How much does it really cost us to clean up our waterways from farm runoff
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 12, 2008 at 5:39 amFrom AlterNet:
The pollution of fresh water by agricultural nutrients costs government agencies, drinking water facilities and individual Americans at least $4.3 billion a year in total, finds new research from Kansas State University.
Biology professor Walter Dodds, who led the study, says the researchers calculated that $44 million a year is spent just protecting aquatic species from nutrient pollution.
Dodds and the K-State researchers based their conclusions on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data on nitrogen and phosphorous levels in bodies of water throughout the country.
The damaging chemicals — phosphorous and nitrogen — enter the environment from nonpoint sources rather than flowing into a lake or stream from one pipe. They enter the water from various points, such as runoff from row crop agriculture across the surrounding lands, said Dodd.
The researchers calculated the money lost from that pollution by looking at factors like decreasing lakefront property values, the cost of treating drinking water and the revenue lost when fewer people take part in recreational activities like fishing or boating.
Read more from AlterNet by clicking here.
Sky is the limit as Sky Vegetables hosts urban agriculture summit; thought leaders brainstorm Rooftop Farm Prototypes at First-Ever Event
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 11, 2008 at 6:21 am
From Market Watch, this press release:
Sky Vegetables, will host a summit of industry-leading specialists from around the world at the first-ever Building-Integrated Sustainable Agriculture (B-ISA) Summit, December 12th and 13th at the Durant Hotel, in Berkeley, California.
“We hope to develop an open source rooftop farm prototype, and to create a strong network of support for the B-ISA initiative as a solution to the global food, energy and water crises,” said Sky Vegetables’ 22-year-old founder and summit co-host, Keith Agoada.
Entrepreneurial and visionary, the hard-working Agoada is no stranger to big ideas. Agoada worked with summit co-host and noted industry expert, James Kalin, to introduce collaborative brainstorming for an open-source prototype for rooftop farming. And, last year eco-preneur Agoada’s Sky Vegetables urban farming business plan (to build hydroponic greenhouses on the rooftops of grocery stores) took home the top prize at the University of Wisconsin School of Business, where he was a senior.
Sky Vegetables is an idea whose time is ripe, with a unique business model to meet the growing demand for affordable, fresh, nutritious and chemical-free local produce, while reducing the energy and food transportation costs normally associated with food production. Sky is currently launching a pilot program in the Bay Area and is planning to have its first unit in operation for harvest by autumn of 2009.
More than 15 presenters, and 30 attendees are expected to attend the invitation-only, two-day summit, where experts will convene from the diverse disciplines of architecture, structural engineering, aquaponics, controlled environment greenhouses, composting, alternative energy, automated systems, aquaculture, hydroponics, horticulture, integrated biological systems, sustainable farming, water economics, urban agriculture, and green business.
Summit organizers anticipate that the group will work to generate the precise wording of a proposed US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED(TM)) Credit for B-ISA systems in general, and the group’s rooftop farm design prototype in particular. USGBC’s LEED is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. For more information about the B-ISA summit, or a list of presenters and topics, go to http://www.skyvegetables.com or email info@skyvegetables.com.
California’s water woes continue; Governor sounds wakeup call, clock is ticking
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 10, 2008 at 6:34 amFrom the California Rice Commission:
Drought continues to take a toll on all of California’s agriculture. With a gloomy seasonal forecast on the horizon, growers, as well as urbanites, are preparing for what is expected to be yet another winter with below average precipitation and snow. The past two dry years have compounded the water crisis, resulting in a 14-year low storage in the state’s reservoirs. Additionally, court-ordered restrictions on water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta have further exacerbated the problem. The Department of Water Resources (DWR) announced in late October an initial allocation of 15 percent for water delivery to State Water Project (SWP) contractors in 2009.
This comes on the heels of California Governor Schwarzenegger’s Drought Executive Order (S-06-08) issued in June mandating various conservation programs, water transfers and other measures for municipalities, agriculture and the complex myriad of water districts that exist in the state.
“This further dramatizes the urgent need for additional investments in water storage and conveyance infrastructure to assure an adequate and reliable water supply,” said SWP Director Lester Snow. “The uncertainly of precipitation patterns due to global warming and deteriorating conditions in the Delta – California’s main water hub – demand immediate action to enhance our ecosystem and keep our economy productive in the 21st century. The Governor has sounded the wakeup call, and the clock is ticking.”
