Farming in South Texas Suffers from Mexico’s Defaulting on Water Delivery

As the Trump administration and national media’s focus remains engaged in the Iran war issue, American agriculture keeps suffering from a decades-long problem involving Mexico. America’s southern neighbor, essentially run by cartels, not only has been infesting America with illegal aliens but also withholding water that it is legally required to provide Texas.

On April 5, Just the News published a story about Mexico’s continued failure to uphold its treaty with the US government by which it is required to provide a specified amount of water to South Texas where the local agriculture needs it. Official records reportedly show that Mexico has not complied with the 1944 treaty since 1992. During the Biden administration, Mexican violation of the agreement hurt America the most as pointed out in the story:

Under the Biden administration, Mexican officials killed any agreements to release water, forcing Texas’ last sugar mill to close.

In the Trump administration, starting in early 2025, farmers and ranchers in Texas found renewed hope of saving their land from drought caused by Mexico’s failure to provide Texas with the water from its side of the rivers along the southern border. The Trump administration started negotiations in 2025, led by Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

After months of negotiations, the two sides reached an agreement in December as reported in Texas Farm Bureau. By that time, Mexico was supposed to provide twice the amount of water to South Texas than what it actually delivered over the previous five-year period. This caused the loss of an estimated 8000 to 9000 acres of agricultural land mainly in the Rio Grande Valley. The December agreement followed President Trump’s warning to Mexico to impose a 5% tariff on Mexican imports if it continued to ignore the delivery of water owed to Texas.

Despite the announcement of the agreement, Mexico has again gone into default, leading to renewed concerns among farmers and ranchers in South Texas over losing their agricultural produce to drought, particularly after a notably dry winter. Republican congresswoman from Texas Monica De La Cruz called on the Trump administration to pressure Mexico into complying with the treaty. On March 28, she posted on her official X account that non-compliance must have consequences.

With the war against Iran launched at the end of February, the Trump administration seems to have focused its attention on securing a military victory in the Middle East and open the Strait of Hormuz while letting go of the agricultural water issue for now, and it is hurting the farming and ranching sectors of American food production.

At the same time, a recent report in Al Jazeera offered a glimpse of the situation on the other side of the border, where Mexican farmers are also suffering due to a dry winter season.