Grady Gammage, Jr. was a participant in the Western Growers 90th Annual Meeting in November in San Diego. Grady participated with five other water experts in a panel workshop regarding water rights.
Grady represented Arizona interests in the panel. He said the public is getting attuned to water use in a way that that they haven’t been before and people have awakened to the fact that in the West, 75-80 percent of all available water is going to agriculture. Despite the fact that they all drink and eat, that usage seems like an imbalance to them. He thinks we are going to see an increased emphasis on trying to protect water for non–agricultural purposes and that the real message for agriculture is, “You need to get ahead of that.”
For more information about the conference see: WGA 2015 Conference