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The diversified agricultural industry in the Valley is ~ comprised of both livestock and crop production activities. C? Slightly less than 10 percent of the irrigated acreage is planted Iv to pome and deciduous orchards, the produce of which is processed 00 locally and may be shipped as far as the Atlantic seaboard. The Grand Valley has long been a favored wintering area for cattle and sheep which were grazed on high mountain summer ranges to the east and north (Young et al., 1975). An economic survey by Leathers (1975), along with the land use inventory by Walker and Skogerboe (197l), indicates that local farming is primarily a small unit operation. The popula- tion engaged in agricultural activities is widely dispersed throughout the Valley with most living on their property. Leathers (1975) determined from sampling about 100 random selec- tions that most farm units were less than 40 hectares (100 acres) in size (Figure 11). Using data supplied by the USDA Soil Conservation Service, a frequency distribution of field sizes is shown in Figure 12. Of the total of 7,870 fields in the Valley, 50 percent are less than 2 hectares (5 acres) in size. AGRICULTURAL LAND USE Although the early explorers concluded that the Grand Valley was a poor risk for agriculturally related activities, the first pioneering farmers rapidly disproved this notion with the aid of irrigation water diverted from the Grand and Blue Rivers (now the Colorado and Gunnison Rivers) entering the Valley. Through a long struggle, an irrigation system evolved to supplement the otherwise meager supply of precipitation during the hot summer months. However, the futility of irriga- tion without adequate drainage was quickly demonstrated in the Valley as some low lying acreages became waterlogged with highly saline groundwater. Today, the failure to completely overcome these conditions is still evident as illustrated by a summary of land use in the Valley presented in Figure 13. For example, of the more than 28,600 hectares (70,800 acres) of irrigable cropland, almost one-third is either in pasture or idle. An examination of land use in Grand Valley by Walker and Skogerboe (1971) indicated a large fraction of the l2,000 to 16,000 hectares (30,000 to 40,000 acres) of phreatophytes and barren soil were also once part of an irrigated acreage. Evidence exists that these same lands were once highly productive and subsequently ruined by overirrigation and inadequate drainage. The various acreages of land uses in the Valley area are shown in Table 3. One of the most quoted statements in the literature concerning the Grand Valley is that approximately 30 percent of the farmable area is unproductive because of the ineffectiveness of the drainage in these areas. Examination of the results presented in Table 3 indicates that 58 percent of the Valley can be classified as usable land. However, only 43 30