Water, Land, and Food: Why Access to Clean Water Is Central to TIHSA's Mission

In January 2026, I was accepted into the GPSI program with a focus on the topic "Resource at Risk: Access to Clean Water." The acceptance was a natural extension of TIHSA's mission — because you cannot talk seriously about sustainable agriculture without talking about water.

The Water-Agriculture Connection

Agriculture is the single largest consumer of fresh water on earth, accounting for roughly 70% of global freshwater withdrawals. In Texas, this connection is particularly acute. The state faces mounting pressure from drought, aquifer depletion, population growth, and a warming climate that is fundamentally altering precipitation patterns across the region.

The Ogallala Aquifer — which underlies much of the Texas Panhandle and High Plains — is being depleted far faster than it can naturally recharge. In many parts of West Texas, the water that has sustained agriculture for generations is running out within a human lifetime. Meanwhile, communities across rural Texas already face challenges accessing clean, affordable drinking water.

What Indigenous Knowledge Offers

This is where indigenous agricultural knowledge becomes not just culturally valuable but practically essential. Indigenous communities across the American Southwest and Texas developed sophisticated water management systems over centuries — techniques for rainwater harvesting, dry farming, soil moisture conservation, and crop selection that minimized water demand while maximizing yield.

These were not primitive workarounds. They were finely tuned responses to living in an environment where water was scarce and precious. The communities that developed them understood, through generations of trial and observation, how to build food systems that could survive drought. That knowledge is precisely what modern Texas agriculture needs.

Broadening TIHSA's Work

Participating in the GPSI program on water access has deepened my understanding of how land rights, water rights, food security, and indigenous sovereignty are interconnected. You cannot address one without addressing the others. A community that loses access to clean water loses the capacity to grow food. A community that loses land rights loses access to water. These are not separate problems — they are the same problem viewed from different angles.

TIHSA was founded around sustainable agriculture and indigenous heritage. But the deeper we go, the more clearly we see that our mission is ultimately about something even more fundamental: the right of communities — especially communities historically dispossessed of both land and water — to grow their own food, steward their own ecosystems, and determine their own futures.