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California Farms Dried Up a River for Months. Nobody Stopped Them.

During California’s most recent drought, officials went to great lengths to safeguard water supplies, issuing emergency regulations to curb use by thousands of farms, utilities and irrigation districts.

Higher Food Bills? Your Veggies, Nuts and Berries May Cost More Thanks to Extreme Weather

Snow, torrential rains, massive floods. Extreme weather has battered the U.S. this year, and shoppers likely will feel the lingering effects at the grocery store heading into summer.

Opinion: Farms, Fish and the Future: State Water Board Must Balance the Needs of All Californians

On Wednesday, March 16 the State Water Resources Control Board will meet to discuss Sacramento River temperature management and its impact on salmon for 2022 and beyond.

Salmon, salmon fishermen, and all Californians, are struggling with drought impacts. And as we work toward long-term solutions, that doesn’t make this year easier for anyone.

However, it is important to maintain balance between all water users and observe the California Water Code, which requires “reasonable” decisions among competing water uses. And while some may want to define “reasonable” solely on the basis of an amount of water allocated to each user, it’s clearly not that simple.

Feds’ Central Valley Project Expects to Send No Water to California Farms This Year, Little to Cities

After an extraordinarily dry start to the year, the federal government announced Wednesday that most farms in California will likely receive no water from the state’s biggest reservoirs in 2022, the latest fallout from drought and a blow to an agricultural industry already crippled by tight supplies. Cities and towns, meanwhile, will get just a fraction of the water they requested.

An impending third straight year of drought has left California’s federally managed reservoirs, including giant Shasta and Trinity lakes, soiled by cracked earth and “bathtub rings,” and standing as striking images of the state’s aridity. Many of the storage sites are at near-record lows for this point in the wet winter season, and officials at the Bureau of Reclamation say there’s just not enough water for everyone who needs it.

Satellites Reveal the Secrets of Water-Guzzling Farms in California

In a new push to stop further depletion of California’s shrinking aquifers, state regulators are turning to technology once used to count Soviet missile silos during the Cold War: satellites.

Historically, California’s farmers could pump as much as they wanted from their wells. But as a consequence of that unrestricted use, the underground water table has sunk by hundreds of feet in some areas, and the state is now trying to stabilize those aquifers.

Regulators need to calculate just how much water each farmer is using across California’s vast agricultural lands, and scientists and private companies are now offering a technique that uses images from orbiting satellites.

California’s Sustainable Farms, Models for Agriculture in Warming World, Need Help Surviving It

The bustle of birds and insect pollinators is the first thing you notice at Full Belly Farm in Guinda, about 100 miles northeast of San Francisco in the Capay Valley, where Judith Redmond and her partners started farming four decades ago.