. It will be refilled come October, then drained again in 2027 for construction, which is expected to be completed in April 2028. 

“Those are all factors ... the more unknown, the less you want to stick your neck out,” Horton said. 

“It’s a unique situation, and everyone’s tackled this a little differently, we won’t know who’s right or wrong until October.”

Beyond water stress, farmers are facing increased input costs - fertilizer and fuel, driven up by inflation and, more recently, the war in Iran. Prices for barley and corn are down; corn due to overproduction and a low export demand, barley due to competing wheat crops and decreased domestic demand. Weaker export demand for seed beans has also driven that market downward. Earlier this year, the USDA announcement that the federal government will provide $150 million in assistance to American sugar beet and sugar cane farmers following commodity price declines. 

“Always, I think, God blessed us. Because I like doing this job. I see the crops growing, see the corn. It looks beautiful now,” Mendez said, looking west from his unplanted field to a lush green cornfield.

“I just hope something’s going to bounce (back), and it’s going to be okay so we can keep farming,”