Farmers are expecting deep cuts in their water supply, possibly up to 50%:
That could spell disaster, or at least hardship, not only for rice growers but also for the years of diligent effort by the rice industry to preserve local wildlife habitat. The state’s ricelands provide an unparalleled wildlife habitat for over 20 species of wildlife and hundreds of thousands of acres of wetland – an environmental resource estimated at $1 billion in habitat value.
The Manomet Center for Conservation Science has recognized the value of California rice fields by designating them “Shorebird Habitat of International Significance.” The area is the second-largest North American shorebird site within the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network and is comprised of nearly 90 percent ricelands.
“If we have less water available for rice production, especially in the winter straw decomposition season, that would negatively impact wildlife in the Sacramento Valley,” says Paul Buttner, manager of Environmental Affairs for the California Rice Commission in Sacramento. “Nestled within the Pacific Flyway – a critical bird migration corridor – the Sacramento Valley holds nearly half of the flyway’s seven million waterfowl and hundreds of thousands of shorebirds, herons, egrets and ibis. Less rice equates to less habitat for more than 20 species of wildlife.”
Read more from the California Rice Commission’s article by clicking here.
Dutch sea kale grown in salty soil offers peek at food future
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 8, 2008 at 6:22 amFrom Bloomberg:
At Jef Schuur’s restaurant on the Dutch resort island of Texel, guests dig in with gusto to an unusual vegetable grown in the salty soil next to the North Sea.
Sea kale, a leafy plant with white stalks that’s fried up with olive oil, surprises customers with its pleasantly nutty taste, said Schuur, who has served the dish for the past year. The plant, related to kale and Chinese cabbage, grows wild on Texel and was recently domesticated by biologists trying to find crops able to adapt to saltier growing conditions stemming from global warming.
“It has a stronger flavor than most vegetables but brings out very nice accents in food,” Schuur said. “Growing sea kale here shows that there are a lot more opportunities for local produce on low-lying islands affected by salt.”
In the Netherlands, where a quarter of the country lies below sea level, 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres) of agricultural land is at risk as soils become saltier from rising sea levels and more intense storms wash additional salt water on shore. By cultivating plants that can grow in such degraded soil or where little fresh water is available, farmers around the world can expand cropland, helping to limit soaring food prices and adapt to climate change.
Global warming is melting polar caps, raising sea levels in some parts of the world and inundating coastal farmland while in other regions climate changes have reduced rainfall, making soil more alkaline. By finding plants that thrive in saltier waters, farmers can better adapt to drought and sometimes irrigate with sea water, which makes up 98 percent of Earth’s water resources.
Read more from Bloomberg News by clicking here.
Survey demonstrates efficiency in farm water deliveries
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 6, 2008 at 8:13 amFrom the Western Farm Press:
A new survey of farm water districts debunks criticism that water is flowing unmeasured to California farms. Improved measurement systems are used on more than 87 percent of the irrigated acreage from surveyed districts, resulting in very efficient management and delivery of farm water.
The survey was conducted by the Agricultural Water Management Council, a non-profit organization that works toward increasing agricultural water management efficiency in California. The survey results represent more than 3 million irrigated acres, or more than one-third of all irrigated acreage in the state.
“These numbers prove that farm water districts have embraced new technology in order to best manage their water supplies and deliveries,” said AWMC Executive Director Mike Wade.
“Efficient Water Management — irrigation district achievements” is a 62-page report available on the Council’s Web site at www.agwatercouncil.org.
“Before automation, many districts were opening and closing delivery gates by hand,” explained Wade. “As a result, more water might have been delivered than ordered by the farmer. It could also result in operational spill or water that could be lost from the system operated by the district.
“Automation has enabled district personnel to remotely monitor and control the settings of gates, valves or pumps from a central location. Now, operational spills are practically non-existent and farmers are getting the amount of water ordered.”
Read more from the Western Farm Press by clicking here.
This report has been added to Aquafornia’s Research and Publications page under the heading “Agriculture”.
Food vs fuel: saltwater crops may be key to solving earth’s land crunch
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 5, 2008 at 5:57 am
From Wired Science:
Saltwater-loving plants could open up half a million square miles of previously unusable territory for energy crops, helping settle the heated food-versus-fuel debate, which nearly derailed biofuel progress last year. By increasing the world’s irrigated acreage by 50 percent, saltwater crops could provide a no-guilt source of biomass for alt fuel makers and tone down the rhetoric of U.N. officials worried about food prices, one of whom called the conversion of arable land to biofuel crops “a crime against humanity.”
