Drought-parched Australian farmland in 2006

By Tara Lohan

California’s four years of drought pale in comparison to the 15 drought years Australians endured from 1997. But Australia’s pain may help ease California’s gain thanks to a new report, “Managing Drought,” which boils down some of the key lessons learned

1. Don’t underestimate efficiency and conservation

Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, and this proved true in Australia where much was gained by demand-side programs. “In Australia, urban water efficiency was the quiet achiever – saving more water at lower cost and greater speed than supply options,” the report states. “California can benefit from long-term structural water savings by implementing water efficiency measures at a similar breadth and scale.”

Thanks to restrictions on watering landscapes, plus regulations for new or renovated buildings to increase efficiency, demand decreased in Australia – in one residential area by as much as 60 percent.

2. Communication is key

This may seem like common sense, but it shouldn’t be taken for granted: Governments and water agencies need to effectively communicate with the public during droughts. In some areas of Australia during the drought, the media regularly reported on per capita water use and how much water was left in reservoirs.

Information about restrictions was doled out along with information about how to take advantage of rebates and incentives.

There were also some missed opportunities. “In most states, decisions regarding investment, policy choices, water use trade-offs, and levels of service were made centrally, occasionally in consultation with industry representative organisations but not necessarily directly with representative members of the broader community and water customers,” the report states. “Governments did not take advantage of the level of innovation that Australia has demonstrated in deploying robust forms of community engagement. Successful community engagement means effective listening as well as skillful speaking.”

3. Don’t forget businesses

Much of the focus in urban areas is on residential water use, but businesses also play a key role. “There remains significant potential to reduce indoor water use, and in California during the drought there has been inadequate attention paid to opportunities to replace old, inefficient appliances and fixtures in homes and businesses,” according to the report. Water used by commercial businesses, industry and institutions totals a third of California’s water.

4. Diversify supply

Areas that depend on single sources of water replenished by rainfall will obviously be most in trouble during a drought. Increasingly in California, water agencies are working to diversify water supply, including using groundwater (although this has been over-utilized in some areas), desalinating seawater or brackish water, and recycling water.

To increase supply, Australia invested $7.2 billion in desalination and recycled water plants. But the benefit was short lived in some places. Post-drought many of those plants are no longer running. “Water customers are still repaying substantial capital costs but getting a minimal benefit,” the report states. “These examples highlight the risks associated with building large, expensive new supplies to meet needs during drought periods.”

An alternative would be to do least-cost planning to evaluate all the available options for both supply and demand and first select the measures that have the lower unit cost. Another option is using a readiness-based plan. This means taking care of the regulatory aspects and permits for the construction of any new projects beforehand, then signing off on their construction when a certain trigger point is hit.

“For example, Sydney’s readiness strategy included a trigger to construct a desalination plant when dam levels fell below 30 percent, which would have allowed sufficient time to build the plant before reaching dead storage,” the report states.

5. Pricing adjustments

When demand falls during a drought it’s good news from a water supply perspective but can be difficult for water utilities because of lost revenue. In California around 80 percent of a water utility’s costs are fixed, so a decrease in consumption can cause shortfalls.

One way to close the gap in short-term losses are drought surcharges or “fee-bates,” where those who use less water are rewarded and prices are raised for those who use high amounts. There is criticism, though, that such approaches could hurt poorer households or renters who can’t make water-efficiency changes to their homes.

“This presents a key opportunity for California to carefully investigate whether short-term drought surcharge incentives could be innovatively designed to address equity concerns, incentivize water savings during drought, and potentially avoid longer-term costs for customers,” the report notes.

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The latest video from the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Eggsacting Standards.”

The annual California snow survey didn’t impress the California Department of Water Resources Tuesday morning.

The statewide snowpack was only 83 percent of the March 1 average due to moderate rain and snow that’s moved through the valley since October 2015, coupled with warm weather, the department said.

