Chinle, AZ Navajo: "Over Half The People Who Used To Grow Crops Here Can't Do It Any More"
Sylvia Watchman is a farmer from Chinle, Arizona, a town of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants on the outskirts of Canyon de Chelly, where Watchman, a member of the Navajo Nation, has lived all her life. Chinle gets its name from a Navajo word meaning “flowing out,” referring to the water that once rushed down from the mountains to fertilize the valley.
Native farmers can’t count on that water anymore. Since the 1990s, record drought has put both the farming and culture of the Navajo, or Diné, nation at great risk. “When I drive around the valley, all I see is this dry land,” Watchman said. “Over half of the people who used to grow crops here can’t do it anymore. If nobody plants on the land, it will continue getting even harder, making planting next year almost impossible.”
Thousands of years ago, the natural water resources and rich soil made the valley an ideal place to plant crops and raise families. The melting snow from nearby mountains was another steady water source for fertilizing the land.
“In April, the snow melted, and the water ran through the valley, and we used water pumps to irrigate the fields,” Watchman explained. But things have changed. The climate has changed. Winter storms that used to reach the Southwest have been pushed further north during the past couple of decades. “This causes our water table to be very low continuously,” Watchman said. As for her own farm, Watchman witnesses the consequences of drought every day. She has lost crops—corn, wheat, varieties of fruit. “This spring we planted corn,” Watchman said. “It grew about two feet and then dried in the sun.” And her peach, apple, and pear trees have been starved of water: “The fruits are really dry.”
EDIT
https://newrepublic.com/article/159418/over-half-people-used-grow-crops-cant-anymore