Incoming Family Farm Alliance Executive Director Advocates Partnerships
As highlighted in last week’s Weekly Wave, several WRRC staff members attended the Arizona Association of Women in Water and Agriculture’s (AAWWA) Colorado River Update on August 26, 2025. There, we had the privilege of meeting Samantha Barncastle, the incoming Executive Director of Family Farm Alliance (Alliance), who will be taking the reins as of November 1. Barncastle is an attorney from New Mexico with over 17 years of experience in the field of complex litigation and policymaking regarding water and natural resources on both the state and federal levels. Many Alliance leaders have expressed their confidence that her passion, background, and knowledge of state and federal water issues will greatly benefit the organization and the people the Alliance serves.
During her talk at the AAWWA conference, Barncastle emphasized her focus on creating unlikely partnerships to solve agricultural challenges, including insufficient irrigation, drought, and legislation changes. Her talk featured several water conflicts in which her creative and collaborative approach is helping to bring about win-win resolutions, even to such long-standing feuds as overuse of the Rio Grande. She hopes to bring a show-and-tell approach to her leadership role, allowing her to spend time on the ground, educating herself about the conditions that family farms are facing and what they need to thrive. Through illustrative stories, she highlighted that, while small farms and communities can’t tackle big problems alone, together they create a strong force to overcome shared obstacles.