Archive of posts filed under the agriculture category.

The inevitable decline of irrigated acreage in California’s central valley

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It’s a relatively straightforward point: when there is less water to irrigate farmland, there will be less irrigated farmland. For example, OtPR last year: As groundwater sustainability agencies have to bring irrigated acreage in line with the sustainable yield of the groundwater basin, they will be retiring irrigated lands (Dr. Burt: 1-1.5 million acres; Dr. Lund: …

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Hanak on federal agriculture policies and water

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When we think of federal water policy, we think Bureau of Reclamation or EPA. But just as agriculture is where the water is, federal agriculture agencies are where the money is. Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California had a post yesterday with some useful suggestions for spending it well: Practical reforms in …

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Despite drought, California agriculture adds 30,000 jobs

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It’s increasingly clear that the lessons we’re learning from California’s drought are not those we expected. Far from the doom of so much of the rhetoric, Californians are adapting to scarcity with remarkable aplomb. The latest data point, from Phillip Reese and Dale Kasler of the Sacramento Bee, may be the most interesting yet: California’s …

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The decline in California’s cotton acreage

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In his keynote at last week’s Law of the Colorado River conference in Las Vegas, Metropolitan Water District General Manager Jeff Kightlinger pointed out something that’s not gotten a lot of attention in discussions of California’s drought – the extraordinary decline in that state’s acreage of cotton. Cotton’s gotten a bad rap in irrigation circles, because …

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A note on alfalfa export data

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There’s a letter to the editor in the latest High Country News (it’s in the paper edition, can’t link yet) that repeats a California water myth that’s just flat wrong – the California Supergiant Alfalfa Water Use Export Myth. Alfalfa alone is using more water than all the other water uses combined, and most of …

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Note to self: invest my next $31.8 million in Palo Verde real estate

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All the cool kids seem to be buying up real estate in the Palo Verde Irrigation District. First it was the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which has upped its stake in the Colorado River farming valley to 22,000 acres. Now comes news that Almarai, a dairy company, bought 1,790 acres to grow food …

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New Mexico’s population history, now with added sheeply goodness

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In response to my cattle v. people post earlier today, Tom Swetnam asked if I had data for sheep:   @jfleck I have been looking for a graph like that! Do you have sheep numbers? Multiple times cows in early decades, I think. — Tom Swetnam (@Tom_Swetnam) January 10, 2016 USDA’s data only go back …

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