Spotted Lanternfly eggs and the firewood in question being inspected in Truckee.
The Spotted Lanternfly, an invasive species originating in China, has been detected in 11 eastern states in recent years, and California is working diligently to keep it away.
As part of that effort, personnel at CDFA’s Border Inspection Station at Truckee recently detected lanternfly egg masses on a trailer carrying firewood from New Jersey — one of the infested states. The firewood was confiscated.
The Spotted Lanternfly threatens a number of trees–including almond, apple, cherry, walnut and pine–as well as grapevines.
CDFA has 16 Border Inspection Stations throughout California for the detection and exclusion of invasive species.
The ongoing drought continues to impact agriculture and rural communities.
By Ian James and Sean Greene
California regulators have begun curtailing the water rights of many farms and irrigation districts along the Sacramento River, forcing growers to stop diverting water from the river and its tributaries.
The order, which took effect Thursday (July 7), puts a hold on about 5,800 water rights across the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers’ watersheds, reflecting the severity of California’s extreme drought.
Together with a similar order in June, the State Water Resources Control Board has now curtailed 9,842 water rights this year in the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds, more than half of the nearly 16,700 existing rights.
“The need to take these curtailment actions is in many ways unprecedented. And it reflects just how dry things have been in California over the last three years,” said Erik Ekdahl, deputy director of the state water board’s water rights division. “After three years of really unprecedented drought, reservoir storage is at record lows for much of the state. And there’s just simply not enough water to go around.”
The number of water rights that fall under this year’s orders is slightly less than the 10,200 curtailed in 2021. But the latest cuts have come earlier in the summer, affecting many farmers at the peak of their growing season, when they typically irrigate more.
A long list of agricultural water suppliers were emailed notices this week ordering them to stop water diversions from rivers and streams. They included Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, Browns Valley Irrigation District and Nevada Irrigation District.
Cities from San Francisco to Sacramento to Redding have also been told to stop diverting water.
In all, more than 4,300 water rights holders are affected by the curtailments, many of them farmers.
California’s water rights system allows for regulators to curtail rights and halt diversions based on the year a rights holder started using water.
In the Sacramento River watershed, Ekdahl said, “we’re curtailing down to a priority date of about 1910,” while those with older rights will be able to continue taking water.
While the initial cuts in June primarily affected those in the San Joaquin watershed, the latest order affects more than 5,000 water rights along the Sacramento River and its tributaries.
“Curtailments are never our first option, and yet we kind of need to go this route,” Ekdahl said.
He pointed out that much of Northern California has received only about two-thirds of the average rainfall over the last three years.
“We’re now in a really tough scenario where we have to look and evaluate how much supply and demand is there, and implement the water rights priority system like it was designed back in 1914,” Ekdahl said. “That’s important for just ensuring that there is water available and for providing a stable and orderly way to administer a very limited supply during drought.”
Those who have been told to stop diverting water have largely been complying, he said.
“It shows that people do recognize that we are in this scenario, we have to work through it all together. But it’s going to get harder,” Ekdahl said.
The cuts are intended to help preserve water supplies as much as possible, he said, not only to get through this year but also in case the state ends up enduring a fourth year of severe drought.
According to the state water board, the curtailments will reduce water diversions by about 789,000 acre-feet during July — more than the nearly 500,000 acre-feet that the city of Los Angeles supplies to customers annually.
Farms and cities across California have already been grappling with cuts in supplies from two large water-delivery systems, the State Water Project and the Central Valley Project.
The drought has taken a toll on California’s agriculture industry, which produces a range of crops including nuts, fruits, rice and hay for cattle.
Researchers at UC Merced estimated that reduced water deliveries last year resulted in 395,000 acres of cropland left dry and unplanted. And growers have been leaving more land fallow this year in the Central Valley.
Karen Ross, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said initial projections point to more than 800,000 acres of farmland probably being left dry this year, including about 250,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley, which previously had largely been spared cutbacks.
“It’s a tremendous impact to the farms and to whole communities,” Ross said.
She said farms have effectively reduced water use over the last two decades while also increasing productivity.
Over the last 10 years, the amount of irrigated farmland has also gotten smaller, Ross said, and in the future, “we’re going to be farming a smaller footprint.”
That’s partly because of the gradual implementation of groundwater pumping limits under a 2014 California law intended to combat chronic problems of excessive pumping and declining aquifers.
The state’s $49-billion agriculture industry also is contending with drought years that are being compounded by warmer temperatures fueled by human-caused climate change.
Ross said that reality underscores the need to conserve now and adapt to hotter, drier futures.
She said the drought is a huge “punch in the gut because it’s so heart-wrenching.”
“It’s a very stressful time in ag,” she said. “But we are also very, very resilient.”
