I’m not sure I would be as sanguine as this Coachella pepper packer about the long term availability of water: The process of producing peppers is both simple and complicated. “Workers, water, weather–those are our three big headaches,” Aiton says. Aiton says while water is a concern in the state, it’s not as critical in …
Continue reading ‘With Colorado River water, growing peppers’ »
OK, not really “news”, but I made you click, and this is the Internet, so let’s proceed: Scientists believe the avocado, with its enormous wood-like seed, evolved to be eaten by enormous animals that lived thousands of years ago. One of these animals would chow down on some avocados and either leave partially-eaten fruit (and …
It’s a relatively straightforward point: when there is less water to irrigate farmland, there will be less irrigated farmland. For example, OtPR last year: As groundwater sustainability agencies have to bring irrigated acreage in line with the sustainable yield of the groundwater basin, they will be retiring irrigated lands (Dr. Burt: 1-1.5 million acres; Dr. Lund: …
Continue reading ‘The inevitable decline of irrigated acreage in California’s central valley’ »
When we think of federal water policy, we think Bureau of Reclamation or EPA. But just as agriculture is where the water is, federal agriculture agencies are where the money is. Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California had a post yesterday with some useful suggestions for spending it well: Practical reforms in …
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It’s increasingly clear that the lessons we’re learning from California’s drought are not those we expected. Far from the doom of so much of the rhetoric, Californians are adapting to scarcity with remarkable aplomb. The latest data point, from Phillip Reese and Dale Kasler of the Sacramento Bee, may be the most interesting yet: California’s …
Continue reading ‘Despite drought, California agriculture adds 30,000 jobs’ »
Interesting point from the Young Farmers Coalition about our West: The majority of young farmers and ranchers in this region have never farmed in non-drought conditions.
Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1934:
In his keynote at last week’s Law of the Colorado River conference in Las Vegas, Metropolitan Water District General Manager Jeff Kightlinger pointed out something that’s not gotten a lot of attention in discussions of California’s drought – the extraordinary decline in that state’s acreage of cotton. Cotton’s gotten a bad rap in irrigation circles, because …
Continue reading ‘The decline in California’s cotton acreage’ »
There’s a letter to the editor in the latest High Country News (it’s in the paper edition, can’t link yet) that repeats a California water myth that’s just flat wrong – the California Supergiant Alfalfa Water Use Export Myth. Alfalfa alone is using more water than all the other water uses combined, and most of …