While growing crops in saltwater has been on the fringes of horticulture for decades, the new demand for alternative energy has pushed the idea onto the pages of the nation’s most prestigious scientific journal and drawn the attention of NASA scientists.
Citing the work of Robert Glenn, a plant biologist at the University of Arizona, two biologists argue in this week’s Science that “the increasing demand for agricultural products and the spread of salinity now make this concept worth serious consideration and investment.”
Glenn has been arguing for the value of all kinds of saltwater farming to a small but growing audience for nearly thirty years, but it is the demand for biomass to turn into fuel that brought NASA calling. His team’s report for the agency estimates that salt-loving crops could be used to produce 1.5 billion barrels of ethanol annually on a swath of new agricultural land almost five times the size of Texas.
“I’m convinced that saltwater agriculture is going to open up a whole new expanse of land and water for crop production,” Glenn said. “Maybe the world hasn’t needed a 50 percent expansion in irrigated agricultural land because we’ve had enough food, but now that biofuels are in the mix, I think it’s the way crop production should go.”
Read more from Wired Science by clicking here.
Coverage wrap-up: Environmentalists sue to shut down Delta pumps and retire drainage impaired land
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on December 2, 2008 at 8:18 amGreat coverage this morning from the state’s three top environmental writers on the lawsuit filed yesterday. Each story is well written with different angles - each is worth the click-through. From Kelly Zito at the San Francisco Chronicle:
The giant state and federal pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that funnel water to 25 million Californians should be shut down until certain Central Valley farmers retire hundreds of thousands of acres of chemical-laden farmland, according to a lawsuit filed today by a state water watchdog.
Irrigating agricultural land in the western San Joaquin Valley tainted with selenium, mercury, boron and other toxic substances constitutes an unreasonable use of a public resource protected by state laws and has contributed to the sharp decline of endangered fish species, said the California Water Impact Network.
“We think there is a simple solution to California’s water problems - to retire all of the drainage-impaired lands in the Central Valley. A second is water conservation - agriculture uses 80 percent of the developed surface water,” said Carolee Krieger, president and founder C-WIN.
The lawsuit marks the latest twist in the continuing Delta drama. The hub of the state’s 1,300-square-mile water system is also at the heart of the fight between uses for food and human needs, and those of wildlife and rare plants. In recent years, failure of the ecosystem forced legal rulings that curbed water exports - a move made more complicated this year by a drought and fears of another dry winter.
Mike Taugher of the Contra Costa Times/San Jose Mercury News focuses on the public trust doctrine:
If it succeeds, the lawsuit would shift the focus away from the worsening conflict between individual species of fish and the amount of water pumped out of the Delta to a comprehensive attempt to balance competing interests.
“The only things that are already protected are already endangered,” said Michael Jackson, a lawyer for the environmental groups. “But what’s happening is the whole bottom is falling out of the ecosystem. You cannot list everything (as an endangered species) and you can’t protect species by species.”
By invoking the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that dates to the Roman Empire, the environmental groups seek to force regulators to consider the environment, recreation, aesthetics and other values to be passed to future generations in the Delta much more rigorously.
The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the California Water Impact Network and retired federal biologist Felix Smith, seeks to stop water deliveries from the Delta until the massive state and federal pumping stations near Tracy come into compliance with laws that the environmentalists say are being broken.
A spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources said the lawsuit could lead to “draconian” cuts in the East Bay and South Bay and threatens what little stability is left in the state’s water supply outlook. “It used to be that drought was determined by hydrology. Now it is determined by hydrology and by regulatory and judicial constraints,” said water resources department spokesman Ted Thomas. “This condition could toss us into the worst drought in California history very easily.”
From Alex Brietler of Stockton’s Record:
State and federal water managers have increased exports to farms and cities south of the Delta even as fish populations plummet, says the lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court. Northern California reservoirs have been “cannibalized” for the sake of Southern California, and irrigation of drainage-impaired lands in the western San Joaquin Valley is a waste of water, the groups say.
