California Ag Network

Tag: SGMA

  • New Opportunities for Trading Surface Water in the Sacramento Valley under SGMA

    New groundwater agencies in the Sacramento Valley are currently finalizing plans to manage their groundwater basins for long-term balance, as required by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Successful stewardship demands good information not only about groundwater conditions, but also about surface water availability. To help build shared understanding of surface water for agriculture—the valley’s main water-using sector—we produced a new dataset showing how access to this vital resource varies across irrigated farmland in the Sacramento Valley and the Delta. This effort builds on previous Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) work in the San Joaquin Valley, making it now possible to assess surface water conditions across the entire Central Valley.

    Although the Sacramento Valley is currently mired in extreme drought, higher precipitation and the presence of major rivers mean that its basins tend to replenish more readily and recover more quickly after drought. Nonetheless, SGMA implementation here will likely entail some pumping cutbacks to avoid significant undesirable results of groundwater use. As in the San Joaquin Valley, some areas face heightened risks of drinking water wells going dry when pumping causes groundwater levels to fall. Because the Sacramento Valley’s basins are relatively healthy, the region will need to pay greater attention to avoiding impacts of pumping on river flows, which can adversely affect downstream water users, including the environment.

    Sacramento Valley surface water is spread unevenly

    The water rights and contracts held by a water district determine the amount of surface water available to its growers. The interactive map below illustrates average surface water availability from various federal, state, and local projects. Districts with less than 3 acre-feet (af) per acre regularly require supplemental groundwater; those with much less are fundamentally reliant on pumping. The valley-wide average is approximately 2 af/acre, but individual district access ranges from over 6 af/acre to none.

    Substantial variation arises both across basins (Vina averages less than 0.5 af/acre, versus more than 3.5 af/acre in Butte) and within (for example, Sutter and Colusa basins contain both areas rich in surface water, and areas without any). We found similar patterns of haves and have-nots within the San Joaquin Valley.

    Diversity in water availability and cropping patterns creates incentives for water trading

    The Central Valley also has a wide diversity of crops, and cutting back on pumping will be more costly for some crops than for others. Trading water—both within and across basins—can help lessen private and regional economic losses by keeping the most productive lands irrigated. Such trading already helps farmers manage the costs of surface water cutbacks during droughts, and incentives to trade will grow as SGMA limits groundwater availability.

    Within the Sacramento Valley, water trading will be especially valuable for the large areas of  high-earning perennial orchards—such as almonds, walnuts, or grapes—that have insufficient surface water but cannot be fallowed like annual crops. Approximately 70% of perennial crop acreage in the Sacramento Valley averages less than 2 af/acre of surface water; nearly 60% is on lands relying almost entirely on groundwater. Other lands may have water to trade, including those where rice is grown, helping to avoid very costly shortfalls for perennial farmers in the future.

    There will also be demand for Sacramento Valley surface water beyond basin boundaries—or outside of the region altogether. The San Joaquin Valley has almost three times as much perennial crop acreage in groundwater-reliant areas. For the past three decades, Sacramento Valley growers have routinely sold water to San Joaquin Valley farmers and coastal urban communities during droughts. SGMA implementation will increase this demand, but it could also increase local pressure to keep this water at home, to balance local basins.

    Although groundwater conditions are generally strong in the Sacramento Valley, the fact remains that 60% of all agricultural lands are in areas with average surface supplies below 3 af/acre. Farmers will need to adapt as groundwater becomes scarcer, especially during drought. Trading can help facilitate this adaptation. A new PPIC report on this topic identifies key barriers to water trading and explores innovative new approaches, such as expanded groundwater banking arrangements. — By Alex Ehrens, Joy Collins & Andrew Ayres, Public Policy Institute of California

    Note: This research was supported with a grant from the Water Foundation. The underlying data and additional notes on surface water availability in the valley can be found in Data Set: PPIC Sacramento Valley and Delta Surface Water Availability.