The snow survey, conducted at Phillips Station off of Highway 50, near Sierra at Tahoe, showed that the snowpack was 105 percent of normal at that location.

However, statewide readings suggested this may not be a drought-busting year unless California received heavy rain this month like it did during the “March Miracles” of 1991 and 1995, according to the department.

“Mother Nature is not living up to predictions by some that a ‘Godzilla’ El Niño would produce much more precipitation than usual this winter,” said the department’s director Mark Cowin in a press release. “We need conservation as much as ever.”

“Right now, we’re obviously better than last year but still way below what would be considered adequate for any reasonable level of recovery at this point,” said Frank Gehrke, chief of the California Cooperative Snow Surveys Program.

Online snowpack readings can be found here

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(External video from KGTV is no longer available)

This year, all San Diego Unified School District schools are taking part in a program where the entire lunch meal is grown in the state.

Jonathan Lashchuk looks forward to harvesting vegetables with his 5th grade class at Torrey Pines Elementary.

“If they’re smooth and dark green they’ll be really fresh,” Lashchuk said.

From snap peas, to rainbow chard, taking care of their school garden gives the students great pride and teaches them the importance of eating right.

“It keeps me healthy, I’ll have a nice strong body,” Lashchuk said.

The garden isn’t just part of their curriculum, it’s also part of their lunch.

Students harvest more than 100 pounds of fresh produce a year. They say the best part about it is being able to eat what they grow.

While the salad bar has always been a hit, the highlight about hot lunch on Thursdays is that now the entire meal, including the entree is grown right here in the state.

SDUSD’s “California Thursdays” nutrition program has now expanded to all of its schools.

Last year, only 20 schools participated.

The district says buying poultry and other protein sources in-state boosts the economy and ensures students eat the freshest foods.

“I think it really gets kids excited about their food and where it comes from,” said Bill Jenkins, Torrey Pines Elementary Garden Coordinator.

The district works with farmers up and down the state to provide a variety of fresh food options.

After all that work in the garden, Lashchuk and his buddy can’t help but chow down – enjoying the fruits of their labor.

“It’s just really cool to know that you’re eating stuff that came from your school and you’re growing it right there,” Lashchuk said.

San Diego Unified’s “Farm to School,” which is the umbrella program, started in 2010 and is one of the nation’s most progressive programs.

By Louisa Burwood Taylor

Secretary Ross is speaking at next month’s World Agri-Tech Investment Summit in San Francisco and shares some of her thoughts about the agtech market.

Why are you attending the World Agri-Tech Investment Forum in San Francisco next month?

It’s an impressive group of people who are affiliated with the event. Technology and agriculture, especially in California, have always been necessary for each other. We’ve also seen so much interest from the investment community and others; I have never seen so many people with money discover agriculture as the new shiny object, especially in the past few years as we’ve been struggling with drought. Almost daily we are getting emails or calls from entrepreneurs with a great idea, but they’re not always well connected to the reality for farmers, who need to make decisions on an hourly basis. So I appreciate when people can come together and have the potential to network to get connected to that reality of what goes on at the farm.

What will you be speaking about?

I will be focusing on what we’re doing here in California regarding policy. I think we’re very progressive, and we certainly have very forward-thinking farmers here. So I will be talking about the policies we’re working on, specifically regarding climate change and what we’ve done to respond to the drought. I think in California we have done very well on many of our environmental issues specifically thinking about resources and the kinds of policies that give clear signals to the private sector that tech and innovation changes are needed to help us achieve our policy goals. I will talk about what we’re doing on climate change, climate-smart agriculture, the water use efficiency program, our dairy digester program, and our healthy soils initiative, and then the role of tech in all of those.

How does your department support agtech innovation?

For the first time, my department has dollars available to incentivize farmers for on-farm practices which are being made available under the state government’s proposed budget. Specifically, we have funds available for improving efficiency in water use, and we’ve already invested almost $20 million into 233 projects of this nature. It is interesting the mix of people who are converting their irrigation systems to drip or subsurface drip using sensor technology to improve the precision of their irrigation scheduling and incorporating evapotranspiration modeling to further improve efficiency.

