After absorbing sunshine all summer, mature rice plants in California’s Sacramento Valley stand as high as three feet tall, in five inches of flood water. Planted in spring, farmers drain their fields in August, and they drive big, loud harvesters into them in September, gently separating the rice stalks from the grain, and blowing the harvest into bankout wagons that they tow beside them.
Already grappling with drought, lower commodity prices and higher production costs, more farmers are feeling the added pinch of groundwater regulations as local agencies implement plans that include pumping limits and new fees to balance long-term groundwater resources as required by the state.
California farms grow about a quarter of U.S. food, and that takes a lot of water. Many farmers rely on water pumped from the ground. But over time, pumping is depleting the aquifers. And severe droughts are making the problem worse.
“Eventually, you’re going to run out of water,” says Don Cameron, vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch in California’s Central Valley.
To help protect the ranch, he’s been working for years to replenish groundwater supplies.
When Maria Regalado Garcia tried to wash the dishes in her California home one recent morning, only a trickle of water emerged from the kitchen faucet. Other taps in her Tooleville house in rural Tulare County ran similarly dry.
The lack of water meant Garcia, 85, couldn’t brush her teeth properly or fill a swamp cooler that pumps out chilled air — a necessity with temperatures topping 100 degrees in her central California town. So Garcia fled to her granddaughter‘s home in Exeter, a few minutes away, to have a place cool enough to sleep.
As I drive across my family’s farm in the San Joaquin Valley, it feels as if I’m traveling on a chessboard. I cross one square with crops and then another without crops — our fields that must lay fallow. Our farm’s crops have been decimated by the drought.
Last year, reduced water deliveries in the state led to 395,000 acres of cropland being idled, according to UC Merced researchers, and about 8,750 agricultural workers lost their jobs.
In California’s fields, farmers are already facing the impacts of climate change every day. They are heading into yet another potentially devastating fire year, and the third year in a row of drought.
As drought continues to be a concern across California and Kern County, there is a new proposal in the state senate that could spend up to $1.5 billion to buy back the water rights that allow farmers to take as much water as they need from the state’s rivers and streams to grow their crops.
After decades of fighting farmers in court over how much water they can take out of California’s rivers and streams, some state lawmakers want to try something different: use taxpayer money to buy out farmers. It comes at a time when the state’s drought tracker says that almost 98 percent of California is currently experiencing yet another severe drought, which is resulting in low river levels.
A proposal to use up to $1.5 billion to purchase farmer’s senior water rights has made its way into the budget negotiations between lawmakers and Governor Gavin Newsom, the Associated Press reports.
It comes at a time when 98 percent of the state is experiencing a severe drought and is part of the larger $7.5 billion Water and Drought Package “to build a climate resilient water system.”
After decades of fighting farmers in court over how much water they can take out of California’s rivers and streams, some state lawmakers want to try something different: use taxpayer money to buy out farmers.
A proposal in the state Senate would spend up to $1.5 billion to buy “senior water rights” that allow farmers to take as much water as needed from the state’s rivers and streams to grow their crops.
How bad is California’s drought? Bad enough to make farmers turn to tequila.
About 40 farmers and distillers gathered last week at an inaugural agave symposium at the University of California, Davis, to explore the prospects of growing agave in California and making alcohol from it.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
