By Nathaniel Johnson

This piece started out as a confident prescription for California’s drought ills. But when I began writing, I kept coming across things that seemed confusing or contradictory. And each time I went to the experts to clarify, they’d explode all my basic assumptions.

So instead of writing that piece, here’s a list of all the (misguided) conventional wisdom I had absorbed set right — or, at least, clarified.

California hasn’t forced agriculture to cut water use: A myth

Californians just don’t want to be suckers. When Gov. Jerry Brown told the state to cut back water use by 25 percent, he didn’t mention agriculture, and that made people suspicious. It looked to a lot of people like farms were getting a free pass. They (reasonably) thought, I don’t want to be a dupe and scrimp and save if agriculture isn’t doing the same. 

So why didn’t California also demand that ag cut back?

It actually did, said Doug Parker, director of the University of California Institute of Water Resources. Brown just didn’t talk about that when he made his big announcement (he’s probably kicking himself about that). Growers that rely on the State Water Project are taking an 80 percent cut from their normal water share. Central Valley farmers who draw from the federal system of dams and canals have taken a 100 percent cut. Brown may be going back for further restrictions.

When farmers get these cuts, they cope by pumping groundwater (which is causing problems in some places — more on this later), or buying water from people with senior water rights. But ultimately, cuts in water deliveries lead to cuts in water use. California farmers took about 5 percent of their land out of production last year, and that number will surely go up this year.

Agriculture uses 80 percent of California’s water: Not the whole picture

This isn’t exactly wrong, but it’s useful to understand the nuance. Here’s how water is divvied up in California:

Northern California Water Association

You do get farmers using 80 percent of water and cities using 20 percent if you don’t count the other pieces of the pie. But those pieces are important, and by no means guaranteed! We are using that water to create habitat and beauty, to allow lots of species to thrive. Leave that out of the equation and it’s easy to forget about the environment and the human joy that comes with rivers. And in dry years like this, the percentage dedicated to the environment isn’t enough for some species: Biologists are worried about salmon, and the delta smelt are on permanent life support.

Dumb laws prevent the buying and selling of water: Not true any more

This was one of the conclusions of my last piece on the drought. And that was true … back in the 1970s. Back then, if you had rights to water, you had to use it or lose it, said Parker. So if you had senior water rights for a patch of rocky desert land, unsuited to growing anything, you still had an incentive to use as much of your water as you could. But that rule changed around 1980. Now, you can take that water and sell it to a city, or a farmer with great soil but little water.

This is confusing — I’d assumed that farmers were slow to adopt water conservation practices because they had cheap water from senior rights. After all, between 40 and 50 percent of farm irrigation in California is flood irrigation: You generally use little sections of curved pipe to siphon water out of a ditch, and flood the furrows between the rows of plants.

 

Flood irrigation in Arizona.

This seems wasteful, and indeed it requires a lot more water than drip irrigation. I thought that a market for water would drive otherwise wasteful farmers to adopt better techniques — but that reasoning relied on another incorrect assumption.

Farmers are wasting a lot of water: A myth

Um, not really, said Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California.

“But let’s say I’m a farmer down in the Imperial Valley,” I said. “I’ve got senior water rights from the Colorado River, and I’ve always used flood irrigation. Now that I can sell my water on the market, shouldn’t I be installing drip irrigation? I’d use a lot less water to grow my lettuce, and I could sell the rest. I make money, there’s more water to go around, everyone wins.”

“You can’t do that,” Hanak said. “Not allowed.”

“Why not?”

Well, basically because flood irrigation is not nearly as wasteful as it looks. Yes, it takes a lot more water than other forms of irrigation, but all that extra water goes somewhere: It seeps into the ground and restores aquifers, or it flows out of the field and back into the river. So, if I sell all my water, it suddenly deprives my neighbors of my backwash, which they’ve come to rely on. Therefore, the law doesn’t allow me to sell that portion that historically passed through my field and then continued on downstream, or underground.

Aha! I thought. So this is the dumb law causing the market to fail! Get rid of this obstacle, and farmers will adopt more efficient practices, leaving us with plenty of water, right?

Wrong, Hanak said. That’s another misconception.

