Tag Archive for: Agriculture

The Western View: Cease-Fire Ahead in the Water Wars?

It’s been a year of surprises, one thing after another – a pandemic that shut down the world, a murder hornet that suddenly appeared in the north woods, rioting in the streets, and even a giant meteor just missed the earth. But there is one more startling event that not many people know about. That is: The State and the feds are actually talking to each other about our water. They’ve been figuring out how to balance the needs of fish versus farmers and settle how they will handle water deliveries to the Central Valley and Southern California.

Opinion: Reimagine California’s Big-Water Dreams

Romantic newspaper myths aside — wait; are there romantic newspaper myths anymore? — editorial-page junkets are not along the lines of a stay in a house on stilts in a Bali lagoon. Just to do some Indonesian fact-finding, don’t you know. In fact, it didn’t take the novel coronavirus to dampen down out-of-town trips to conventions or the state capital on the paper’s dime. That non-ship sailed long ago; not enough dimes.

State, Feds in Talks Over Water

California and federal water regulators are trying to quickly resolve their legal dispute over competing biological opinions governing the management of their respective water projects, a top state official says.

In a Dry Year, Valley Water Sales Get an Extra Dose of Scrutiny

As California navigates a critically dry water year, many business-as-usual elements are getting a second look. One such transaction is a proposed water sale by the Merced Irrigation District.

Opinion: Concerning the Colorado River

My name is JB Hamby and I am a general election candidate for the Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors and fourth-generation resident of the Imperial Valley.

I read Mr. Hudson’s op-ed, “Clean Drinking Water, Considered, Part Five” and share much of his skepticism regarding the conversation happening along the Colorado River, its tributaries, and the special interests that surround it.

However, I did want to reach out and share some concerns with a few points raised in the editorial — specifically the comments on Imperial Valley.

Western Colorado Water Purchases are Stirring up Worries About the Future of Farming

For five years, Zay Lopez tended vegetables, hayfields and cornfields, chickens, and a small flock of sheep here on the western edge of Colorado’s Grand Valley – farming made possible by water from the Colorado River.

Lopez has a passion for agriculture, and for a while, he carved out a niche with his business, The Produce Peddler, trucking veggies seven hours away to a farmers market in Pinedale, Wyoming.

Australia’s Water Is Vanishing

The early afternoon sun was pounding the parched soil, and Gus Whyte was pulling on his dust-caked cowboy boots to take me for a drive. We’d just finished lunch—cured ham, a loaf of bread I’d bought on the trip up, chutney pickled by Whyte’s wife, Kelly—at his house in Anabranch South, which isn’t a town but rather a fuzzy cartographic notion in the far west of New South Wales, a seven-hour drive from Melbourne and half as far again from Sydney.

Klamath Farmers Protest Early Water Cutoff

In two weeks or less, farmers and ranchers near the California-Oregon border will see their water supplies run dry, after operators of the federal Klamath Water Project unexpectedly cut allocations in response to concerns about protected fish.

Farmers Must Diversify in a Post-Pandemic World, Ag Experts Say

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, few industries have been quite as essential to the nation as agriculture.

From pickers crouching for nine hours a day to scoop up strawberries to CEOs making handshake deals to keep their companies afloat, hundreds of thousands of workers are feeding America. But, in many ways, the pandemic is forcing farmers to reevaluate how they do business.

What’s at the Heart of California’s Water Wars? Delta Outflow Explained

The latest dustup In California’s water wars, as noted in Dan Walters’ commentary, revolves principally around the federal government’s efforts to increase the amount of water supplied to farms and cities by the Central Valley Project, and a breakdown in cooperation between the state and federal government.