  • A Plea for Farmer Engagement and Government Support of California GSAs

    As farmers face drought conditions once again this summer, local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies are still working on the planning and implementation of their Groundwater Sustainability Plans. Watch this brief video with Patricia Poire, Executive Director of the Kern Groundwater Authority, as she shares concerns and needs for both farmer and government support to meet the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requirements.

    Please thank this video’s sponsor Suterra for their industry support.

  • The Impact of Water Regulation on Ag Lending

    It is no secret that the American West is in the midst of an alarming water shortage. Data from April shows that almost 80% of the West is in at least moderate drought, while 61% is in severe drought, 42% is in extreme drought and 21% is in exceptional drought.

    This dry spell has created water stress for farmers across the region, and water stress in most cases translates to financial stress. But analyzing that financial risk is tricky given the amount of data involved and how that data is often difficult to analyze and fragmented.

    AQUAOSO uses a data-driven approach to provide water security analysis to help financial institutions incorporate water risk into their business decisions.

    Using this data, Alex Parillo, head of sales at AQUAOSO, and Cameron Buford, co-founder and product manager at AQUAOSO, recently gave a presentation on water security trends titled, “The Impact of Water Regulation on Ag Lending,” using California as a case study. Data from the Drought Mitigation Center shows that almost the entire state of California is experiencing dry conditions, with 94% of the state under at least moderate drought. In addition, 77% of the state is in severe drought, while 37% of the state is in extreme drought.

    About 2 million acres — roughly a quarter — of California’s irrigated farmland is receiving only 5% of its water supply.

    “Farmers are already bracing for severely limited water again in 2021,” Parillo said.

    In the coming years, 780,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley are expected to come out of production, and it is likely that water once used for vegetable production will be reserved for higher-value crops such as wine grapes and nuts. Fortunately, vegetable crops, which are planted and harvested annually, are easier to take out of production than tree crops, and therefore easier to manage water requirements.

    While water stress at its most simple can be interpreted as demand outstripping supply, a number of human factors such as population growth and water management must be taken into account when determining actual water stress in a specific region.

    “It looks at all these factors in a local context to really understand what is happening on the ground,” Parillo said.

    In California for instance, one of the most significant human factors is the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). Because California depends on groundwater for a significant portion of its annual water supply, 41% on average and up to 58% in drought years, SGMA was enacted in order to halt overdraft and bring groundwater basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge to provide a buffer against drought and climate change.

    SGMA requires local agencies to adopt sustainability plans for high- and medium-priority groundwater basins, and under SGMA basins must reach sustainability within 20 years.

    “Talking about water in California, everything revolves around SGMA,” Buford said.

    Out of the more than 500 basins in California, 94 have been designated medium- or high-priority water basins. But while those basins account for less than 20% of the total basins in the state, they account for 98% of groundwater pumping, 83% of the state’s population and 88% of all irrigated areas.

    “A vast amount of our reliance on groundwater is coming from high groundwater-risk areas,” Buford said.

    AQUAOSO analyzed 53 sustainability plans to do a trend analysis and found about half of the plans proposed supply augmentation, while only a third of the plans proposed any sort of groundwater pumping reductions.

    Supply augmentation entails basins bringing in water from other sources, but with limited surface water, at some point, it becomes unsustainable for every basin to plan on making up their deficit through outside sources without reducing pumping.

    “Where is this water going to come from?” Buford said.

    As a result, lenders cannot simply look at whether or not a property has access to two sources of water anymore to assess water risk. Groundwater limitations and other factors related to policy must now also be accounted for.

    “The risk that we’re seeing on the water side is rapidly changing, more than ever before,” Buford said.

    In addition to assessing water access and its impact on property valuation, the impact of water restrictions could lead to further financial hardships for farms that are forced to fallow lands because of their limited water allotment.

    The Public Policy Institute of California estimated that without flexibility to trade water or adapt crop choices and without new supply, the Central Valley alone would have to fallow 780,000 acres, with an estimated revenue loss of about $3.3 billion per year.

    “If you think about the collateral that you have supporting your loans, if that collateral was once productive farmlands or even permanent plantings, and that gets converted into fallowed lands, the value of that land goes down sharply,” Buford said.

