FRUITA, Colo. — The scrubby green plants that fill a checkerboard of 24-by-36-foot research plots on the arid plains of Mesa County could be part of a major shift in agriculture in the drought-plagued western United States.

More than a quarter of all Colorado River water is used to grow alfalfa — more water than is used for 40 million people’s drinking water, business needs and industrial uses combined, according to an analysis published earlier this year. In the Upper Colorado River Basin, which includes Colorado, alfalfa irrigation uses double the combined amount of water of those other categories.

So a team of researchers at Colorado State University’s Western Colorado Research Center is carefully tending and measuring plots of potential alternative crops outside Fruita. They’re testing whether those stand-ins for alfalfa — known as the “queen of forage” — resist drought better and grow in Colorado using less water.

The sheer quantity of precious Colorado River water that goes to growing alfalfa, which is primarily used as cattle feed, often puts it in the crosshairs of people looking to reduce water usage from the overallocated river that makes life possible in the Southwest. Longstanding agreements promise more water along the mainstem than the amount that actually flows down from the Rocky Mountains year after year.

As climate change further shrinks the amount of water available, the search for ways to cut water use — or use water more efficiently — becomes more critical.

“The grand theory is if we can find less thirsty hay crops, it will take some pressure off the system and off rivers,” Hannah Holm, associate director for policy in the southwest region for the conservation group American Rivers, said as she walked among the plots in October.

Alfalfa dominates crop markets across the Colorado River basin. Farmers across the West grow about 6.8 million acres of the legume hay that, combined, is worth billions of dollars. It primarily feeds the livestock that provides the country’s beef, milk, cheeses and other dairy.

While often criticized, alfalfa is popular for reasons besides its steady profitability. It can be harvested multiple times a year, is relatively resilient in different growing conditions, contains a lot of protein and comes back for several years without needing to be replanted.

The work at the Western Colorado Research Center is part of a multistate research study testing three alternatives to alfalfa: Kernza, sainfoin and silflower.

Farmers will be apprehensive about switching to alfalfa alternatives, said Perry Cabot, a water resources specialist at the center. Farmers need to know they can sell a crop before investing.

“When a person’s livelihood is based on selling something, it’s hard to ignore that the market for alfalfa is always strong,” he said. “It’s a known quantity.”

That’s why Cabot and his team want to test out new crops and learn best practices they can pass on to farmers.

“We’re going to struggle so that when producers try this out, they don’t have to struggle,” said Hunter Doyle, an agronomist with agricultural research organization The Land Institute, which is working on the project.

While Kernza is common in Kansas, it is rarely grown as a crop in Colorado. Doyle is working with farmers in six areas of Colorado to test out Kernza and other alfalfa alternatives in different parts of the state.

Growing conditions vary greatly across the state, depending on elevation, soil condition and temperatures. While the research center in Fruita gets 180 days a year without frost, a farm Doyle is working with near Kremmling might get only 50, he said.

The team also needs to measure how Kernza, sainfoin and silflower handle drought. Higher temperatures fueled by climate change mean droughts will become more intense and more common in Colorado.

“If you’re trying to ride out a really rough cropping season, or you know it’s going to be dry for the foreseeable future — which we do — how can they actually get something growing on that land that doesn’t require the consumptive water use demand of alfalfa?” Cabot said.

That’s part of the reason rancher Paul Bruchez is growing small plots of the three alternative crops on his land outside of Kremmling. Not only will learning more about the crops potentially help the larger Colorado River water system, he said, but the crops could help his ranch become more resilient to future drought and water shortages.

“We’re dipping our toes in the water,” Bruchez said.

Swapping crops is not easy and comes with inherent risks, he said. For example, there is no perfect treatment to use on sainfoin to minimize weed growth, like there is for alfalfa. That means more work for farmers and ranchers.

“It’s incredibly expensive, it’s incredibly challenging” to change, Bruchez said.

Getting paid to swap alfalfa for another plant could be a better option for farmers than being paid to fallow their fields, as is done under current water-saving programs, Cabot said. Fallowed fields sometimes become overgrown with weeds, which can spread into neighbors’ fields, leaving farmers without any yield.

Early results indicate the alternatives use less water than alfalfa, but the trial will last several years to see how the plants weather multiple seasons.

“Farming is a system. You have to look at it over multiple years,” Doyle said. “Something I do today could impact something five years down the line.”

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