In addition to the curtailments of water rights, rice farmers who are part of a group called the Sacramento River settlement contractors have voluntarily reduced water use. Ekdahl said they are receiving about 18% of their full contractual allotments.
He said the state water board doesn’t have data on how the cuts will affect different crops in the Central Valley.
In the last year, many of the large irrigation districts have been able to use water stored in reservoirs, which isn’t subject to the curtailments, Ekdahl said. Many also continue to have access to groundwater, and some are able to buy water from other growers.
Ekdahl said who is affected and who isn’t is going to be a “site-specific kind of question.”
What’s clear is that without enough water to go around, he said, it will be difficult for some growers to find enough for their crops this summer.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture is pleased to provide an update on Proposition 12, written by Dr. Elizabeth Cox, Animal Care Program Manager and the lead for Proposition 12 enforcement in California.
Dr. Cox recently visited ten sow farms across the U.S. at the invitation of several pork farmers and processors, including Clemens Food Group, Hormel, JBS, and Premium Iowa Pork. Members of the pork industry invited Dr. Cox for discussions about Proposition 12 standards, and to see the enormous progress they’ve made in building or upgrading facilities to produce Proposition 12-compliant pork.
As Dr. Cox notes, “my visits to sow farms have given me great confidence in the pork industry’s ability to provide compliant pork meat to California, as well as a real connection to the people in the industry working hard to care for their animals.” She added, “I witnessed enormous employee pride, satisfaction, and enjoyment working with the sows.” Dr. Cox’s full account is available here: https://bit.ly/3IlUO4h
From Tuesday’s conservation tour — from left, Charlotte Mitchell, Executive Director, California Farmland Trust; Ken Oneto, President, KLM Ranches; Taylor Roschen, CA Farm Bureau Federation; Josh Eddy, Executive Director State Board of Food and Agriculture: Michael Delbar, Chief Executive Officer, California Rangeland Trust; Glenda Humiston, State Board Member/ Vice President, UC ANR
Loss of farmland and conservation were the topics of discussion when members of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture toured ranchland and a nature preserve in the Elk Grove-area on Tuesday.
Board members met at KLM Ranches and spoke with company president Ken Oneto and Charlotte Mitchell, Executive Director of California Farmland Trust. The Board also visited Stone Lakes National Wildlife Refuge to meet with Pat Kirby, Chair of the California Cattlemen’s Foundation Board.
Speakers answered questions about their experiences confronting urban conversion and conservation of farmland as well as the hurdles, challenges, and opportunities for farmers and ranchers.
Each year, California loses an average of 50,000 acres of agricultural land, according to the Farmland Mapping and Monitoring Program at the California Department of Conservation. This loss of farmland, especially in urban and suburban areas, contributes to increased greenhouse gas emissions.
“While CDFA has ramped up conservation through programs like the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation Program (SALC), we need to do more to make sure we don’t continue to lose this precious resource,” said CDFA Deputy Secretary Virginia Jameson. “Farmland conservation is a climate strategy. It protects our food supply and keeps us resilient while maintaining opportunities for carbon sequestration and biodiversity preservation.”
SALC is a competitive grants program of the California Strategic Growth Council and administered by the Department of Conservation. The program funds permanent conservation easements as well as strategic planning and policy development grants. Since its launch in 2015, SALC has helped preserve more than 130,000 acres of California farmland, awarding nearly $300 million in grants.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Division of Measurement Standards has launched its Registered Service Agency (RSA) portal to simplify the registration process for licensed agents and companies that sell, rent, install, service, or repair California’s 1.85 million commercial weighing and measuring devices; including gas pumps, water dispensers, grocery scales, meters, and truck and railroad scales.
CDFA’s new online system replaces an old, manual paper-based registration process for licensed agencies and agents. The portal offers a full suite of self-serve functions to update agency registrations and contact information, view and print licenses, submit calibration reports and standards certifications, and make required payments.
The portal was created in record time and is a significant milestone for the California Department of Technology’s Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) because it is the first project to reach “Minimum Viable Product” status and go live. The TMF makes investments in IT that modernizes state digital services, like this program.
The RSA portal is a valuable resource for agencies and agents in all 58 counties to help assure that Californians are getting their money’s worth in streams of commerce.
Rice production will be down a projected 50 percent due to drought, with fallowed fields like this one a common site. Photo: California Rice Commission
A University of California economic study projects that 2022 drought impacts to farm production are likely to cause a loss of about 14,300 jobs and an economic loss of about $1.315 billion in the Sacramento Valley, which is the part of the Central Valley north of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The study, “Continued Drought in 2022 Ravages California’s Sacramento Valley Economy,” by Daniel A Sumner and William A. Matthews of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Davis, projects that direct farm and ranch output will be reduced by $950 million.