    AQUAOSO found that open land on the east side of California’s Central Valley can sell for twice the amount as land on the west side of the valley, even with similar soils.

    There has been a trend of permanent planting acreage replacing vegetable acreage, and with water regulations in 2021, this year will be no different.

    “Permanent planting prices are more likely to cover rising water costs due to the surface water and groundwater scarcity we are seeing this year. Vegetable acreage is also under threat from farmers choosing to fallow their typical vegetable acreage to use that water on their permanent planting acreage,” Buford said.

    “It’s simply because of water security, and that’s a very clear example that water risk really is financial risk,” Parillo said.

    Although the presentation used California as an example, water security is something agricultural investors throughout the West are prioritizing when assessing a property’s value.

    “While we have thought about this as maybe, ‘This is only a California problem,’ no, this is something we are seeing through the West,” Buford said. – Article by AQUAOSO Technologies

  • Anticipating and Addressing the Impacts of the Drought

    California’s current drought is already off to a strong start, with some major challenges already looming just two years in. Compared to the drought of 2012‒16, the normally wetter Sacramento and North Coast regions have been hit much harder than the rest of the state. Beyond the local challenges this poses, drought in the Sacramento region is already having statewide implications, given its key role in supplying water to farms and cities further south.

    The 2012–16 experience showed that some sectors were better prepared to handle drought. Cities and farms had significant capacity to adapt, while small well-dependent communities and freshwater ecosystems were especially vulnerable. Although these patterns are still present, some important policy changes—most notably the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA)—could change the way we respond this time around.

    Cities and suburbs: More than 93% of all Californians receive their water from some 400 urban utilities. Utilities in large metropolitan areas have made major investments to improve supply reliability and reduce demand. Conservation mandates in the last drought brought large additional reductions, and water use has generally remained lower since then.

    Most cities should be well-positioned to weather the drought this year without major shortages, although some—notably in the North Coast and Bay Area—have started calling for increased conservation, following their drought contingency plans. The regional situation is especially good in Southern California, where reservoir levels are still around average, with additional water stored in Lake Mead and groundwater banks.

    If the drought continues, the threat of shortages—and the need for greater conservation and other emergency actions—will grow. New drought planning and reporting requirements should improve information sharing with the state about local conditions and help avoid the broad-brush approaches of the last drought.

    Small communities: Small communities that rely on shallow groundwater wells or local surface water supplies are likely to be much more vulnerable than urban residents. During the last drought, reductions in surface water deliveries in the San Joaquin Valley led to extensive groundwater pumping, lower groundwater tables, and dry wells. The same could occur this time. Our preliminary analysis finds that almost 2,400 Central Valley wells could be affected this year, with an additional 900 wells next year. Other small communities around the state with similar supplies may also experience significant shortages.

    Proactive strategies will be needed to ensure vulnerable communities have unbroken access to drinking water. Last time, the state provided emergency funds to shore up roughly 150 small community systems and delivered temporary supplies to homes whose wells went dry.

    Although the vulnerabilities are still considerable, some changes could improve the capacity to respond. Better information is now available on wells, groundwater conditions, and other risk factors; this can help identify communities at highest risk and target mitigation actions. SGMA also changed the policy landscape: new local groundwater sustainability agencies now have a responsibility to avoid or mitigate significant impacts to drinking water wells from groundwater pumping. This creates a new opportunity for state and local partnerships to more durably address the problem—for instance, by drilling deeper wells or connecting small communities to larger, more resilient water systems. Where possible, solutions should seek to simultaneously address water supply and water quality vulnerabilities facing these communities.

    Agriculture: Agriculture always faces challenges from droughts. The exceptionally dry conditions in the Sacramento watershed are causing local shortages and have dramatically reduced surface water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley, California’s largest farming region. Previously, farmers could substantially mitigate drought shortages by pumping more groundwater. Farmer-to-farmer water trading also helped keep some of the most productive cropland going and maintained many farm-related jobs.

