Albuquerque’s South Valley is surrounded by brown desert and towering red mesas. But inside the valley, the land is sprouting lush trees and green fields.

Here, the Rio Grande spills into irrigation ditches called acequias. They wind through the landscape of this small Hispanic community, carrying rain and snowmelt straight to crops.

“It's totally a gravity-fed system,” said farmer Santiago Maestas, gesturing to the acequia he gets water from. “You don't use machinery.”

No pumps, pipes, or sprinklers. Just flowing water that feeds farmland the old-fashioned way — by flooding it. For decades, Maestas has been soaking his fields to grow apples, chili and corn.

“Our whole community basically is built around the irrigation canal or ditches — acequias as we call them,” Maestas said.

For hundreds of years, Hispanic communities across the Southwest have relied on these networks of hand-dug irrigation ditches to water their crops and feed their families. But now, these ancient traditions are under pressure from a changing climate and shrinking water supplies.

That has Maestas worried that their farming and cultural practices are at risk of fading into the past.

Spanish colonists began digging these ditches in the 1600s. Now, New Mexico has hundreds of acequias that function through community governance. Neighboring Colorado has a few dozen.

Farmers pay dues, elect a manager to oversee each acequia, and share in their cleaning and upkeep.

An hour north of Albuquerque, in La Cienega Valley, farmer JJ Gonzales was doing just that, scooping leaves, sticks, and sediment out of the acequia he manages.

“There’s always trash falling into the ditch. So, this is the stopping point for the debris,” Gonzales said.

He was at a headgate, which looked like a metal door set into the ditch that controls how much water gets released. Gonzales said their water supply this year has been stable — so far. But “usually, we get the rain in July and August, and it didn’t materialize this year,” he added.

That’s been the case most summers in the Southwest. Arizona, and New Mexico are currently experiencing the worst drought in 1,200 years. 

For an ancient ditch system that relies on gravity and flood irrigation, ongoing drought threatens the future of acequias.

And these earthen canals are worth preserving for a number of reasons, said Santiago Maestas. He pointed to research from New Mexico State University that shows they can hold water for long periods, and their seepage recharges groundwater that eventually returns to the river.

“Our valley’s green because of the acequias. Without the acequias, the valley would be just as dry as the mesas that surround us,” said Maestas, adding that the farmers in Albuquerque’s South Valley plan to keep it that way as long as they can.