In Texas we use an average of 17 billion gallons of water a day and with future growth it is expected for that consumption to increase while our supply of water is expected to decrease.

“We use a lot of water, and over the next few decades we’re going to increase that by about 26%, but our supplies are going to decrease by 10%.”

Neal Wilkins is director of the Texas Water Resources Institute at Texas A&M.

“It’s pretty easy to dispel the myth that we’ve got enough water. This last year we lost 5.2 billion in agricultural proceeds to the state of Texas because we didn’t have enough water. That pretty well tells the story right there, and that’s just agriculture.”

You’d be hard pressed to find any sector of the state’s economy that can do without water.

“How much did we lose in, from the nurserymen’s associations? How much did we lose from energy because of the lack of water? What happens when we don’t have enough water for our electric generation cooling facilities? So, it’s a real threat.”

The state of Texas has a lot of people looking at the problem.

“We’ve got a lot of smart scientists that are putting their brains on it and our state legislature’s putting attention to it. We can anticipate this next year that there’s going to be a lot of attention in our state legislature towards water. “

Wilkins says that at Texas A&M they’re focused on water every day.

“Every one of our disciplines, everybody from agronomists to economists are focused in on water. How do we make sure that we have enough, how do we use what we have in the right way, and how do we make sure that our state can continue to prosper, and we don’t suffer from lack of water? And a lot of that’s just a management issue.”

Without some solutions, many people believe the water issue has put agriculture on a collision course with municipalities. I’m Kailey Carey, looking at Brazos Valley agriculture, From The Ground Up.