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Farmers scramble for solutions to California’s water shortage

Posted by: Maven on March 14, 2009 at 7:18 am

From Red Orbit:

In the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley, the most productive agriculture region anywhere in the world, almond farmer Marvin Meyers has moved into water banking.

Meyers, who grows 8 million pounds of almonds for companies such as Hershey, bought land to collect water during wet years and recharge an aquifer. The water authority then uses this supply for neighboring farmers, crediting Meyers to irrigate from a canal 15 miles away from his orchard.

The move has cost Meyers $7 million and plenty of hassles along the way, but he is now the envy of farmers throughout the valley who are now facing a third year of drought, water cutbacks and billions of dollars in losses.

Indeed, the worse may be yet to come as global climate change leads to lengthier droughts and dwindling mountain snowpacks that now provide a steady supply of water to the region.

Nevertheless, if the current drought persists for another three years, Meyers’s “bank of last resort” will run dry. “I do all I can, but really it is just Band-Aid farming,” Meyers said during an interview with Reuters.

His “Band-Aid” is a clear indication of just how fragile the water future is for California’s $35 billion agriculture industry. The state is the source of half the fruit, vegetables and nuts sold in the U.S., 80 percent of the world’s almonds and one-third of its canned tomatoes.

If the region’s farmers can’t learn to thrive with less water and create infrastructure to capture more, the economic impact will be significant. And while farming accounts for just 2 percent of California’s economy, its demand for equipment, transport and other services bolsters wide swaths of the nation’s economy.

Read more from Red Orbit by clicking here.

March 14, 2009 · Filed Under Drought, Weather & Snowpack

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