Tag Archive for: Farming

Farming, Water and Wall Street On Colorado’s Western Slope

/in , /by /AP Newsby Chris Outcalt

Under the blazing afternoon sun, Joe Bernal navigates a shiny-green John Deere tractor onto a dirt road a few miles north of downtown Fruita. Bernal is headed to cut hay in a field a few hundred feet down the road. On his way, he points out the land his family has acquired over the years. His grandparents had 150 acres over there. His parents bought this land here. His great grandparents, who showed up in 1925, lived in a house right there.

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Rancho Guejito Tapped Groundwater Deep in San Pasqual Valley. Some Farmers Aren’t Happy About It.

/in , /by /The San Diego Union-Tribuneby Joshua Emerson Smith

Hank Rupp stands on the edge of a holding pond on the historic Rancho Guejito — more than 22,000 acres purchased nearly 50 years ago by the now-deceased shipping mogul Benjamin Coates and considered by many the ecological crown jewel of San Diego County.

The 20-foot-deep reservoir — fed in part by several 1,000-foot wells dug on a more recently acquired property — is vital to the transformation of Rancho Guejito into a working agribusiness.

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From Killer Heatwaves to Floods, Climate Change Worsened Weather Extremes in 2021

/in , , /by /Reutersby Lisa Shumaker and Andrea Januta

Extreme weather events in 2021 shattered records around the globe. Hundreds died in storms and heatwaves. Farmers struggled with drought, and in some cases with locust plagues. Wildfires set new records for carbon emissions, while swallowing forests, towns and homes.

Many of these events were exacerbated by climate change. Scientists say there are more to come – and worse – as the Earth’s atmosphere continues to warm through the next decade and beyond.

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Opinion: What if Farmers Really Could Use 50% Less Water? Arizona Would Be a Different Place

/in , /by /AZ Centralby Joanna Allhands

What if farmers could use half the water than they are now without sacrificing crop yield?

Arizona would be a different place.

There are roughly 946,000 acres of farmland in the state, according to the most recent federal farm census in 2018, using an estimated 4.4 million acre-feet of water.

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State Allocates $50M to Fund Water Conservation Projects in Agricultural Centered Areas

/in , , /by /Bakersfield Nowby Elizabeth Christian

Today local lawmakers toured the Kern Water Bank to see drought impact firsthand.

$50 million from the state budget is going to fund Assembly Bill 252, which calls for land repurposing all to focus on the drought and getting water flow back to where it matters.

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Torture Orchard: Can Science Transform California Crops to Cope with Drought?

/in , , /by /CalMattersby Julie Cart

There’s a hive of PhDs at the University of California at Davis who are working to reinvent food production in the Golden State. Researchers have fanned out across the globe collecting rare plant samples; others are grafting Frankenstein trees and stitching together root systems of plums and peaches to create better almond and walnut trees.

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The Drought Is Drying Up California’s Economy: Who’s Responsible For Opening The Floodgates?

/in , , /by /Forbesby David Lynch

Cropless fields, fishless rivers, burning forests, empty reservoirs and powerless dams — either you’ve seen the headlines, or you’re living it. America’s West has run out of water.

For most of us, this is a reckoning moment. Water exists in abundance. It’s cheap, free-flowing and limitless. We’re quite literally swimming in the stuff.

But suddenly, that’s no longer true. California’s surging population and farming-dependent economy, coupled with sustained drought, means that demand has completely drowned out supply.

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Water Cutbacks Coming to Arizona

/in , , /by /Arizona Public Mediaby Christopher Conover

The “bathtub ring” at Lake Mead has become a familiar sight. The water level in the lake is the lowest it has been since the Hoover Dam, which created the lake, was built in the 1930s. Those low levels have been decades in the making.

“Back in around 2000, Lake Mead was pretty close to being full, but over the last 20 years-plus now we’ve just not had good hydrologic conditions. It will take years to recover from that, years of good conditions and unfortunately the climate models and projections don’t predict us getting cooler and they don’t predict us, let’s say, getting wetter,” said Dr. Sharon Megdal, University of Arizona professor and former board member for the Central Arizona Project.

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State Water Officials Preparing to Make Emergency Cutbacks to Growers and Ranchers

/in , , /by /CBS Sacramentoby James Taylor

As California’s drought worsens, state water officials are preparing to take emergency action to conserve.

The state water board is voting later this morning on new water restrictions that could impact thousands of farmers. If passed, the emergency regulations would restrict anyone from diverting water out of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and their tributaries.

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Starving Cows. Fallow Farms. The Arizona Drought Is Among the Worst in the Country

/in , , /by /Los Angeles Timesby Jaweed Kaleem

The cotton’s gone.

The alfalfa barely exists.

“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.

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