The federal Bureau of Reclamation and state Department of Water Resources, both of which export Delta water, are targets of the lawsuit. So is the State Water Resources Control Board, which is charged with regulating water rights and ensuring water quality in California. The board has failed to provide important oversight, environmentalists say.
“It’s clear that if the Delta, this estuary and its fisheries are to be saved, it will be under a court’s jurisdiction,” said Stockton-based Bill Jennings, whose California Sportfishing Protection Alliance is among several plaintiffs. “This may be the last, best chance for California fisheries.”
A federal court has already restricted exports from the Delta to protect threatened smelt, and the state is enduring its second year of drought. That double-whammy has triggered water rationing from portions of the Bay Area to San Diego.
Ted Thomas, a spokesman for Water Resources, said the department was “disappointed once again that everyone focuses only on the pumps,” just one factor in the decline of fish. Shutting down the pumps would be Draconian, Thomas said.
Read the press release from C-WIN by clicking here.
Californians need to worry about food security, says commentary
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2008 at 8:05 am
From the San Francisco Chronicle, this commentary by A.G. Kawamura, the secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture:
At a time when people are deeply concerned about our dependence on imported oil, we should also be concerned about increasing our state’s dependence on imported food. In fact, our ability to feed our state could be seriously threatened by problems such as a long-term drought, the state’s aging water delivery and supply system, and court-ordered water supply cuts.
When people talk about food security, it’s normally a social justice topic at international conferences on hunger and famine. But it’s a term that we’re hearing more in California as population growth, along with land use and water policies, puts more pressure on this state’s agricultural industry. Rather than referencing worries about global food shortages, food security for Californians is about whether our state can continue to be the nation’s top food producer.
One of the major threats to the state’s farming industry is our lack of water. California’s drought, combined with court-ordered cuts in water deliveries, is threatening our food production.
Because of the water shortage, growers are cutting back on production, fallowing land and stumping trees. The drought has cost the state more than $250 million in lost plantings and 80,000 acres of crops this year alone. And that doesn’t include the huge amount of idle farmland that hasn’t been planted in the past few years because of an unpredictable water supply.
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
Water Summit works through cutback woes: Growers must decide between lower deliveries, discounts
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 28, 2008 at 8:37 amFrom Capital Press:
Water is getting harder to come by in San Diego County, and growers are struggling to find answers on how to cope. The problem has been created by drought, court orders, new environmental regulations and water supply decisions. “This water situation isn’t short-term,” said Ken Roth, chairman of the California Avocado Commission’s Southern California Agricultural Water Team. “We will have to work with this situation for a while.”
San Diego County agriculture is among the most water-intensive in the nation. High-value nursery crops - citrus and avocados - require large water allotments. Most irrigating water comes from Northern California via canals.
San Diego growers had been getting up to 30 percent discounts from the regional Metropolitan Water District of Southern California that distributes water to SoCal water districts. The flip side of that program was a pledge by growers to take cuts of up to 40 percent of their water allotment should the resource become scarce.
Nearly three years of drought and small snowpacks have pulled water out of the system for farmers and city dwellers alike, felt all the more harshly in San Diego with its dry conditions and urban population. A federal judge’s recent ruling in favor of the endangered delta smelt also affects supplies.
“We can’t underestimate the impact of the drought the last few years; that represented about two-thirds of the impact and the judge’s ruling affecting the other third,” said Michael Hurley, principal water resources manager at Malcolm Pirnie Environmental Inc.
Read more from the Capital Press by clicking here.
Multi-tasking canola: California’s miracle crop?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 27, 2008 at 9:38 amFrom the San Jose Mercury News:
A hardy but pedestrian plant is doing triple duty in California’s agricultural heartland, absorbing a salt that once deformed waterfowl by the millions, creating clean-burning biofuel and nourishing cattle with the leftovers.
Crop-crippling selenium in soil and groundwater makes the arid west side of the San Joaquin Valley a challenge for farmers, whose diesel tractors have been blamed for helping cause the worst air quality in the nation.
But farmers, water managers and agriculture researchers are closely watching an experiment using canola plants to absorb the salt from soil and water. The seeds are then crushed to extract oil for blending into environmentally friendly biodiesel.
If that were the end of the story, it would be just another case of farmers turning food into fuel. Yet at John Diener’s Red Rock Ranch in this town 60 miles southwest of Fresno, the selenium-rich canola byproduct has an even higher calling: cattle feed naturally infused with an essential micro-nutrient.