Farm conservation measures can free up plenty of water: One last myth

Switching from flood irrigation to a more efficient system like drip does improve water quality. And you lose less water to evaporation — but just a little bit. You can see how this works in this infographic from the Pacific Institute (don’t pay too much attention to the specific numbers, they are just rough placeholders).

The thing to pay attention to here is that the “more efficient water use” scenario, while it keeps mud and salts out of the river, doesn’t save much more water in the end.

“It’s a very small percentage lost to evaporation,” Hanak said. And in the real world, farmers actually end up using more water when they switch to efficient irrigation, she said. That’s because upgrading irrigation boosts yields: Tomatoes have been setting yield per acre records every year, because farmers have come up with better techniques based on drip irrigation. You can see the same thing going on with onions, bell peppers, and cotton. With flood irrigation, water flowsthrough farms. With drip irrigation farmers can capture more of that water and grow more food.

The end result: Irrigation upgrades increase farm productivity and profits, but also tend to increase the farm’s net water use. “Irrigation efficiency doesn’t save water for the system as a whole,” Hanak said — blowing my mind.

OK, now I know nothing. What is water even for?

Assumptions are useful things — they provide a foundation for understanding the world. The more I read and talked to experts, the less of that foundation I had left, and I found myself asking the most basic question: What is water for?

Well, it’s for drinking. That’s pretty important.

It’s for growing food — at least a bare minimum to feed ourselves.

After that, keeping fish alive and ecosystems healthy is a priority — at least for me.

But even in this historic drought, California has plenty of water left over after those uses. So then we move up the hierarchy of needs to things like lawns and golf courses, and farming as a business (beyond the subsistence level). Hey, we have some of the best growing conditions in the world; maybe we should use the rest of this water to stimulate our economy and export food like almonds.

That’s basically the way that water is divided up at this point. As climate change reduces the water stored in the snowpack, and as populations grow, there will be less water to go around. The system is already under enormous pressure — there’s not going to be a solution that will make everyone happy.

The least societally important, and least profitable use of water, I suspect, will be farming. Cities will expand, and farms will shrink. We already see that shift happening. Since 2000, farm water use has declined. A lot of that decline comes from farmers taking marginal land out of production, Hanak told me. At the same time, farm income is up: Farmers can afford to give up land because they are planting higher-value crops (like almonds) on the rest of their acreage.

 PPIC

What then do we do?

Most places in California have plenty of water to keep humans alive. But, there are neighborhoods in agricultural areas that have lost their drinking water because farmers with deep straws have sucked the wells dry. Some people are beginning to suffer from this classic example of the tragedy of the commons. And it’s always the poor who suffer most.

My first reaction is to look for forceful solutions: Perhaps local governments could stop giving permits to drill wells in sensitive areas. Some are trying to do that, though it can backfire, and may not hold up in court.

People like to seek villains by pointing at almonds or alfalfa (to feed cattle), but it would be nearly impossible to change water use by telling farmers what they can and can’t plant.

“We will be in court arguing for decades if we try to regulate where crops are grown,” said Renata Brillinger, executive director of the California Climate and Agriculture Network, speaking on a panel about farming in California’s drought put on by the Berkeley Food Institute.

It seems self-evident to me that society has an urgent duty to take care of people who lose their water. But when it comes to fixing the systemic problem, it’s probably better to be patient. California communities have to set groundwater management rules by 2020. This is ridiculously late — think of all the expense and strife we could have saved if we had started managing groundwater 20 years ago. But we seem capable of making hard decisions only when we have no other choice — the challenge is to make thoughtful decisions, rather than panicked ones that we’ll regret.

The legislature could have imposed rules from above that would be in place now, but lawmakers wanted to allow the people to craft rules that were contextually appropriate. That seems wise to me. It doesn’t make sense to implement the law overnight, Hanak told me, but it would be in the best interest of many farm communities to make rules sooner rather than later — so they don’t have to wait until 2020.

 

PPIC

Meanwhile, we should still be pushing water-conservation practices. Even if irrigation efficiency doesn’t add water to the system, it does clean up the environment, while making California’s farm economy more resilient to climate change.

