With the March 31, 2026 deadline for Mexico to deliver 202,000 acre-feet of water as per the 1944 water treaty behind them, growers over the border in south Texas are still awaiting word as to how much water was actually delivered. There are hopes that that figure will be announced next week.
In the meantime, Brian Jones, a Texas grower and board member of the Texas Farm Bureau says he's heard that that number has in fact not been reached. "We just don't know what it is. Whatever it is, we will still be disappointed if it's not 202,000 because it feels like we're constantly getting played by Mexico," he says. "That's what a lot of the producers around here feel as well."
He says even if any more water was to be allocated at this point, it wouldn't change his spring plantings given that the window for regular row crop plantings in the region has closed. "The way I set up my farm this year was to have about 42 percent of the farm planted. The majority of that is in food grade corn and it's about the same as last year," Jones says, noting that with the previous allocations and with what the area received in water in the January-February time frame, there is enough water for irrigation. "The problem now is I'm having to rob water from the 58 percent of the farm that's not planted to make sure I have enough for what I do have planted," he says.
© Texas Farm Bureau
Payments also due
In the meantime, payments are also still to be made for the 800,000 acre feet that were not delivered in the last cycle. However the deadline on those payments is October 20, 2030.
So where does that leave things? The next deadline is October 24, 2026 when Mexico has agreed to deliver a total of 350,000 acre feet for the year. There are also hopes of incorporating penalties for a lack of water deliveries within the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) which will go under renegotiation starting this July.
"One of the biggest problems with the treaty is there's no teeth to non-compliance. So we're hoping to come up with penalties for non-payment of water and withholding water," Jones says. "While we're appreciative of the current administration applying pressure to Mexico on this issue, we still feel like we're the football getting kicked one direction or the other while people play politics with our livelihood."
For more information:
Brian Jones
https://texasfarmbureau.org/