    This time, adaptation may be more challenging. Unsustainable pumping—made worse during the last drought—led to the adoption of SGMA. Renewed demand for pumping now poses challenges for meeting SGMA mandates to avoid undesirable impacts from groundwater use, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley. These impacts include loss of groundwater storage, degradation of water quality, and ground subsidence that damages roads, bridges, and canals. In the Sacramento Valley and North Coast, pumping can have major effects on sensitive wetlands and streams.

    State, federal, and local efforts are already underway to facilitate increased water trading, which will help reduce the economic costs of shortages. And a recent federal drought declaration will provide financial assistance to farmers and ranchers. But to avoid significant damage from additional pumping—while minimizing economic harm—actions are also needed to address risks to drinking water, infrastructure, and ecosystems. A creative package of solutions—including drilling deeper wells and incentivizing growers to voluntarily avoid pumping in sensitive areas—are needed. The state should partner with groundwater sustainability agencies to help ensure success.

    Ecosystems: Freshwater ecosystems fared very poorly in the last drought, and the dry-warm conditions will again pose major challenges because many protected species—such as salmon and steelhead—depend upon access to reliable cold water. Water project operators will struggle to meet requirements for flow and temperature below reservoirs. Many watersheds will see escalating conflicts over trade-offs between water used to maintain habitat and water for homes, businesses, and farms. All of these issues are important this year and will become acute if the drought continues next year.

    Federal, state and local agencies learned a great deal during the last drought. To mitigate harm this time, the single most important lesson is for key agencies—including the State Water Board and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife—to be proactive and communicate clearly about likely actions.

    Act now, and plan for a dry future: During the last drought, California was slow to respond to increasing scarcity. Since then, the state has seen significant actions to strengthen urban water management, protect drinking water supplies for small communities, set mandates for groundwater management, and identify ways to improve ecosystem resilience. These changes will help address the drought today and anticipate actions needed if next year is also dry. We may not be able to make it rain, but early responses, cooperative approaches, and creative partnerships can help us mitigate the worst impacts of this latest drought, and better prepare us for the next one. — By Alvar Escriva-Bou, Ellen Hanak & Jeffrey Mount, Public Policy Institute of California

  • Collaboration on CA Groundwater Accounting Platform and Data Standards

    State water agencies, the California Water Data Consortium (Consortium) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced a new partnership today to make an open-source groundwater accounting platform freely available to help groundwater sustainability agencies manage the transition to sustainable supplies. 

    Collaborative efforts are underway among the Department of Water Resources (DWR), the State Water Resources Control Board (Water Board), the Consortium and EDF to adapt and scale the groundwater accounting platform that was co-developed by EDF and Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District with technical support from Sitka Technology Group, OpenET, WestWater Research, and Olsson Engineering and funding from the Water Foundation, among other supporters. Use of the groundwater accounting platform is entirely voluntary. 

    “Our goal is to help groundwater managers more easily and cost-effectively track water use across their agencies and coordinate within and across basins to find the most effective approach for enabling sustainable groundwater management,” said Steven Springhorn, acting deputy director at DWR for statewide groundwater management. “The accounting platform developed by EDF is a valuable tool for local decision making, and the Water Data Consortium is a natural fit for ensuring the platform meets local and state needs long term.”

    “An accounting system is the crucial backbone to managing groundwater and balancing supply and demand — you can’t manage what you can’t measure,” said Christina Babbitt, senior manager of EDF’s California Groundwater Program. “Bringing groundwater supplies into balance is a challenge that demands new, innovative solutions and partnerships, like the one announced today.”

    “This project is a great opportunity to build local capacity to support data-driven water management decisions. We look forward to this unique partnership that will help state and local agencies to continue protecting groundwater in California.” said Tara Moran, president and CEO of the Water Data Consortium. “A common accounting platform could provide consistency and reduce costs for local and state agencies.” 

    The open-source platform enables water managers and landowners to track water supplies and use, create water budgets, model scenarios, and trade allocations of water within a district or basin. EDF, an international environmental organization, has been working with Rosedale-Rio Bravo Water Storage District in Kern County since 2018 to develop and pilot use of the platform in order to facilitate innovative water management and protect disadvantaged communities and ecosystems. 

