Posted on 06/15/2024 10:50:24 AM PDT by karpov
California is awash in water after record-breaking rains vanquished years of crippling drought. That sounds like great news for farmers. But Ron McIlroy, whose shop here sells equipment for plowing fields, knows otherwise.
“I’ll be lucky if I survive this year,” he said.
Illustrating how broken California’s vast water-delivery system is, many farmers in Central Valley, America’s fruit and vegetable basket, will get just 40% of the federal water they are supposed to this year.
Why? Endangered fish.
The pumps that transport water from wet Northern California to the semiarid south have been drastically slowed to protect threatened migrating smelt, measuring up to 3 inches, and steelhead. That means growers in the U.S.’s richest farming area are having to plant fewer crops even as they are surrounded by water.
The decision by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and California officials, to curtail water to farmers for the silvery fish has ignited an uproar in the southern Central Valley, and threatens to upend this important agriculture region just as it was recovering.
“There’s no reason for it and it’s dangerous for the country,” said Wayne Western, farm manager of Hammonds Ranch, which plans to plant tomatoes, cotton and other crops on only 60% of its 5,000 acres this year, compared with 80% last year. “You don’t know how to plan. You kind of come to a standstill.”
Drought has pummeled California’s farm industry, the nation’s largest, for much of the past decade. University of California researchers estimate drought-related farm losses totaled $7 billion and cost 40,000 jobs in 2014, 2015 and 2022 combined.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Now that right there would be funny if it weren't so damn true.
In Californication the spotted wing snotfly is more important than humans.
Los Altos was one big apricot orchard back in the day. The largest remaining orchard is in the hills and owned by some family named “Packard.”
Why do we grow livestock feed in a desert using massive government subsidies for a handful of multimillionaires?
= = =
Because the best land, most fertile and productive, and easiest to access for cultivating, harvesting, and marketing has been paved over for parking lots, multi story projects, and freeways.
California orange groves, for one example.
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thats the false narrative ...
the whole interior of the valley is a flood plane , lots of rain, lots of water
a little chunk of desert down south is a small part of this state.
shasta is full this year.
this is all about destroying private agriculture , land ownership and capitalism.
I hike the Packard Trail by the orchard when I’m back in town
I’m on Mindego Hill right now. Got 5G out here! Half way to Pescadero!
More war on farmers. Which is really a war on people who eat.
The nitwits in California don’t see the need for farms…they get their food at the local grocery stores, after all.
California water law is that 50% of.surface water flows are to be environmental flows. This is total flow.volume regardless of an extra wet year. There is a minimum flow where that 50%’can be larger than 50% of the flows present as the flows continue too decrease up to 100% environmental flows and zero diversions for human use. In California environmental flows are the most senior water rights then everything else. The only way to change what the Supreme Court’s already upheld in California is to get the legislature to change the law and get the governor to sign it out get a veto proof majority. That’s is end of story so set about getting the votes needed.
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