A field of dead almond trees is seen next to a field of growing almond trees in the Central Valley. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

By Nathanael Johnson

First comes the drought, then the deluge. It’s not just that climate change is making the weather more extreme, with hotter dry spells and warmer winters that transform mountain snowpack to water. It’s also that the drought has actually made flooding more likely by diminishing the soil’s capacity to soak up moisture. It’s as if dryness defends its turf against wetness — baking the dirt into an impermeable crust, or turning it into a hydrophobic crumb that causes raindrops to bead off.

The result: more scarcity where people need water most, and greater abundance were we don’t want it at all. In other words, the water that could trickle down to overdrawn aquifers and refill dry wells instead ends up lapping against your bedspread. We’ve already seen floods in Texas and Los Angeles; more are bound to come.

There’s a potential solution: redirect swollen rivers onto farmland to recharge groundwater while also protecting cities in flood zones. As Heather Mack has written for Grist, researchers have tested this out with a few innovative farmers in California’s San Joaquin Valley, and it worked great. The water sank into the ground, and the crops were none the worse for wear.

So now people are asking, how much of the problem could this fix? Two recently published studies are providing the first estimates.

How much water is there?

California farmers pump about 30 percent of their irrigation water from wells in a typical year — a total of about 34 million acre feet (the amount needed to fill a one-acre tub with a foot of water; it’s roughly equal to a gajillion gallons).

That’s a lot, but California farmland aquifers are already getting over 31 million acre feet in recharge each year. The annual overdraft is 1.1 to 2.6 million acre feet. This is an average: This year, it’s much worse; at other times it’s much better. For our back-of-the-envelope figuring, let’s stick with the average, which includes both the wet and dry years.

If we could capture all of California’s floods, we’d have no trouble balancing the groundwater accounts, but the researchers I talked to said that the state is nowhere close to being able to do that. One big problem: California often gets floods in the Sacramento River basin, in the northern half of the state, where groundwater levels are fairly healthy. There’s no way to magically teleport floodwaters from north to south before they hit cities.

A new study commissioned by the California Water Foundation took a close look at three counties in the San Joaquin River Basin, where groundwater is overtapped. This study found an average overdraft of 250,000 acre feet per year, and average winter flood flows in the region’s rivers of 253,400 acre feet per year. So the water is there!

Of course, there are problems. That water comes in large pulses that would swamp the existing canals and ditches if water managers tried to channel it all onto fields. The study estimates that the region could only move 130,000 acre feet of water out of rivers with the existing canals. And then we have to ask, where do we put all that water?

How much land is suitable for flooding?

What sort of farmland can we inundate? The flood-the-farms idea will only work if the soils allow for deep percolation. The land has to be flat; you obviously can’t flood rolling hills. We should rule out any land with contaminated soils — we don’t want salts, pesticides, and fertilizers flushing into the aquifers. And farmers won’t volunteer to flood any field if it’s bad for business — if the waters are likely to damage soil structures or hurt the orchards. After accounting for each of those limits, how much farmland is left?

Approximately 3.6 million acres, according to a research team led by Toby O’Geen, a soil scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources Cooperative Extension. That’s plenty. In a recent paper, O’Geen et al. wrote, “A preliminary calculation based only on soil properties and crop type shows that landscapes rated Excellent or Good could be used to bank as much as 1.2 million acre feet of water per day.” At that rate you could eliminate the state’s entire overdraft with just two days of floodwater.

But again, it’s not so simple. The researchers note that this land isn’t necessarily connected to the water (again, the lack of canals). And each field may have complications: a hesitant farmer, variations in the soil profile, heaps of red tape. Many farmers have replaced flood irrigation systems with micro sprinklers, or drip systems, and in some cases have taken out the old ditches or completely regraded the fields, said Thomas Harter, a UC-Davis researcher who collaborated with O’Geen on the mapping project. Those researchers have made interactive maps available online in hopes that farmers and water officials will combine that data with local knowledge to find the realistic spots.

If we want a sense of how much flood water could realistically get to those green spots on the maps, we can return to that California Water Foundation study. In that area, if you recall, there is an average overdraft (the amount of water farmers are pumping out of the ground in excess of what goes back in) of 250,000 acre feet per year. Realistically, farmers could be adding 52,000 acre feet of water per year to aquifers by diverting flood water onto fields, according to that study. That would cut the overdraft by 20 percent.