In a trial, Diener’s canola meal was fed to dairy cows on the east side of the Valley, where selenium does not occur naturally and has to be added to food rations.
“It’s all part of what we have to try to do here to turn a profit,” said Diener, who also grows almonds, tomatoes, grapes and corn on 5,000 acres. “The controversy of the day is taking ground for food crops and using it to make energy. This is taking ground that isn’t good for anything right now.”
Read more from the San Jose Mercury News by clicking here.
Wine company tries cooperation over regulation: Jackson family builds ponds for tiger salamander
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 27, 2008 at 7:36 amFrom the Lompoc Record:
They’re not furry or cuddly and they don’t live very interesting lives. But the California tiger salamander made it onto the endangered species list and has since then disrupted many development projects. However, one area property owner decided to work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to learn more about the elusive amphibian in the hopes that further study would help with future projects on the property.
Jackson Family Wines, known formerly as Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, created two new ponds on its 5,400-acre property in Los Alamos that may lure the spotted creature out for breeding purposes.
Jackson Family Wines signed an agreement with Fish and Wildlife to have their property excluded from the agency’s critical habitat designation in exchange for developing conservation measures to protect the salamander.
“It’s a very cooperative relationship,” said Lee Anne Edwards, the Jackson vice president of real estate. She added that the company is a “really big land steward” in its operations.
Read the rest of this story from the Lompoc Record by clicking here.
“Efficient” drip irrigation may deplete more water
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 26, 2008 at 6:40 amFrom the Worldwatch Institute:
An Israeli water engineer was sitting under a tree one day when he noticed a leaking faucet slowly drip water to the tree’s roots, a nearly 50-year-old irrigation tale says.
The idea inspired the invention of modern drip irrigation, also known as micro-irrigation. The method runs water through plastic tubes that release the flow through small holes directly to crop roots or stems.
The precise application allows drip-irrigated crops to be watered more frequently than with traditional sprinkler methods. Yet farmers waste fewer resources because most water is absorbed through transpiration. As a result, many governments have encouraged drip irrigation as a water-conserving technology that can boost crop yields.
But drip irrigation may have a downside, according to a study published in last week’s Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. In traditional flood or sprinkler irrigation, “wasted” water - the water not absorbed by crops - seeps into the ground and recharges the below-surface aquifers used by area farmers. As drip irrigation becomes more common, recharge of groundwater may be less frequent, the study said.
“I think it’s very true that drip irrigation and drip irrigation subsidies definitely contribute to food security and increased farm income,” said Frank Ward, the study’s co-author and a professor of water resource economics at New Mexico State University. “The only downside…is that drip irrigation could be using more water.”
Read more from the Worldwatch Institute by clicking here.
Growers face difficult planting choices
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 26, 2008 at 5:54 amFrom the California Farm Bureau Federation:
For California’s agricultural producers, whether they specialize in permanent crops, annual crops or livestock, next year is fraught with uncertainty. The biggest concerns are three–water availability, work force availability and the cost of farming.
Farmers are making tough decisions now and in the coming weeks regarding what to plant, how much to plant and how to best use a water supply that could fluctuate dramatically depending on how much precipitation the state’s watersheds receive over the next five months.
Livestock producers face similar difficult decisions. Do they start severely culling their herds, or do they expand? The high cost of feed will have a major impact on those choices.
Throw into the equation the regulatory challenges created by legislation such as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act, and the picture becomes even murkier.
“Clearly for many Central Valley growers, access and price of water is first. Second, labor availability and cost is vital for many crops. Third, input prices, fertilizer and fuel especially, have been up and now down. This is a tough call to decide to lock in input prices now or hope they continue to come down,” said Daniel A. Sumner, director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center in Davis.
“Fourth, the same issue in reverse on the output price side. Not only have field crop prices dropped, but the stronger dollar and worldwide recession cause serious concerns for the market for wine, nuts and crops that depend on export markets and economic growth,” Sumner said.
What if water rules change? Water users who rely on federal projects to deliver water may think they know what their rights are, but they could be wrong.
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 23, 2008 at 7:35 amFrom Ag Weekly Online:
Water users who rely on federal projects to deliver water may think they know what their rights are, but they could be wrong.
Take the shareholders in the Stockton East Water District. The district is located in a part of California that has been heavily dependent on ground water since the Gold Rush days. The aquifer is in a state of critical overdraft, said Jennifer Spaletta, an attorney from California that is representing Stockton East in a court case that began when she was still in school.