Instead of taking a reductive approach and looking for a simple evil to vanquish, Brillinger said, we have to understand the system and, as Wendell Berry put it, solve for pattern. Instead of trying to solve problems with centralized, top-down control, we need rules informed by local knowledge and crafted by local water users. Instead of focusing only on big technological solutions, like desalinization plants and dams, we need to look for small-scale and biological solutions, she said. The “only” there is key: The big engineering projects could really help in the crunch times, but they’re not going to make this problem go away.

Humans faced with a crisis want to find a villain, pick a fight, and exercise quick, top-down action to bring the accused to justice. This kind of thinking may make sense in a small tribe, but it’s all wrong for a complex societal problem like California’s drought. It’s especially hard to avoid this reductive thinking when conventional wisdom is peppered with misconceptions. California may be getting drier, but we’re still awash in water myths.

Link to article

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Michael Casey

California Gov. Jerry Brown has sounded the alarm over the state’s historic drought, warning that it will take “unprecedented actions” to solve the crisis.

That battle cry has produced a brainstorming session like no other – prompting celebrities, tech gurus, politicians and business leaders to offer a range of innovative and outlandish solutions for easing the dry stretch that is now in its fourth year and shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

Much of the talk has been about conserving water, plugging leaks and capturing runoff, highlighted to some degree in the state’s five-year Water Action Plan.

The first-ever statewide water restrictions, aimed at reducing water usage 25 percent, will see 50 million square feet of lawns replaced with drought-resistant plants, restaurants offering drinking water only on demand, and perhaps even golf courses letting their lush greens go brown.

But water savings alone won’t solve a problem of this size.

An analysis earlier this year from NASA satellite data concluded that the state would need 11 trillion gallons of water to recover from its dry spell. That’s roughly equivalent to filling up Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, one and a half times.

And the drought is only getting worse. With the El Nino weather pattern arriving too late and too weak to help replenish water in the region after record-low snowpack this winter, much of the West is in for another year of wildfires and more dry conditions.

As a result, the talk has turned to diversifying the state’s water resources. To some degree, that has meant dusting off grandiose projects like piping in water from out of state or expanding on technologies that convert wastewater or saltwater into clean water that could be used for industrial, agriculture or even drinking purposes.

Pipe dreams

Some voices have revived talk that dates back the late 1980s of building a pipeline to deliver water from out of state. Then, it was water from Alaska. Now, it’s William Shatner of Star Trek fame proposing to raise $30 billion for plan to pipe water from Seattle.

Never mind that much of the state of Washington is also in the grips of drought.

“I want $30 billion…to build a pipeline like the Alaska pipeline,” he told Yahoo Tech. “Say, from Seattle — a place where there’s a lot of water. There’s too much water. How bad would it be to get a large, 4-foot pipeline, keep it above ground – because if it leaks, you’re irrigating!”

Nancy Vogel, a spokesperson for the California Department of Water Resources, said neither Shatner’s plan nor anything like it is actually being considered.

“It would be cost prohibitive,” Vogel told CBS News. “Even if you could clear the environmental and legal hurdles, it runs counter to the state’s policy of reducing our reliance on imported water. We are not looking to take water from the Great Lakes, Pacific Northwest or Alaska.”

The state is, however, moving ahead with a $25 billion Bay Delta Conservation Plan that includes the construction of two tunnels that would pump water from Northern California to the southern part of the state.

Desalination technology

Reuse and desalination technologies seem to be gaining more traction, withdesalination garnering the most headlines of late. Technology that converts seawater into drinking water is standard fare in places like the Middle East where countries have little or no freshwater.

It has been slow to catch on the United States, mostly due to the high cost and huge amounts of energy needed to run the plants. But the drought is making the technology more politically palatable in places like California.

Poseidon Water is one of those companies already taking advantage of the changing attitudes toward unorthodox sources of water. It expects to open the biggest desalination plant in the western hemisphere later this year in Carlsbad, Calif. and is on the verge of winning approval for a smaller plant in Huntington Beach.

“Carlsbad will be a game-changer,” Poseidon’s Vice President Scott Maloni said. The plant is expected to produce 50 million gallons of drinking water each day and supply up to 10 percent of San Diego County’s water needs.