If the combined estimates of floodwater and land to absorb it hold true for the rest of the state, we may have solved 20 percent of the problem. But we are still missing 80 percent of that 1.2 to 2.6 million acre feet of overdraft. “It’s obviously not solving the problem, but it’s a first big bite,” said Daniel Mountjoy, director of resource stewardship for Sustainable Conservation, a California nonprofit that has been an active player in the groundwater recharge investigation. Where does the rest of the water come from?

In the end, it will come from farmers taking land out of production, or switching to more drought-tolerant crops. But Mountjoy also thinks it could be possible to nudge that 20 percent higher. So far we are just looking at the cheapest option. We could spend more — build more ditches, enlarge canals, build up berms for deeper inundations — and we’d get more water into the ground. In addition, the study only considered floods that came from November to March. Additional big storm events can also come in April, May, and June. It’s possible that farmers could take water later into the spring, even as the crops are growing.

Sustainable Conservation is now working with the California almond growers to study how farmers might flood their orchards without hurting the trees. Tree fruit growers and grape farmers are also investigating the opportunity. Groundwater recharge won’t keep every acre of farmland in business, but I bet it will keep a lot of farms chugging as they feel the squeeze of California’s new groundwater law — which requires farmers to take no more water out of the ground than goes in.

If farmers embrace groundwater recharge, it could keep them in business and reduce flooding. But my favorite aspect of ground water recharge is that it would help desiccated riparian environments — rivers that have become trickles, and creeks that have gone dry. The Water Foundation study found that 40 percent of the water from flooded fields would end up in groundwater below those fields, while 17 percent flowed to groundwater elsewhere. The final 43 percent of the water — the biggest portion — goes into the ground and then back out again in streams. Stricken creeks could spring back to life. Groundwater recharge gives farmers a strong incentive to do something that will help them, and help the local environment even more.

Link to story

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross signing the Charter of Milan.

The 2015 World’s Fair recently concluded in Milan, Italy, and an important development was the Charter of Milan, described by its authors as a moral, non-binding commitment to achieve such goals as regulations guaranteeing rights to food for all; stronger legislation to promote the safeguarding of agricultural land; and the development of a system of open international trade, based on shared rules that are not discriminatory.

With the United Nations estimating A 70 percent increase in world food demand by 2050, it’s essential that we–all nations, all people–do everything we can to make food as readily available as possible.

The Charter’s authors are hoping that people around the world will support and ultimately sign the Charter in order to send a message to world leaders that its principles are essential core values for our planet – a road map to a sustainable world. One key point – it’s not just leaders who are asked to sign the charter, but all people, to deliver a genuine message of unity.

Earlier this week I was honored to attend a meeting in Napa with Stefano Bonaccini, governor of the Emilia Romagna region of Italy (north-central, between Milan and Florence), as well as his Ministers of Industry and Agriculture, and a delegation of about 15 local government and business leaders. We discussed collaborations on food safety, food security, climate smart agriculture, and sustainability. I also had the opportunity to sign the Charter of Milan on behalf of the State of California and now invite you to sign it, as well.

The Charter may be viewed and signed here

#signMilancharter

By Bettina Boxall

Gary Serrato watched as a tractor worked its way across a field of dried-up weeds, slicing the sandy dirt into orderly furrows.

The field was being readied not for a crop but for what he hopes will be a bountiful harvest of floodwater this El Niño winter. “We’re going to capture as much as we can,” said Serrato, general manager of the Fresno Irrigation District.

He was standing in the district’s Boswell Groundwater Banking Facility near Fresno: A complex of 100 graded acres enclosed by low earthen berms. If El Niño lives up to its promise, early next year up to 10 feet of Kings River flood flows will inundate the shallow basins and slowly seep into the torn earth, replenishing growers’ groundwater supplies.

Boswell is one of four groundwater banking projects the district has built in the last decade to supplement supplies from Pine Flat Reservoir and corral periodic floodwaters that would otherwise disappear downstream.

“It’s worked out great for us,” Serrato said. “We intend to build more.”

Deep drought and predictions that climate change will substantially shrink the mountain snowpack that serves as nature’s reservoir are amping up calls for more water storage in California.

Long-standing proposals for costly new dams and reservoirs remain in play. But interest is also surging in projects such as the Boswell bank that are rewriting the standard storage script.

When the California Water Commission this year surveyed water agencies about storage proposals that might qualify for funding under Proposition 1, the 2014 water bond approved by state voters, half the responses involved groundwater projects, including one from Serrato’s district.

A confluence of factors is focusing attention on stowing supplies underground, which is generally cheaper and less environmentally damaging than building a big dam and reservoir.

A major force is the new state groundwater law that requires Californians over the next two decades to end the chronic over-pumping that has depleted many major aquifers.