    DWR and the Water Board are working with EDF and the Consortium to ensure that the platform is compatible with the online electronic portals that local agencies use to submit data to the state, such as DWR’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) Portal and the Water Board’s Groundwater Extraction Annual Reporting System (GEARS). 

    The partners are working to expand the platform’s features to provide a cost-effective option for local agencies. State agencies do not require use of the accounting platform. Local agencies will continue to have the option to develop and use other accounting and trading platforms.

    Under the historic Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) of 2014, more than 250 local agencies have been formed to bring groundwater basins into sustainable conditions over the next two decades. The law was enacted in the midst of severe drought in which overpumping groundwater caused hundreds of drinking water wells to go dry and land to sink, damaging canals, roads, and bridges. 

    Since the last drought, the state has made significant investments to support local groundwater sustainability agencies as they work to bring basins into sustainable conditions through a variety of approaches, including finding additional supplies to recharge basins; reducing water use through efficiency measures, changing cropping patterns, or strategic fallowing of farmland; and efficient and equitable groundwater trading.

    State agencies, the Consortium, and EDF intend to engage stakeholders as they expand the open-source platform to meet local needs and define and encourage adoption of data standards consistent with the Open and Transparent Water Data Act (AB 1755). 

    To enable local agencies and the broader community to share ideas on how platform features and design can best accommodate local needs, a public workshop on the open-source accounting platform will be held on June 23 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Pacific Time. Please register for the workshop here.

    Other state efforts complement this work. DWR has created a Water Budget Handbook, a reference guide to help water managers create water budgets that account for historical conditions and how future changes to supply, demand, hydrology, population, land use, and climatic conditions may affect an area. Such budgets are useful for planning and evaluating potential management actions. Use of DWR’s handbook could help ensure consistency in the data that populate an online accounting platform.  The Water Board’s GEARS platform, which will only be used if state intervention is triggered, can also inform the need for sound accounting principles as a key groundwater management component; carrying these principles to an open-access, third-party system will help GSAs reduce costs, communicate with groundwater users and other stakeholders, and will ultimately help implement SGMA successfully. Joaquin E. Esquivel, Chair of the Water Board, is a member of the California Water Data Consortium steering committee. 

    The state also is weighing how to ensure that any groundwater trading that develops in response to SGMA protects disadvantaged communities, ecosystems, and other water users. Well-designed water trading programs are one of many tools that local agencies are considering for managing groundwater sustainably, and an accounting system is the first step for such programs.

    The California Water Commission is expected to begin public workshops on water trading this summer and distill conclusions from the public discussions by the end of the year.

    Additional resources:

    Online interactive guide to accounting platform

    California Water Data Consortium

    California Department of Water Resources Handbook for Water Budget Development

  • Lessons Learned in Regulating Hemp

    Navigating the Urban/Agriculture Interface: As California’s population grows, counties and cities across the state are grappling with the difficult challenge of preserving California’s rich agricultural tradition while providing adequate housing for their residents in accordance with state housing mandates. Housing and commercial development has slowly (or sometimes quickly) crept into traditional agricultural land especially in jurisdictions seeking to avoid infill development. Recognizing the vital importance of agriculture, the state, counties and cities have adopted laws, regulations and policies to protect agriculture, such as the Williamson Act, the Right to Farm Act, local Right to Farm Ordinances, and local General Plan Agriculture Elements and zoning ordinances. However, these laws do not always resolve potential conflicts. Rather, the increasing population around agricultural lands, and staff and decision-makers’ lack of knowledge about agriculture can turn the regulatory balance against protecting the industry. This has been particularly true with hemp.

    In 2018, the Farm Bill legalized hemp cultivation across the country. Since hemp hasn’t been grown in the U.S. for nearly half a century (aside from a few research applications), most people are unfamiliar with the crop and make little distinction between it and its THC-bearing relative, cannabis. The lack of education and the struggles of a fledgling industry have led to conflicts between hemp and other interested parties across California. This has forced local decision makers to consider whether and how to regulate a legal agricultural crop in a manner that satisfies nearby residents who may voice a host of complaints (whether founded or unfounded). The following lessons learned from local efforts to regulate hemp provide insight into strategies to resolve other conflicts at the urban/agriculture interface.