“It will open the door for desalination plants to be considered up and down the coast,” he said.

Wastewater reuse

Another technology that could expand its reach in California is the reuse of everything from storm water to wastewater. Most of the projects so far involve treating the water for use in agriculture fields, cooling industrial process or refilling groundwater aquifers.

“We are only scratching the surface of this incredible resource, which could address scarcity,” Jon Freedman, vice president of government affairs for GE Water & Process Technologies, said of the technology, which he estimates produces up to 10 percent of California’s water.

Among the 35 projects that GE Water has built in the state are one in American Canyon, where 3 million gallons of municipal wastewater each day is treated and used in area vineyards and golf courses. Another system in Redlands treats 6 million gallons of wastewater for use in cooling towers of a local power company, and still another in Oakley treats 4 million gallons, which is then piped into the San Joaquin River to help replenish the delta ecosystem.

The state has not yet gone as far as Singapore, which converts wastewater into drinking water called NEWater. Parched Wichita Falls, Texas, has also given“toilet to tap” recycling a try. And California could be next.

It is drawing up a framework for potable reuse of wastewater, and several municipalities are toying with the idea. San Diego is running a pilot project to test its feasibility, and millions of Orange County residents depend on drinking water that is treated and sent to an aquifer, before being pumped through the taps.

Futuristic ideas

Still, with things so desperate, some are looking even further afield to technologies that might seem more at home in an episode of “The Jetsons.”

One such proposal is something called atmospheric water generation. The technology literally strips moisture from the atmosphere, using a salt solution, and converts it into water.

“We could help dramatically with the California drought,” Abe Sher, the founder and CEO of Florida-based Aqua Sciences, which says it is talks with California and several other drought-stricken states about deploying its technology.

Until now, the company’s technology has been mostly used on a smaller scale to produce water, including at an oil facility in Saudi Arabia and after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. It also is in talks with Chinese officials to deploy its machines and is considering making units for home use.

“We could scale up the technology to produce millions of gallons a day,” Sher told CBS News. “Our source is everywhere on the planet. Even in dry places, there is water in the atmosphere … And it’s actually better than bottled water.”

Another futuristic approach comes courtesy of ionization.

The Florida-based company Rain on Request has developed a system featuring a 100-foot tower and 10 satellite towers 40 feet tall that it claims could induce rainfall within a 15-mile radius. The towers send a charge into the atmosphere, “creating a polarity that is conducive to rainfall,” explains business development manager Larry Gitman. The system requires humidity in the atmosphere or a nearby water source to function.

The company says it could boost precipitation levels between 50 percent and 400 percent. However, while it says the concept has proven effective in testing, it has not yet been put into place by any municipality. An online fundraising campaign on Indiegogo fizzled, raising just a few hundred dollars toward its $1,000,000 goal.

But the company has done the math and says all California needs is 50 of its stations “to solve the drought and restore rainfall levels to the entire state.”

“We think California is perfect for the technology because it’s right along the Pacific,” Gitman told CBS News. “We are in touch with a number of water authorities in California and we are confident that we will have a system in place in the near future.”

Peter H. Gleick, president and co-founder of the Pacific Institute and a leading expert on water and climate issues, said he has his doubts about some of the more far-fetched proposals.

“There is some controversy on how effective any of these technologies are,” said Gleick, who advocates reuse technologies and cutting waste as the best options for ending the drought.

“There are no shortage of ideas that might work,” he said. “There is a real shortage of ideas that are likely to be economically and politically feasible.”

Link to story

 

The latest segment in the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, is “Strawberry Fields…Forever,” a profile of a grower and his commitment to water efficiency.

 

By Josué Medellín-Azuara and Jay Lund

When it comes to water, California’s irrigated agriculture is always under the public magnifying glass because it is the largest managed water use in the state and the economic base for many rural areas. During a prolonged drought like the current one, however, crop water comes under a microscope.

We have compiled a table to help answer questions on which crops use the most water and which crops provide the most economic “pop per drop.”

The estimates are very broad because California is so diverse in crop varieties, agricultural practices and local water availability. But the numbers are still useful for comparison purposes.

