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Severe Drought, Worsened by Climate Change, Ravages the American West

/in , , /by /The New York Timesby Henry Fountain

This year, New Mexican officials have a message for farmers who depend on irrigation water from the Rio Grande and other rivers: Unless you absolutely have to plant this year, don’t.

Years of warming temperatures, a failed rainy season last summer and low snowpack this winter have combined to reduce the state’s rivers to a relative trickle. The agency that controls irrigation flows on the Rio Grande forced the issue. To conserve water, it opened its gates a month later than usual.

Severe drought — largely connected to climate change — is ravaging not only New Mexico but the entire Western half of the United States, from the Pacific Coast, across the Great Basin and desert Southwest, and up through the Rockies to the Northern Plains.

In California, wells are drying up, forcing some homeowners to drill new ones that are deeper and costlier. Lake Mead, on the border of Arizona and Nevada, is so drained of Colorado River water that the two states are facing the eventual possibility of cuts in their supply.

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As Surface Water Supplies Dry Up, California Rice Growers Worry About Ripple Effect

/in , , /by /CBS Sacramentoby Rachel Wulff

California’s drought is impacting more than how you water your lawn, but also the way your food is grown on hundreds of thousands of acres in the Sacramento Valley.

Growing rice is a multi-billion dollar industry that supports 25,00 jobs.

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Ag Community Welcomes More Environmentally Friendly Farming But Says It’ll Take Money

/in , /by /Bakersfield Californianby John Cox

California’s agricultural community made clear in a series of public meetings last month that growers, dairies and ranchers stand ready to expand forward-thinking environmental practices — but that such activities don’t necessarily make financial sense without some form of government support.

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Reclaimed Water Could Be the Solution to Farming in a Drier Future

/in , , /by /Yes Magazineby Cirrus Wood

On a Saturday in late October, Carolyn Phinney is hip-deep in a half-acre of vegetables, at the nucleus of what will one day be 15 acres of productive farmland.

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Local Ag Looks to Spotlight its Climate-Friendly Profile

/in , /by /Bakersfield.comby John Cox

The Kern County Farm Bureau issued a “call to action” this week asking local growers and ranchers to participate in a series of upcoming meetings that will influence the role California’s agricultural lands will be expected to play, or continue to play, in fighting climate change. Besides asking members to speak up at a series of online meetings the state is hosting this month, the bureau is collecting data it hopes will illustrate local ag producers’ “climate-conscious nature” with an eye toward ensuring private industry will continue managing its property “on a voluntary basis,” bureau President John C. Moore III said by email.

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Opinion: Water Markets Critical to Managing Scarcity

/in , , /by /OC Registerby Will Rinehart

As COVID started to spread, farmers and large cities in Southern California were hit with another blindside last March. Fires, drought, and the planting season drove up the price of California’s water market, over 220 percent in just three months. Crops failed and pastures were lost.

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New Avocado Study Outlines Costs/Returns of High-Density Plantings

/in , /by /California Ag Todayby Pam Kan-Rice

Growers considering producing avocados in San Diego County with high-density plantings now have help to determine the economic feasibility. A new study on the costs and returns of establishing and producing avocados in San Diego County has been released by UC Agriculture and Natural Resources’ Cooperative Extension, UC Agricultural Issues Center and the UC Davis Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

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Climate’s Toll on the Colorado River: ‘We Can Weather Maybe a Couple of Years’

/in , , /by /The Arizona Republicby Ian James

Beside a river that winds through a mountain valley, the charred trunks of pine trees lie toppled on the blackened ground, covered in a thin layer of fresh snow. Weeks after flames ripped through this alpine forest, a smoky odor still lingers in the air.

The fire, called the East Troublesome, burned later into the fall than what once was normal. It cut across Rocky Mountain National Park, racing up and over the Continental Divide. It raged in the headwaters of the Colorado River, reducing thick forests to ashes and scorching the ground along the river’s banks.

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Water Authority and GSA To Settle On Sagging Friant-Kern Canal Resolution

/in , /by /The Sun Gazetteby John Lindt

The Friant Water Authority cleaned up some of the most important work in the last month of the year hashing out a legal settlement with farmers in southern Tulare County.

Represented by the Eastern Tule Groundwater Sustainability Agency farmers agreed to contribute at least $125 million to repair the significant subsidence-caused sag in the gravity-fed canal that has cut water deliveries by 60%.

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Farmers Swap Out Irrigation Methods To Keep The Colorado River From Growing Saltier

/in , , /by /Aspen Public Radioby Jodi Peterson & KVNF

AJ Carrillo farms 18 acres outside of Hotchkiss, Colo., in the high desert of the Western Slope about an hour southeast of Grand Junction.  When he irrigates his peach orchard, water gushes from big white plastic pipes at the top of the plot and takes half a day to trickle down to the other end of his five-acre orchard. Carrillo is planning to convert his Deer Tree Farm from flood irrigation, which is commonly used in Western Colorado, to a new and much more efficient style of irrigation – microsprinklers.

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