The range and variety of California’s crop mix means that there is no single solution, so we are seeing farmers and researchers and app designers and a whole host of other innovators work together to design tailor-made solutions from drip tape all the way to fully automated, sensor-driven systems that can be run remotely from a farmer’s cell phone or tablet.

We also have funds for dairy digester projects and began funding digesters in 2014. This segment is in line for a significant increase in investment because of our need to address methane as a priority pollutant. What we’re hoping to signal there is the need for anaerobic digesters that can generate low-carbon transportation fuel. There are offsets available for that in California which could be significant. We need more development of that technology in the state and technology to help us quantify what true reduction in greenhouse gas emissions comes from healthy soils, which hopefully our healthy soil program will be funded to help. 

Our healthy soils initiative is driven by science; we know that increased carbon in soils gives us benefits ranging from increased water-holding capacity, increased crop yields and decreased sediment erosion. The California department of food and agriculture(CDFA) is coordinating this initiative, and our goal is to do the research, the education, and the ground work to get to real-world, on-farm practices that protect and restore soil organic matter.

Which technologies are you and your team most excited about?

I have to start with the dairy digester. We have two million cows in the state creating significant methane challenges. The ability for dairy digester technology and waste management to provide an additional revenue stream for the dairy farmer is significant, as well as improving environmental conditions. We’re very excited about this technology especially as we’re seeing very promising numbers around the production of low carbon fuel for transport.

On the water front, we have a combination need of low tech and high tech. On the low-tech side, we really need the infrastructure and technological support to work with farmers who come in all shapes and sizes. There are 80,000 farms in California and on some, English is not the first language, so how do we bring them all up to speed to use precision irrigation technology? And how do we help them understand how to maintain drip lines or use the right pump size and so on? 

Once it is up-and-running on the farm, all of this new machinery is going to generate a steady flow of data that is much more refined than what we’ve had in the past, so our farmers are also going to need high-tech tools, apps and innovations we haven’t even thought of yet to monitor, quantify, verify, optimize and compare those results.

I have also been on some roundtables and panels talking about the opportunity to lower the cost and improve the efficiency of wastewater treatment so that manufactured water can be reused again and again. The first approach to improving water efficiency is that we all have to have a conservation ethic.

What regulatory challenges do you see cropping up for agtech startups?

Obviously, when we think about the future, we think about climate change, drought, and water salinity conditions. Plant breeding is critical, but there are already existing regulatory challenges if you have a solution that involves genetic modification. You have two challenges: getting through the federal regulatory system in a timely manner, and the pushback and reluctance of the population not to accept GM as a solution; that’s really frightening to me. Part of it is that I want to preserve choices for consumers, but also choices for farmers to have marketing channels. We’ve got to come to grips with this without making it an either-or situation; it shouldn’t be framed that way. Secretary Vilsack is trying to bring people together for coexistence, but I am worried about how it will play out.

It’s also very challenging to have a new disruptive technology when the federal government structure and statutory charges and regulations do not respond the way markets move, which is much faster. I think that’s an issue all across government; it’s regulating for the 20th century, but needs to be more forward-thinking. In California, we have helped to make some significant changes, and it’s been a combination of sending policy signals to the federal government. Coming from a state with a lot of consumers really helps us.

Our farmers lead in terms of growing crops and feeding people, but our consumers — 38 million of them and counting — tend to lead by example as well. Trends start here, like the ongoing wave of interest in food and where it comes from and how it is grown and new ways to prepare and serve it. Our proximity to such a huge consumer base means California’s farmers and ranchers aren’t just leaders in terms of agricultural production — we are also in the best position to understand our consumers. They expect us to be innovators whether that means irrigation technology, or new crop varieties, or being responsive to global markets, or making sure our regulatory framework remains adaptable to this dynamic industry.

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