Another driver is money. The days when the federal government would sweep in with a blank check for a mammoth storage project are over. And although Prop. 1 sets aside $2.7 billion for storage, the bond legislation specifies that the state will pay for no more than half of a project. That means local backers will have to dig into their pockets.

Though groundwater storage costs can vary substantially depending on the water source, the median price is significantly less than that of major new reservoirs, according to Stanford University researchers. Last year they concluded that the $2.7 billion in bond funding could provide six times more storage capacity if it is spent on groundwater projects than if it goes to the construction of new dams and reservoirs.

Many water experts say California needs more storage to buffer the effects of climate change, which is expected to intensify swings between very wet and very dry years. Global warming also means more precipitation will fall as rain, which creates heavy bursts of winter runoff, and less as snow, which melts slowly and fills reservoirs in the spring just as seasonal demand rises.

“We don’t have the pattern of runoff that we once did when most of our big projects were built,” said Lester Snow, a former secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency and who now heads the California Water Foundation.

“To compensate for that, we need to be able to capture some of the peak flows we’ll have … and get that into long-term storage,” Snow said.

The best way to do that, he argues, is to put it in the ground. “We don’t keep water in reservoirs. It gets used on an annual basis. Groundwater is far superior for putting water away for a long period of time.”

The state Department of Water Resources doesn’t have good figures on how much vacant, refillable space is available in California’s groundwater basins. But a department analysis suggests there is plenty — and more every year as Central Valley growers turn to wells to make up for steep, drought-related cuts in their irrigation deliveries.

From 2005 to 2010, the Central Valley groundwater table dropped an average of 9 feet. According to department estimates, that amounts to 5.4 million acre feet to 13.1 million acre feet of storage space.

In the Southland, a 2011 report for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California concluded the region has 3.5 million acre feet of unused aquifer space. (An acre foot is enough to supply two average households for a year.)

By comparison, the three biggest surface reservoir proposals under consideration would add a total of 3.8 million acre feet to the state’s storage capacity.

Still, there are limits to groundwater projects. The cheapest method of recharge is through spreading basins, which have to be located on relatively coarse-grained soil through which the water can percolate. There has to be a way of getting supplies to the recharge areas, and there has to be a source, whether flood flows, releases from surface reservoirs or recycled water. Compared with how quickly a reservoir can fill up and release supplies, groundwater recharge and withdrawal is a relatively slow process.

Moreover, said Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, “You got to be damn sure somebody else hasn’t dropped a straw” into the hidden reserves, something that is much easier to do with a surface reservoir.

None of that is stopping the long-neglected sibling of more glamorous dam projects from finally getting some attention, especially in the over-pumped San Joaquin Valley. To the south of Serrato’s district, the Semitropic Water Storage District is pursuing an ambitious proposal to revive a portion of historic Tulare Lake.

With the release of the full text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the California Farm Bureau Federation urged the state’s congressional delegation to support the agreement. The TPP would reduce barriers to trade among the United States and 11 other Pacific Rim nations.

“We’re glad to have the text of the agreement available, and we expect that to ease concerns people might have about the TPP,” CFBF President Paul Wenger said. “Fairer, more open trade will benefit people in all the countries represented in the agreement and in California, the opportunity to sell more goods in other countries will lead to new opportunities in both rural and urban areas.”

Because of California’s proximity to the Pacific Rim nations participating in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Wenger said the state is “uniquely positioned” to gain from it.

“California-grown food and farm products have a worldwide reputation for high quality, and our ports have the ability to deliver those products efficiently,” he said. “Farm exports provide jobs in rural areas, of course, but also lead to jobs at warehouses, ports, trucking companies and other urban businesses that move farm goods to customers around the world.”

For that reason, he said, California congressional representatives should support the TPP.

“We will be working with our representatives in Congress to describe the benefits of the agreement to their constituents, no matter what part of the state they represent,” Wenger said.

Link to news release

By Diane Nelson, UC Davis

Growers, researchers, policymakers and others can now pinpoint California’s most promising parcels of farmland to help replenish the state’s dwindling groundwater supplies, thanks to a new interactive map developed by the California Soil Resource Lab at the University of California, Davis. The Soil Agricultural Groundwater Banking Index provides site-specific information on millions of acres of California farmland based on previous research led by Toby O’Geen, a UC Cooperative Extension specialist with the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources.

Before designing the Web-based map, O’Geen and his team identified about 3.6 million acres of farmland with good potential for groundwater banking, based on how likely the land could accommodate deep percolation with little risk of crop damage or groundwater contamination.

