Water is a limited resource in Utah, but we can all help protect our water quality. We offer best practices to help small farmers and neighborhood gardeners keep Utah’s waters healthy and clean. If you have a backyard garden, manage multiple acres, or own a variety of livestock, you can benefit your neighbors and Utah’s waters by following best practices to help prevent sharing pollutants, weeds, and disease.

Whether you’ve been on your land for generations or you're just getting started, there’s always more to learn. ​Click the topic that interests you to learn more.

​Here are just a few positive changes that will benefit your water as well as your downstream neighbors’ waterways.

Positive actions

• ​Limit animal access to waterways.
• Provide animals a watering facility.
• Encourage natural vegetation along streambanks.
• Store manure away from water.
• Get soil tested before fertilizing.
• Protect bees, birds, and pets from dangerous pesticides and hazardous materials.
• Use water efficiently​.

Where does the water on my property go?
Water is not confined by property lines. It can flow into irrigation ditches, rivers, and eventually, lakes and reservoirs, or may seep into groundwater supplies. Water can pick up natural and human-caused pollutants (such as excess fertilizer). What you do on your land can impact the quality of the water as it flows downstream to your neighbors, both human and wildlife.

What is small acreage farm in Utah?

There’s no unique definition, so we just asked our Utah small acreage owners.  This is what we learned:

• ​The majority are less than 40 acres in size and 25% are less than 1 acre.
• Half of the small acreage owners consider themselves “hobby farmers.”  Only 12% were full time farms.
• Many of these are in semi-rural areas along the Wasatch front, but small acreage farms can be found around the state.
• Over 1/3 of these farms have been in operation for 1 to 5 years. Over 25% have farmed their property for over 20 years.
• Small acreage owners are diverse.  Some raise food only for themselves, while others sell their vegetables, fruit, eggs, flowers, and more at local farmer’s markets.
• Almost 2/3 raise chickens,  50% raise horses, about 1/3 raise sheep and beef cattle and less than 15% raise pigs or milk cows.

This “word cloud” includes all the different goals and motivations of our Utah small acreage farmers.   Click here for more about the small farms survey.