    1. Avoid Broad Brush Bans and Buffers

    Broad bans, especially of a new crop, can be politically attractive. But broad-brush regulations unnecessarily limit agricultural operations. With respect to hemp, regulations can be customized to consider local topography, climate and other factors that may make hemp cultivation feasible in certain areas while creating a conflict in others. Further, farmers can reduce potential odor impacts by building into ordinances limits on harvest timing and periods. Although it will take more time upfront, developing custom-made regulations will prevent confrontation down the road while fully allowing the agricultural community to thrive and diversify.

    1. Go on Site Visits

    Many decision makers and staff personnel have limited experience with agricultural operations. Site visits can provide important information to staff and decision makers about the real-life implications of proposed regulation. Site visits can help reveal the win-win scenarios possible with tailored, rational regulation. For hemp, site visits provide an important opportunity for decision makers and elected officials to learn about the crop (i.e., that hemp is not much different than other crops and that there are different types of hemp grown in different ways that may result in different impacts). For example, will the hemp be grown to flower, which is when the plant produces the most odors? What is the odor, if any, of the hemp plant when it is not flowering? Having boots on the ground is the most effective way to understand and truly appreciate how hemp fits into and synergizes with existing land uses.

    1. Understanding the Benefits of the Agricultural Community

    A jurisdiction that bans or overly restricts agriculture can injure the broader community. For hemp, the crop has been used to make textiles, paper, paint and inks, rope and food. It has immense potential to benefit an array of industries and domestic innovation. Hemp also improves the local environment by requiring little to no pesticide use, having a reduced water demand compared to other crops, and even remediating contaminated soils and sequestering carbon. As California’s agriculture works tirelessly to remain competitive and profitable, allowing for the opportunity to diversify to a crop that has positive environmental impacts will benefit all. Because of hemp’s relatively low water demand, there may be an opportunity for those that are reducing groundwater pumping to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to shift to hemp cultivation, which is a better alternative to outright fallowing.

    The challenges faced by the hemp industry with local regulation reveal these key strategies that the agricultural industry can use to fight other overly broad regulations and help protect California’s agricultural history, community and economy. – By Beth Collins and Chris Guillen

    About the Authors

    Beth Collins is a shareholder at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck where she leads the firm’s California Real Estate and Land Use Group.

    Chris Guillen is an associate at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck whose practice spans all areas of water and land use.

  • Dairy’s Shrinking Water Footprint: A Key Piece of the SGMA Puzzle

    The implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) and and other anticipated water restrictions pose major challenges for California agriculture. Without effective solutions, economists have estimated that up to one million acres of farmland will be fallowed, resulting in a revenue loss of $7.2 billion per year. As the state’s top agricultural commodity, dairy farming is an important part of the SGMA challenge. Fortunately, dairy farmers have an excellent track record for water savings and are continuing to adopt innovative strategies to advance environmental sustainability and help meet the water conservation challenges ahead.

    According to researchers at University of California, Davis, the amount of water used per unit of milk produced in the state has decreased more than 88 percent over the past 50 years. This is primarily due to improved feed crop production and water use efficiency. A large portion of the water savings can be attributed to the use of byproducts as feed.

    More than 40 percent of feed ingredients used on California dairy farms are byproducts of other agricultural and food production processes, which are provided as dairy feed without any additional water needed for production. This includes materials such as almond hulls, tomato and citrus pulp, cotton seed, and brewer’s grain, which could otherwise be wasted. Dairy farmers work with nutritionists to incorporate these materials into well-balanced, nutritious rations for cows. In this way, dairy farms work in harmony with the state’s other agricultural and food production industries—making for efficient use of water resources.