“These losses will cost the Sacramento Valley about 5,000 on-farm jobs and reduce the value added generated from farming and ranching by about $560 million,” the report states. “The impact of these farm losses and their upstream impacts to the Sacramento Valley economy are a loss of more than 9,000 jobs and almost $1 billion in economic added value.”
The study projects that compared to 2019, drought impacts to Sacramento Valley agriculture output in 2022 will include a 50% reduction in rice; 10% reduction in fruits and tree nuts; 20% reduction in vegetables, other grains and all other crops; and 10% reduction in livestock and livestock products, including apiary services.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) and the Monterey County Farm Bureau are joining together to announce the release of “California Agricultural Neighbors: neighbor-to-neighbor best practices to help enhance localized food safety efforts.”
California Agricultural Neighbors (CAN) was formed in January 2021 to bring together members of the Salinas Valley agriculture community to review what could be done to help reduce outbreaks of pathogenic Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7 associated with leafy greens.
CAN provided a roundtable opportunity to foster collaboration and discuss enhanced food safety practices between neighboring farms when various agricultural operations are adjacent to one another, including leafy greens, cattle ranches, vineyards, and compost sites.
CAN membership includes representatives from agriculture production as well as various industry and consumer associations, academia, and government.
Actions for enhanced food safety outlined in the report include:
1 – Foster Neighbor-to-Neighbor Interactions and Conversations
2 – Build a Research Roadmap for the Salinas Valley,
3 – Create a Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA) Framework
4 – Build and Maintain Capacity to Transfer Knowledge from Research into Applied Practice.
Click here to view “California Agricultural Neighbors: Neighbor-to-neighbor best practices to help enhance localized food safety efforts.”
Click here to view a one-page flyer of the food safety actions outlined in the report.
The amount of water you can save at home is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things, but agricultural users are responsible for an estimated 50% of total water used in California.
So if they can reduce use, it would be noticeable.
“Water is our most expensive input, it’s our most precious input, and we’re just trying to do everything we can to be as sustainable and successful as possible,” said Jason Cole, a ranch manager with Cole Limited in Santa Paula.
Cole’s family has grown avocados and lemons across 4,000 acres in Santa Paula for three generations, but over the last decade, he has turned to Acuity Agriculture and Benchmark Labs to get farm specific climate data that can save up to 10% of his water usage.
“You’re cutting some water down, but you’re also just delivering the water that’s going to be used,” he said.
“We leverage the sensors to improve the forecast and provide the most actionable data for their locations,” said Carlos Felipe Gaitan Ospina, the co-founder and CEO of Benchmark Labs. “We try to give them insights so they can better manage their operations.”
Saving water might have been the initial reason for going high-tech with agriculture, but what farmers like Cole are finding is the yield from their crops has jumped incredibly by using water more efficiently.
“We’ve seen massive yield gains, I’m talking 50%, some areas almost 100% increase,” said Cole.
Megan Dilley of Acuity Agriculture said that 10% could be huge across the industry.
“Save on water and increase their crop yield? They’re doing a great job,” she said. “If every farm is saving 10%, and we have 10% back in our ground water resource, that’s huge.”
Cole uses one sensor station for every 20 acres and said his cost is cheaper than a cell phone bill.
It is technology that’s becoming more common across the industry, and the water reduction could save more than the environment.
“That 10% could be saved to your profit margin, and that could be the difference between a profitable farmer or not … so that adds up,” said Ospina.
Many agree.
“It’s a win-win-win, I guess, all the way around” said Cole. “We’re growing more food, we’re maximizing a resource, we all got to eat … that takes water. It’s just how can we do it as efficiently as possible.”
As the drought continues into the warmer months, farmers are looking for ways to help conserve water while still trying to keep their businesses afloat.
One Yolo County grower has found a way to do that using a water monitoring tool that was developed at UC Davis.
For the past twenty years, Dan Martinez has managed this vineyard for Berryessa Gap Vineyards in Winters but finding a sustainable water source over the past two decades has been a bit of a challenge.
But then came along a device developed at UC Davis nearly 10-years ago. The device is installed in the field alongside the crops and from there it does all the work itself, allowing growers like Martinez to make sure every last drop of water is not wasted.
Efficiency is the key since Martinez can now track all of that information without actually having to go out into the field like he used to, which is something that’s important to Martinez in growing these grapes.
“We don’t want to use more water than we need because it costs us money to turn on the pumps,” Martinez said.
And as the push to conserve water continues, Martinez believes this is one of the best tools for the future of farming.
“As costs increase, as water becomes more scarce, I think it’s going to force more people to use technology like this so that they can be sustainable,” Martinez said.
June 20-26 is National Pollinator Week. To celebrate, CDFA is joining farmers, ranchers and the broader agricultural community in California to recognize the efforts of our state’s growers, gardeners, landscapers and others who have incorporated pollinator-friendly habitat and other measures on their land and in their neighborhoods.
