“Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over,” has often been attributed to Mark Twain. Regardless of who said it, it is a reality.

Many years ago, when flood water threatened the farm I grew up on, my uncle pushed dirt up on the levee that protected the farm from high water on the Santa Cruz River.

As the water rose it spread on the opposite side of the river, flooding the neighbor’s farm.

More than 30 years later the farmer from across the river approached me at a funeral and said, “Brent, I have to apologize to someone. I used to run your uncle off the road when I saw him coming because of what happened in the flood. I’ve felt bad about it for years.”

My uncle had died many years earlier and they had never settled the feud.

While not all water altercations are physical, battles rage across the country from aquifer depletion to growers fighting overreaching regulation by government agencies or the rising cost of getting water onto a crop.

Water is the number one input for growing a crop, without it there is no production. Too much water also results in no crop.

As the industry has worked to manage water more efficiently a subindustry has risen in agriculture that has gone from pushing up borders to retain or deter water to precisely put on just enough water to manage plant growth and production.

When farmers began tracking water use in irrigation, saving costs was the principal driver. Water conservation was a result of those measures – less water equals less cost.

Prior to that water usage was tracked in estimates, “I can grow that crop with about three-acre-feet of water.”

As producers began to refine their irrigation applications, they were able to narrow down the plant’s real needs and determine how to best apply their water resource in precise amounts.

That data-driven approach has revolutionized the irrigation industry and created an industry that didn’t exist a couple of generations ago. I can’t count the number of irrigation aids that have popped up over the last 10 years that have greatly advanced irrigation.

Over the years conservation programs have also popped up. They focus on water savings, most of them paying the grower to use less water. FSA programs which focus on conservation include drinking water protection, reduction of soil erosion, wildlife habitat preservation, preservation and restoration of forests and wetlands, and aiding farmers whose farms are damaged by natural disasters – be it flooding or drought.

At the same time, federal agencies are looking into how we manage our water, whether we are doing enough to protect the environment and what counts as designated waterways in the U.S. So, the battles are also philosophical.The fight will continue, and I appreciate the fact that farmers can lead that charge.