“A lot of growers are interested in learning how they can help improve the groundwater situation in California,” O’Geen said. “The index provides details on the groundwater-recharge potential for any parcel, which you can search for by address or access using your device’s GPS.”

Absorbing El Niño

Water tables have plummeted by more than 100 feet in some areas of California, as growers and others dig more wells and pump deeper into the Earth to replace diminishing surface-water supplies.

If a much-anticipated El Niño arrives this winter, California’s vast acres of farmland may hold the key to groundwater recharge by absorbing rainfall and flood flows.

“During storms and flood-control releases, excess river water could be routed through irrigation canals onto farms, where the surplus would seep underground to replenish groundwater,” said professor Helen Dahlke with the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. “On-farm flooding could also mitigate downstream flood risks.”

Rain check

What can farmers and water managers do in preparation for a potentially wet winter? UC Davis researchers offer these tips:

• Minimize fall applications of fertilizers and pesticides to protect groundwater quality.
• Maximize water infiltration by reducing soil compaction and improving soil structure with cover crops and amendments like mulch, compost, and gypsum.
• Clear and repair irrigation canals this fall, before the storms arrive.
• Clarify water rights as they pertain to capturing and applying large amounts of floodwater to cropland.

This December, Dahlke and a team of scientists will flood almond fields in the Central Valley, building on research that suggests that deliberately flooding farmland in winter can replenish aquifers without harming crops or drinking water.

“Adding an extra few feet of water to even just 10 percent of California’s cropland this winter could add an additional 3 million acre-feet of groundwater,” Dahlke said. “That could go a long way toward replenishing the 6 million acre-feet growers had to pump this year alone to cope with California’s drought.”

Link to article

A historic achievement for California rice – on the final day of the 7th Annual World Rice Conference, hosted this year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it was announced that the “World’s Best Rice” award had been won by California Calrose rice.

This is the first time California Calrose has been the sole recipient of the award. In 2013 it tied with Cambodia Jasmine rice.

The winning rice was chosen from a field of entries submitted by delegates from countries around the globe. The “World’s Best Rice” is decided by a panel of experts and international chefs, one of which was Chef Matthew Teruo Sato, whose Sacramento restaurant Ten22 won this year’s “Lord of Rice” culinary competition. The panel inspected the visual aspect of the rice and performed a sensory evaluation (pre-cooked and cooked).

Calrose is a medium-grain white rice that originated in California.  Nearly 2.5 million tons of rice are grown annually in the state, produced by nearly 2,500 farmers. California is the second largest rice growing state in the nation.

California rice is exported to Japan, Korea and Taiwan; the Middle East and Mediterranean markets; and the Caribbean and Pacific Islands. It is widely distributed throughout the United States, to the Korean and Japanese communities; specialty restaurants; and health food markets. Preferred for its processing characteristics, makers of cereals, baby food, rice flour and crisped rice for candy and health bar manufacturing all utilize California rice.

More than 550,000 acres or 98 percent of California’s rice is grown within 100 miles of Sacramento. For the rural Sacramento Valley counties of Colusa, Butte, Sutter and Yuba, rice is a primary crop and provides a substantial contribution to the economy.

Link to item at the California Rice Exchange

The latest segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Farm to Folks.”

CDFA Secretary Karen Ross at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

By Nick Wilson

The state’s top agriculture leader urged about 250 people — mostly Cal Poly students — Thursday to lead change in the agriculture industry by taking innovative steps to conserve water and encouraging new and efficient ways to farm globally.

“In times of crisis, leadership can take hold and solve problems here and beyond borders,”Karen Ross, secretary of the Department of Food and Agriculture, urged the group in a campus forum at the university’s Chumash Auditorium. “You are going to change the world and for the positive.”

It was her third visit to the university this year to maintain a dialogue with the university on its research. This week, she met with faculty whose expertise includes hydrology and other water issues, animal health, climate change and healthy soils.

“I think the conversation with Cal Poly goes both ways,” Ross said. “There are initiatives that I can learn from and take back home and Cal Poly can be made aware of grants and programs. We’re leveraging our resources.”

Ross spoke to mostly students from the College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences for about an hour.

A common thread of the discussion concerned the threat of losing significant amounts of agricultural land in California due to commercial and residential development, taxes associated with inheritance of farm land and a decline in multi-generational farming. Feeding a world population that’s projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 is a key concern.

The USDA’s agency of Food Safety and Inspection Services is joining the Ad Council and Alvin and the Chipmunks (new movie: The Road Chip) to promote food safety with a video PSA targeted for children.

The PSA discusses the importance of safe food handling through the four steps to food safety: Clean, Separate, Cook and Chill.