Managed Retreat of Agriculture in the Arid West

U.S. agricultural policy has subsidized farming in place and sought to tame aridity with science, money, and dams. Now, the ongoing megadrought has severely contracted water supply and rendered western agriculture inviable at its present scale. In response, an increasing number of farms, particularly small farms, are shuttering agricultural operations, filing bankruptcy, fallowing fields, slaughtering livestock, and selling water rights. And the pain is only beginning. The current drought retreat is poised to be the most severe in western history due to climate change, urbanization of the West, and unaccounted for water claims. This Article makes two contributions to the western agricultural water crisis. The first is to provide the only scholarly account of the current “third wave” of western drought retreat—a massive societal event that has been virtually ignored by policymakers and researchers. The Article’s second contribution is to propose a solution: the federal government should adopt agricultural “managed retreat” to soften the pain of climate transition for stranded small farmers. We seek to shift thinking about agricultural climate policy from its longstanding and exclusive focus on supporting farming in place, to recognize a role for managed retreat. Our proposal for agricultural managed retreat is designed primarily as an economic relief policy, although one with secondary benefits to food security and water shortage. Options for implementing federal managed retreat include voluntary federal acquisition of western farmland or water rights or government relocation assistance (physical retreat) and repurposing farmland and retraining farmworkers (economic retreat).