In partnership with Sand County Foundation, MillerCoors is the principal corporate sponsor of the first demonstration site for Water As A Crop™ on the Trinity River in Texas, which supplies water for MillerCoors’ Fort Worth brewer. The Trinity River basin is prone to flash floods that strip soil from the ground. This degrades the land for agriculture and cattle ranching, and also reduces water quality downstream. Water As A Crop™ has brought together local landowners who collectively hold 1,000 continuous acres along the river, and is giving them incentives (with support from MillerCoors) to adopt land-use practices that will slow water to prevent erosion, keep riverbanks intact, and reduce flooding. These include cross fencing to enable rotational cattle grazing and installing vegetative buffers below cultivated fields to protect tributary creeks that feed the river. One of the project’s most ambitious goals is to scientifically measure improvements in water quality and quantity that result from these practices. This will convince other landowners and water conservationists of the benefits of such initiatives and, hopefully, persuade them to replicate the approach more broadly in the Trinity River Basin and across the country.

Project Results

Empowering landowners with knowledge and resources to effectively improve the conservation of water, beneifiting both the farmers and the watershed as a whole.