Calif. drought forces cattle ranchers to downsize

AP ^ | November 7, 2008 | Terence Chea

[americanophile]

California's worst drought in decades is forcing the state's cattle ranchers to downsize their herds because two years of poor rainfall have ravaged millions of acres of rangeland used to feed their cows and calves.

--snip--

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought in May after the state recorded two years of below-average rainfall, a sharp reduction in Sierra Nevada snowpack and its driest spring on record. Late last month, state water officials warned local agencies that their water deliveries could be cut by as much as 85 percent next year.

The drought has drained many reservoirs, left lawns and golf courses brown, stranded fish in dried out creeks and forced homeowners and businesses to cut their water usage. It also contributed to an unprecedented wildfire season that scorched hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and rangeland this year.

--snip--

Wayne Farrell, 59, and his partner usually run about 200 cows on their Salinas Valley ranch, but they have reduced their herd to 140 animals and may have to sell the rest if drought continues.

"If we were to have another year like this, I would probably be out of business," Farrell said. "I would like to stay in it until I'm so old that I can't do it anymore, but economics plays a big part of this. If you can't make money doing something, you have to quit."

The cattle sell-off has brought a short-term spike in business for Jim Warren, who has run a livestock auction since 1975, but it leaves fewer animals to sell in the future. He said many ranchers have liquidated their entire herds and left the business.

"Economically, this is the worst I've seen it by a long ways," Warren said. "It's a disaster for people who are trying to make a living."

[americanophile]

Pray for rain people!

[americanophile]

[smokingfrog]

Pray for rain (but stock up on beef jerky - just in case).

[JoeVet]

During the Depression, California posted State Police on the borders to harass the Oki’s.

Maybe we should post National Guard troops on the borders with CA now, keep the Californicators in the hell-hole of their own creation.

Let them eat alpha sprouts ... ooopppssss, not enough water to fill the pool and grow sprouts. Here Rover .....

:)

[repubpub]

Knowing a little about the water system in CA, they forgot to mention what the avg. rainfall is in CA, the total rainfall for CA from 7/1/07-6/30/08, what was collected last year in reservoirs etc. The primary reason that local reservoirs are running dry is from the courts and tree (fish) huggers limiting what can be pumped out of the delta (run off from the Sierra). When the courts state that pumping is limited to 25-35% of normal in the dry months due to smelt spawning, it will tend to dry up the largest reservoir. The lack of capacity pumping (letting the runoff into the bay) and limiting when it can be pumped due to spawning (June-Dec), I could see how the Governor can mistake something he and the courts created be a drought.

As far as the farmers in the article stating how hard it is for them, they really aren’t blaming the lack of water, they point more towards the cost of fuel and feed. And this is more than likely due to the ethanol push.

[NVDave]

Nah. For the cow-calf man, the price of corn means little to him. He doesn’t grain cattle. Until a steer is up in the 8+ weight range, you don’t ever feed them corn.

It is all about pasture. In past years, when the pasture or range was thin in California, they’d truck their calves at 4-weights down to Texas and put them on winter wheat pasture. Well, that model worked at $2 diesel. It doesn’t work at $4 diesel, or when wheat is going through the roof and it becomes more profitable to keep the wheat for grain rather than pasture it off.

The ethanol issue contributed only to the price of corn, and that really only affects the price of fats. Calves and feeders need pasture, and they were getting a lot of pasture by being moved around while the west suffered droughty conditions through the late 90’s into the early 2000’s.

Corn and fuel has come back down rather rapidly as people have discovered that yes, speculators, not ethanol, drove the price of corn (etc) through the roof. You’ll see commodities prices go yet lower as more hedge funds are forced to liquidate as they close up shop. But the damage is done, the “truck to pasture” model has taken a hit from which it won’t recover as long as people continue to think that fuel will go right back up.

[whcbg]

You can probably add blame to Los Angeles and San Francisco populations who consume huge quantities of the available water when they are next to the largest ocean in the world and have decided that building a bullet train from LA to SF was more important than de-salinization or more storage facilities-that will probably make the airlines who actually have more than 4-5 stops in the state happy for the healthy competition.

[mrs tiggywinkle]

Are you aware that the owner of this forum lives in California? Are you aware that many contributors to this forum live in California? We vote conservative.

[utherdoul]

nuclear powered desalinization plants ... california wouldn’t need to draw off the delta anymore and disrupt all of those fragile ecosystems so if the greens raelly care about the earth they won’t complain.

they do care don’t they?