Note that the amount of water applied to a crop – “gross use” – is not the same as its “net use,” as some of that water seeps underground and replenishes aquifers or is reused downstream.

Some observations about the data:

• The “truck (vegetables) and horticulture (garden plants)” crop group has the highest revenue per net water use, followed by the “fruits and nuts” group. Together, these two large crop categories account for nearly 86 percent of all crop revenue, but occupy only 47 percent of the irrigated cropland and use just 38 percent of the water applied to that land.
• Fruits and nuts are grown on about one-third of the irrigated cropland and use one-third of the water, but produce nearly 45 percent of the total crop revenue.
• Alfalfa, corn irrigated pasture and other livestock fodder account for nearly 37 percent of all net water crop use, but produce less than 7 percent of total crop revenue. However, the ranches and dairies that depend on these foodstuffs generate more than 22 percent of California’s agricultural production value, which totaled $45 billion in 2012.
• Rice fields use a lot of water but also provide important bird habitat.

Josué Medellín-Azuara is a senior researcher and Jay Lund is a professor of civil and environmental engineering with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.

Link to blog post

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reminds farmers that the 2014 Farm Bill requires producers to file a Highly Erodible Land Conservation and Wetland Conservation Certification form (AD-1026) with their local USDA service center by June 1, 2015, in order to become or remain eligible for crop insurance premium support.

Most farmers already have a certification form on file since it’s required for participation in most USDA programs such as marketing assistance loans, farm storage facility loans and disaster assistance. However farmers, such as specialty crop growers who receive federal crop insurance premium support, but may not participate in other USDA programs, also must now file a certification form to maintain their crop insurance premium support.

“USDA employees are working very hard to get the word out about this new Farm Bill provision,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “While many producers will not need to take action, we want to help make sure that those who are required to act do so by the June 1 deadline. We want all eligible producers to be able to maintain their ability to protect their operations with affordable insurance.”

Producers should visit their local USDA service center and talk with their crop insurance agent before the June 1, 2015, deadline to ask questions, get additional information or learn more about conservation compliance procedures. Producers that file their form by the deadline will be eligible for federal crop insurance premium support during the 2016 reinsurance year, which begins July, 1, 2015. USDA will publish a rule outlining the linkage of conservation compliance with federal crop insurance premium support. Go to http://go.usa.gov/3Wy5J to view a copy of the rule.

The Highly Erodible Land Conservation and Wetland Conservation Certification form is available at local USDA service center or online at www.fsa.usda.gov/AD1026form. When a farmer completes this form, USDA Farm Service Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service staff will outline any additional actions that may be required for compliance with highly erodible land and wetland provisions. USDA’s Risk Management Agency, through the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, manages the federal crop insurance program that provides the modern farm safety net for America’s farmers and ranchers.

Today’s announcement was made possible by the 2014 Farm Bill, which builds on historic economic gains in rural America over the past six years, while achieving meaningful reform and billions of dollars in savings for the taxpayer. Since enactment, USDA has implemented many provisions of this critical legislation, providing disaster relief to farmers and ranchers; strengthening risk management tools; expanding access to rural credit; funding critical research; establishing innovative public-private conservation partnerships; developing new markets for rural-made products; and investing in infrastructure, housing and community facilities to help improve quality of life in rural America. For more information, visit www.usda.gov/farmbill.

Link to news release

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that the organic industry continues to show remarkable growth domestically and globally, with 19,474 certified organic operations in the United States and a total of 27,814 certified organic operations around the world.

According to data released by the Agricultural Marketing Service’s (AMS) National Organic Program (NOP), the number of domestic certified organic operations increased by more than 5 percent over the last year. Since the count began in 2002, the number of domestic organic operations has increased by over 250 percent. The certified operations list is available at apps.ams.usda.gov/nop.

USDA is committed to connecting organic farmers and businesses with resources to ensure the continued growth of the organic industry. Along with programs to support conservation, provide access to loans and grants, fund organic research and education, and integrated pest management, USDA administers organic certification cost share programs to offset the costs of organic certification for U.S. producers and handlers nationwide.