    While dairies typically grow the majority of their non-byproduct feed ingredients using recycled water from the dairy, feed is also grown out-of-state, further reducing in-state water use by more than 30 percent. Over the past 50 years, California dairy farmers have also significantly increased the amount of feed crops they grow per acre of land, providing tremendous environmental benefits—reducing the amount of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides needed, while also reducing the energy to irrigate crops, and the amount of fuel used by tractors. Water use and feed production will remain an important topic moving forward, which is why California dairy farmers continue to implement new strategies and technologies to boost water use efficiency and promote overall sustainability.

    One example of these efforts was recently awarded a prestigious sustainability award from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. Sustainable Conservation and Netafim partnered with De Jager Dairy and two other California dairies to develop and demonstrate a new way to grow dairy forage crops: a subsurface drip irrigation (SDI) system that uses manure effluent. The system delivers plant nutrients found in dairy manure beneath the soil surface, improving irrigation water use efficiency and nutrient use efficiency, while providing other environmental benefits. Thanks to this partnership effort and grant funding now being provided by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), more dairy farms will soon be able to implement this approach.

    The manure SDI system will serve as an important tool in the implementation of SGMA for two reasons: the conservation of water (nearly 40 percent more crop produced per drop of water) and a more efficient use of manure nutrients as fertilizer. As acres of farmland will need to be fallowed to meet SGMA requirements, dairy farmers will need to ensure manure nutrients produced on their farms continue to be used in ways that best to protect water and air quality, while helping build healthy soils. The organic matter and nutrients found in dairy manure have potential to help improve the health and water-holding capacity of soils throughout the state.

    Dairies are an integral part of any sustainable food system. The state’s dairy farms play an important role—from providing nutritious dairy foods and180,000 year-round jobs, to utilizing thousands of tons of byproducts as feed, while offering a source of organic matter that can help promote healthy, more resilient soils. California dairy farms also continue to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability—reducing water use by adopting innovative practices. Likewise,

    Dairy farms continue using water efficiently, maximizing resources while supporting the economy.

    dairy farms will continue to be an important part of the conversation—as farmers, stakeholders, and officials at both the local and state level continue developing plans to achieve sustainability in groundwater use and protect the environment. — Article Courtesy of Dairy Cares

  • What is SGMA Going to Cost CA Farmers?

    With Groundwater Sustainability Plans (GSPs) now required for critically overdrafted basins, the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is gradually taking effect across the state of California; but how will this impact farmers? Watch this brief interview with Duncan MacEwan from ERA Economics as he shares his insights, as addressed at a recent meeting held by the California Tomato Growers Association.

  • Be Sure to Manage these Insect pests in Young Pistachio Orchards

    Growers likely have heard a lot about the damage leaf footed bugs and navel orange worm can cause to their pistachio crop, but what about integrated pest management practices in the early nonbearing years of an orchard?  When there’s no crop, growers may overlook the impact that some insect pests can have their young trees that are in their critical years of establishment.  These pests should not be ignored; but what are these pests, and how does a grower go about managing them?  Watch this brief interview with Entomology Farm Advisor from the UC Cooperative Extension David Haviland as he explains and read more about it in Pacific Nut Producer Magazine.

     

    Please thank our sponsor Duarte Nursery for their industry support by visiting them at their booth at the following November Events: Tree & Vine Expo, the Grape, Nut & Tree Fruit Expo & Blue Diamond Growers Annual Membership Meeting.

  • Friant Water Authority Shares Blueprint to Save Central Valley Farmland & Water

    With the tasking demands of Sustainable Groundwater Management Act coming down on California farmers, a considerable amount of farmland will have to be retired and will have a severe economic impact on the Central Valley.  But there has to be a way to meet the demands of the state without devastating our farming communities.  Watch this brief interview with Friant Water Authority CEO Jason Phillips as he shares their Water Blueprint initiative to meet both the State’s demands without robbing our critical farming communities of the water they need to continue feeding the world.  Read more about it in Pacific Nut Producer Magazine.

    Please thank our sponsor Duarte Nursery for their industry support by visiting them at their booth at the following November Events: Tree & Vine Expo, the Grape, Nut & Tree Fruit Expo & Blue Diamond Growers Annual Meeting.