In the 1970s, the Bureau of Reclamation built a dam on the Stanislaus River and created a reservoir that holds 2.4 million acre-feet of water to relieve the pressure on the aquifer. BuRec contracted with two entities to provide 155,000 acre-feet of water provided those entities built the infrastructure to get the water from the reservoir to their projects.
So Stockton East sold bonds and assessed everyone from irrigators to homeowners to raise the $65 million needed to build the 25 mile-long conveyance system that included tunneling through the mountains.
The BuRec contracts were signed in 1983, the canal system was completed in 1992, the same year Congress redirected BuRec to use 800,000 acre-feet of the yield of the reservoir for fish restoration. As soon as Stockton East finished building the canal system, it asked for 10,000 acre-feet of water and was denied.
And that raises a couple of questions: What does the law mean when contractors have contracts to receive water from a federal Bureau of Reclamation project but the federal government decides to use the water for a different purpose? If the government decides to use the water for fish restoration is that a takings, a breach of contract or a really bad deal?
Read more from the Ag Weekly Online by clicking here.
Does drip irrigation really reduce water consumption?
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 21, 2008 at 8:21 amMaybe not, says a new study. From the New York Times:
With flood irrigation, much of the water is not used by the plants and seeps back to the source, an aquifer or a river. Drip irrigation draws less water, but almost all of it is taken up by the plants, so very little is returned. “Those aquifers are not going to get recharged,” Dr. Ward said.
Drip irrigation also generally increases crop yields, which encourages farmers to expand acreage and request the right to take even more water, thus depleting even more of it. “The indirect effect is very possibly to undermine policy attempts to reduce water consumption,” Dr. Ward said.
Policymakers, he added, must balance the need for more food and for farmers to make a living with water needs. “It’s fair to say that subsidies are very good for food security and very good for farmer income,” Dr. Ward said. “But they may be taking water away from other people.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Greenspace blog agrees:
While drip irrigation can require half the water that flood irrigation does, plants absorb more water with drip, crop yield increases and more water is lost to evapotranspiration. Because drip is more efficient, there is also less overflow to seep back into aquifers or wash into nearby streams or rivers.
That means less water for downstream users and future generations dependent on the aquifers. “Higher consumption comes from someplace — someone else’s use,” Ward said. Drip, he added, has its benefits. “It’s just not a water conserving thing.”
Related discussion: Guest blogger JWT at Aguanomics starts out with a post about farm conservation versus urban conservation, and a great discussion ensues. Check it out from the Aguanomics blog: Cutting fat or muscle?
Water quality advances in danger: Farmer sees conflict between food safety and conservation
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 21, 2008 at 5:51 amFrom the Capital Ag Press:
Farmers now have more to balance than their checkbooks. Profit margins aside - it’s safety margins that can spell out a good harvest or doom it for waste. To ensure their crops meet safety standards, some are questioning and even abandoning conservation practices.
According to speakers at the fourth annual Sustainable Ag Expo, strides made in water quality improvements on farms in recent years are in danger of being lost due to food safety concerns.
Since the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach that was traced to a San Benito County farm, growers of leafy-green vegetables have come under increased pressure to remove all possible sources of pathogens from their fields.
Conservation practices such as vegetative filter strips, hedgerows and ponding basins, promoted to growers as improving water quality, have been questioned. The practices prevent run-off of sediment, nutrients and pesticides from fields, but buyers of leafy greens and third-party auditors charged with ensuring food safety are asking growers to curtail those practices because they believe them to a source of pathogens that can cause food-borne illness.
“There is the perception of risks to food safety, but there is no good data to back it up,” said Trevor Suslow, a University of California researcher.
Read more from the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.
Urban growers go high-tech to feed city dwellers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 21, 2008 at 5:24 amFrom the San Francisco Chronicle:
Terry Fujimoto sees the future of agriculture in the exposed roots of the leafy greens he and his students grow in thin streams of water at a campus greenhouse. The program run by the California State Polytechnic University agriculture professor is part of a growing effort to use hydroponics — a method of cultivating plants in water instead of soil — to bring farming into the cities where consumers are concentrated.
