Alfalfa is a Funny Word

It was my first semester of college, and so far my Natural Disaster class class was my

favorite. It was the only class that I had where I felt like I was learning something that was

impacting my everyday life. We talked about how different weather forms, how earthquakes and

tsunamis happen, and how people prepare for those events. I eventually came to learn some

things that were much more important to my real life than I had thought.

Only now, almost 4 months into the class we were finally talking about Utah’s geography.

The room was illuminated by the blue light from the fall day outside, and the 2 large TVs that

showed a slideshow about the water cycle. Our teacher talked about Utah specifically when

teaching about how geography affects water. She talked about how our Mountains trap the clouds

that come in from the Pacific and cause rain, and eventually, she started to talk about the

controversy around alfalfa farmers and Utah’s water usage.

“Many people think that Utah doesn’t prioritize its water usage well, like all the

discussion around alfalfa farms. The massive amount of water that Utah uses definitely doesn’t

help our environment.”

She also talked about how both the Colorado River and the Great Salt Lake are at risk of

drying up. I had heard of alfalfa farmers using a lot of water sometime years in the past, but I

never cared to look it up and find out more. But that day the word “alfalfa” stuck in my head

(partly because it sounded funny), and I looked it up during class and found an article published

by the Salt Lake Tribune on the issue of Utah alfalfa farmers. Sitting there in class, reading over

the article and hearing mentions about how alfalfa is another name for hay, how it's very

commonly grown in Utah, and that it uses up massive amounts of the state’s water, I was very

surprised.
 The lecture went on, and we were told about the homework right before the class ended.

When the time reached 1:20, the lecture was over and the classes for that day were done.

After school, I sat down in my room. My lamp lit up my messy desk, and I was ready to

get started on the homework. That night the assignment was to watch a documentary about the

Colorado River drying up, and note how it is symptomatic of the water shortage that impacts

much of the southwest United States.

The documentary was a few years old, and started with a man walking through a dried up

riverbed. Looking at the camera, he said “This was once a part of the Colorado river.” Seeing a

completely dry area being called “once a part of the Colorado river” was shocking. He continued

speaking, stating that this section of the dried out river that he was standing in was just one of

many parts of the river that had gone completely dry. The documentary showed how dire the

situation was regarding the river and the ridiculous amounts of water so many of the people and

cities near the river consume. He mentioned how other bodies of water in the west, such as the

Great Salt Lake, were also at risk.

Whenever I do my homework, I usually do so without being surprised at what I'm

learning or doing. It’s just normal homework, usually reviewing what we learned in class or

doing an assignment with normal requirements. But doing homework that was centered around a

very local issue, and one that I had only heard in passing before, was one of the few times I felt

actually engaged and connected with my homework.

Sitting there after learning all this information about how much water Utah uses, and how

the water shortage could worsen due to human activity and potentially lead to the Great Salt

Lake drying up was very surprising. Other classes didn’t talk about current events or problems in

Utah, so learning about them now was interesting, but very disconcerting.