All watersheds support agriculture.
Agricultural pollution harms the watershed, but maintaining farm land as open space protects it.
Maintaining these important benefits from farming and ranching operations under the tidal pressure of urban growth is a complicated and difficult task, the Commission said, requiring attention from the federal, state, and local levels. At the same time, however, if the goal is to protect sustainable farming and ranching operations and ecosystems, it will be in everyone's interest to help avoid the unintended negative consequences of new water policies on rural communities. Between 1982 and 1992 the net conversion totaled some 1.5 million acres in the Western states. Most of the six basin case studies prepared for the Commission mention agricultural land and water conversion, or increased demand for urban water supply, as key geographical trends affecting water and water policy in the basins. National farm and public lands grazing policies, tax policies, and other laws affect the economic viability of individual operations.