Now, USDA is using funding from the 2014 Farm Bill to develop the Organic Integrity Database, a modernized certified organic operations database that will provide accurate information about all certified operations that is updated on a regular basis. The modernized system will allow anyone to confirm organic certification status using the online tool, support market research and supply chain connections, allow international verification of operator status to streamline import and export certificates, and establish technology connections with certifiers to provide more accurate and timely data. The initial launch is planned for September 2015.

Additional information about USDA resources and support for the organic sector is available on the USDA Organics Resource page at www.usda.gov/organic.

Link to news release

Note – the USDA has designated April as Invasive Plant Pest and Disease Prevention Month.

From the Growing California video series, a partnership with California Grown, here is an encore presentation of “First Line of Defense,” a story about CDFA’s Border Inspection Stations.

By Tim York and Daniel Sumner

California’s drought is raising concerns about whether fresh produce grown in the Golden State could run short, potentially raising prices nationwide. The reality is that there was little jump in produce prices last year, and consumers should expect only slight increases in 2015. To appreciate why, one must understand a bit about the geography, water infrastructure and economics of California agriculture.

The drought hasn’t affected California’s diverse regions uniformly. Most crops come from two areas: the Central Valley, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys; and the coastal region, including the Salinas Valley, which is often dubbed America’s “salad bowl.”

The Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys are home to significant production of alfalfa, silage, rice, cotton and other so-called field crops, but are also a major source of fresh produce, including peppers, melons, grapes, oranges, tree nuts and tomatoes. Farmers in these valleys have typically relied on a mix of pumped groundwater and surface water deliveries via both the Central Valley Project—a huge network of dams, reservoirs and canals—and the larger California State Water Project. Most farmers, however, will receive no water from the CVP for the second year in a row, and the SWP is delivering only a fraction of normal allocations.

This, coupled with much higher groundwater pumping costs as more and deeper wells are required, has forced many farmers to shift out of thirsty field crops. But this decreased production has minimal effects on food prices because California accounts for a small share of the supply, or because these crops affect food prices only indirectly. For example, fewer acres of corn silage makes it more expensive to feed milk cows, but the subsequent effect on the price of cheese is small. Fresh produce, which generates high revenue per unit of water consumed, continues to be planted.

In the coastal region and the Salinas Valley—where crops include strawberries, avocados, lettuce, celery, cauliflower, broccoli and wine grapes—farmers do not receive surface water from the CVP or the SWP. Instead, rainfall is stored in local reservoirs or underground aquifers. Lake San Antonio sits at 5% capacity, and Lake Nacimiento at 29%. But groundwater is still available and farmers find it economical, given the value of the produce they grow.

Roughly half of California’s water flows undiverted for human use. Another 40% goes to agriculture, and the remaining 10% to cities. The environment requires a certain baseline of water that cannot be reallocated in a drought. Urban use is small and hard to change much, though Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s recently announced 25% mandatory reduction may help some. The bulk of water cutbacks will fall on agriculture but plumbing and economics determine where they will be made.

California voters passed a $7.5 billion water bond measure last fall, with $2.7 billion going toward increased storage. Legislation allowing regulation of groundwater will be implemented gradually over the next several years. These solutions will help, eventually.

Some farmers are adjusting planting schedules and shifting crops between growing regions to adapt. Others are rerouting water from annual field crops, which can be left unplanted for a year or two, to permanent crops such as fruit and nut trees. These adjustments assure a reliable supply to consumers, but they raise prices. Even so, this is a small factor compared with other costs. Produce prices are more likely to be influenced by labor shortages and the increase in California’s minimum wage in January 2016 to $10 an hour from the current $9. Governments in the region could scare off produce farmers if they were to place tight restrictions on irrigation practices. But that seems unlikely, at least for now.

So what does this mean for consumers? Even if water remains short over the next decade, an adequate supply of fresh fruits and vegetables should not be a concern. In a global market, produce suppliers from the U.S., Mexico, Chile and beyond compete to keep prices low. The rising cost of water in California is likely to increase the cost of production over time, and that will be reflected in gradually higher retail prices. But Golden State farms will remain reliable suppliers of the produce that consumers have come to expect.

Mr. York is the CEO of Markon Cooperative, a fresh-produce food-service purchasing cooperative. Mr. Sumner is the director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center.

 

Link to article