About 100 attendees at the 31st annual Southwestern Water Conservation District seminar Friday heard two words that will become increasingly familiar – water transfers.

CSU will receive almost $900,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop approaches and technology to help farmers adapt to drought, the federal agency said Thursday. The $883,000 grant comes from $5.3 million in conservation innovation grants also given to universities in South Dakota, Texas and Florida as well as American Indian tribes in multiple states.

USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service is helping to mitigate the impacts of drought across the nation. With good drought plans and conservation systems, farmers and ranchers are better equipped to manage dry and other extreme weather. NRCS hydrologists are predicting continued drought for the western part of the nation and other states may also be facing dry conditions.

According to a January New York Times article county sheriffs, farmers, and ranchers across the West are grappling with a new scourge: hay rustling. Months of drought and grass fires have pushed the price of grain, hay, and other animal feed to near records, making the hay bales an increasingly irresistible target for thieves. Some steal them for profit, while others are fellow farmers acting out of desperation. Sheriffs in rural counties in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and  Oklahoma say the spike in hay thefts is part of a broader rise in agricultural crime. California’s farmers have grappled recently with growing thefts of grapes, beehives and avocados, and sheriffs say high prices of scrap metal have made agricultural machinery--whether it works or not--an appealing target. On the range, wire fences are being clipped to allow interloping herds to poach grazing land. In addition, dubious online merchants are selling feed to farmers but never delivering.

Farmers consume nearly 90 percent of Colorado's water, and Colorado State University is offering ways for them to use it more efficiently. A grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to CSU's Center for Agricultural Energy will pay for reduced-cost irrigation efficiency audits for growers with center pivot systems.

Just after the local water board announced this month that its farmers would get only one-tenth of their normal water allotment this year, Ronnie Walterscheid, 53, stood up and called on his elected representatives to declare a water war on their upstream neighbors. “It’s always been about us giving up,” Mr. Walterscheid said, to nods.

Ranchers and growers in the Roaring Fork Valley and elsewhere in the Colorado River basin would have a new incentive for conserving water without jeopardizing their water rights under legislation moving forward in the Colorado Legislature. The drought-fueled measure, put forth by state Sen.

A handful of Colorado cities are telling ranchers and farmers suffering through an ongoing drought it's doubtful any extra water will be available for agriculture this year, the Greeley Tribune reports.

Farmers will be paid a record $16 billion in crop insurance claims for 2012 because of the widespread drought, a staggering amount that has critics calling for changes to what they say is an inefficient taxpayer subsidy the government cannot afford.