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Sarah Jones is on a mission to save agriculture in the San Luis Valley.
For more than 20 years, the Southern Colorado high desert has been in a drought, leaving local farmers, like Jones—and the valley itself—in a perilous situation: Residents are using much more water than is being replenished. The farmers have to dig deeper and deeper to access the underground aquifer system that provides water for their cash crops: potatoes and alfalfa.
But how long before the water table dries up entirely? Jones, co-owner of Jones Farms Organics, is working to find a solution before the drought drives agriculture out of the valley. She teamed up with Heather Dutton, district manager with the San Luis Valley Water Conservancy District, to launch the Rye Resurgence Project (RRP), an initiative that aims to shift farmers’ focus from water-guzzling crops to a far-less-thirsty plant: rye.
Growing high-quality rye to maturity only requires about 12 inches of water, compared to 18 to 30 inches for barley, potatoes, and alfalfa. But farmers haven’t embraced the grain because it’s typically grown as a cover crop, not a cash crop—meaning it’s used to improve the soil, not to make money. That’s where the RRP comes in.
By collaborating with local bakers, brewers, millers, and distillers, the organizers behind the RRP are working to generate more demand for San Luis Valley rye, which would create more work for local farmers. “[The project] is literally eating and drinking and baking to save Colorado. That’s it. It’s that easy,” Jones says.
Where Did All the Water Go?
The San Luis Valley wasn’t always in such dire circumstances. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago when water felt like an endless resource, says Jason Cody, a fourth-generation Alamosa farmer and cofounder of Colorado Malting Company and the Colorado Farm Brewery. When Cody’s grandfather was a boy, the family drilled a well that would flow all year. “It would come out of the ground, and it would literally shoot up in the air uncontrollably—that was in the 1930s,” Cody says.
It was no different at the Jones family farm. “Grandpa Jones had stories about how he would ice skate from Hooper to Mosca because the water table was so high,” the RRP cofounder says. “Now I think the water table is 100 feet below, and that’s not Mother Nature. That’s the ag [sector] doing that. We are overpumping the water that’s being given to us every year.”
The subdistrict where the Jones family farm is located is operating at a 40,000-acre-foot deficit of water annually. (One acre-foot of water is a little more than 325,000 gallons, or enough to cover one acre of land with a foot of water.) That means that farmers are pumping roughly 13 billion gallons more than they have water rights for.
“The fact is, we’ve just got to stop pumping water the way we are,” Jones says. “At the end of the year, some farmers pay over a million dollars for overpumping.”
Rye to the Rescue
Rye has long been used as a cover crop in the San Luis Valley. Traditionally, farmers would plant this hardy grass in September or October after harvesting the barley and potatoes. Then, they’d water the crop until it sprouted and leave it in the ground all winter. When the weather turns in the spring, bringing wind gusts up to 60 mph, the rye prevents erosion and maintains the topsoil. After the last frost in late April or May, all of the rye—and the nutrients within—would get plowed right back into the soil.
Selling rye as a cash crop, on the other hand, isn’t common practice in Colorado. When Jones and her husband moved to Hooper to manage the family farm in 2017, they began researching how to diversify their moneymaking harvests, “mainly just not wanting to put all of our potatoes in one basket,” she quips.
So, the Jones family started partnering with Dry Land Distillers, Mountain Mama Milling, and restaurateurs including Kelly Whitaker, to turn a profit on their rye. “Pretty quickly I began selling 100 percent of what was just a cover crop as a cash crop,” she says.
Although she found success selling the grain, Jones noticed her neighbors had stopped growing rye entirely. When she called to find out why, she learned they didn’t have anywhere to sell it. “I recently heard a quote from a farmer: ‘If I’m going to plant it, put water on it, spend diesel on it, I’d also like to get paid for it.’ What a novel idea,” Jones says.
Green for the Grain
The Rye Resurgence Project is all about connecting farmers with bakers, brewers, distillers, and millers that will buy this cover crop. “The things that come out of here are such high quality and such good flavor, because it is that stress—the warm days and cool nights—that makes plants have these complex and interesting flavors,” Dutton says.
Several distilleries are already taking advantage of the San Luis Valley’s “resurgence rye.” Bear Creek Distillery in Denver is currently crafting a new whiskey anchored by the valley’s rye, and Del Norte’s 1874 Distilling is releasing a special Rye Resurgence Project whiskey, which uses three grains sourced from the region, this month.
The Cody family, with support from the RRP, developed three rye beers, which they dubbed the Dustbowl series. These brews—a light blonde ale, a pale ale, and a porter—are made with 30 percent malted rye, with an additional 11 percent chocolate rye malt in the porter.
Other partners—including Barton Springs Mill, Moxie Bread Co., and Roaring Fork Mill—have also gotten in on the rye-vival, but project leaders hope this is just the beginning. Although the price for San Luis Valley rye is higher than commodity grain or flour, Cody says the product is worth every penny. “If we’re good stewards of the natural resources that are here, it can produce really high-quality stuff, maybe the best in the world,” he says.
And it isn’t just about putting money in the pockets of local growers, it’s also about being better stewards of the valley’s limited resources. Dutton calculated that the region could save 500 to 1,000 acre-feet of water (or 162.5 million to 325 million gallons) each year by getting some of the local farmers to include more rye in their existing crop rotations. Following the fall 2023 potato harvest, ten farmers pledged to grow 120 acres of winter rye each—and they didn’t use the aquifer to do it. Instead, these growers only used surface water to coax their rye into the sky. Dutton hopes these small changes add up to a longer future for San Luis Valley agriculture.
“I care about this place, and I care about the people on a deeper level. It’s not just a place that I really enjoy. It’s home, and this community is my family,” Dutton says. “If we’re able to support farmers, transition crops, be more resilient, and reduce our water use, then we can have a community that we want, rather than seeing all these places dry up and farmers having to leave. That’s not what I want. That’s not where I want to live.”