Hydroponic farming requires less water and less land than traditional field farming, leading Fujimoto and researchers-turned-growers in other U.S. cities to see it as the perfect way to bring agriculture to apartment buildings, rooftops and vacant lots. “The goal here is to look at growing food crops in small spaces,” Fujimoto said.
Long a niche technology existing in the big shadow of conventional growing methods, hydroponics is getting a second look from university researchers and public health advocates. Supporters point to the environmental cost of trucking produce from farms to cities, the loss of wilderness for farmland to feed a growing world population, and the risk of bacteria along extensive, insecure food chains as reasons for establishing urban hydroponic farms.
However, the expense of setting up the high-tech farms on pricey city land and providing enough year-round heat and light could present some insurmountable obstacles. “These are university theories,” said Produce Business magazine editor Jim Prevor. “They’re not mapped to things that actually exist.”
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle by clicking here.
San Joaquin River restoration bill clogged; Fish and Game Commission votes to cut water deliveries
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 20, 2008 at 3:27 pmFrom the Capital Ag Press:
Delay in the action on the San Joaquin River restoration bill until early 2009 is cutting it close. Interim flows down the river are scheduled to begin next year.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., funds the massive restoration project aimed at returning a salmon run on the river. On Monday, Nov. 17, lawmakers in Washington, D.C., decided to postpone action on the large public lands bill that included Feinstein’s bill.
The Senate will take up the bill when the new Congress convenes. Stalled since 2006, the bill provides $88 million in funding, far short of the $250 million in the original legislation. The funding will implement the settlement reached between east side water users and environmental groups in 2006.
Water users who receive San Joaquin River water stored behind Friant Dam agreed to send part of their water down the river channel to restore a salmon fishery. In the settlement, they are promised that the amount of water they lose will be capped, and there will be improvements in the water delivery system to route water back to them.
Recent news of further restrictions for the longfin smelt could have implications for Friant water users:
New restrictions in delta pumping to protect longfin smelt would not directly affect the water deliveries to exchange contractors, Chedester said, but it could impact the Bureau of Reclamation and how it operates the water delivery system. If the bureau can’t deliver water from the delta, they will have to take it from Friant, he said, because the districts hold senior water rights.
Get the full story from the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.
Cost-cutting program drying up on farmers in Rancho California Water District
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 16, 2008 at 6:26 amFrom Riverside’s Press-Enterprise:
Farmers served by the Rancho California Water District will pay more for water. It’s just a question of when.
A program that allowed farmers to get cheaper water in exchange for agreeing to cutbacks in supplies in drier times could be phased out by 2013. That means farmers used to getting discounted water for crops will pay the same as the district’s household and industrial customers.
That, combined with higher fuel and fertilizer costs and cheaper foreign goods, is the last thing local farmers need, said Ben Drake, a district board member who runs a farm management company. “I may not be able to farm in the next eight to 10 years,” said Drake, who has been in the Temecula Valley since the 1970s. “None of my clients are spending any extra money on anything.”
Read more from the Press-Enterprise by clicking here.
Commentary: California crisis signals warning for all farmers
Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 13, 2008 at 7:55 amFrom the Capital Ag Press, this commentary by Frank Priestly, president of the Idaho Farm Bureau:
A drought that’s lasted only two years is creating serious problems in this nation’s most populous state. And other Western states, including Idaho, had better take notice of the simple fact that if we don’t increase water storage we are putting our food supply and our economy in jeopardy.
If the drought in California continues until spring, water officials there are planning to ration municipal water deliveries and dry up as much as 200,000 acres of farmland. Compounding California’s problem is a recent federal court ruling that limits pumping of water out of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Delta in order to protect an endangered fish, the smelt. Sound familiar?
To sum up California’s problem, the state ranks No. 1 in population with over 37 million people and No. 1 in value of agricultural output at $36.6 billion in 2007. At the present time, there’s not enough water to supply both of those demands. So water managers’ options include first, pray for rain and make plans to dry up farmland, and second, ration water to cities and encourage people to conserve, by limiting lawn watering and other activities.
Idaho citizens, lawmakers and water managers should have a clear understanding of this situation and what it means. In times of severe shortages, the municipalities will get their water first. Even though farmers may own the rights to use that water, the cities won’t get shorted in order to irrigate crops. While Idaho isn’t dealing with drought at the present time, we do live in a desert and should be making proactive plans to deal with it.
Read more of this commentary by the Capital Ag Press by clicking here.
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