Indiana precipitiation, courtesy NCDC
Water shortages are coming to Indiana unless the state implements policy changes, according to a recent prediction by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Data courtesy NCDC.
From the USDA (pdf):
Contracted production of California processing tomatoes is forecast at a record high 14.0 million tons, averaging 48.61 tons per acre, according to a survey conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service. The current forecasted production is 17.6 percent above the 2013 crop.
Drought has been an issue for some crops, but apparently not tomato:
The extreme drought in California has forced growers to fallow land and cut back on the acreage for many crops, but the impact on tomato acreage appears to be limited. The projected harvested acreage of tomatoes is 288,000 acres, a 12.5 percent increase from 2013.
I’ll speculate that what we’ll see, once the final data on the California Drought of 2014 is in, that what water farmers had access to was shifted to high-value crops like almonds and vegetables, and the acreage drop will be in the low-value stuff.
reclaimed water, golf course, Ventana Canyon, Tucson, by John Fleck
In the Colorado River Basin writ large, 14,000 acre feet of water is a very small rounding error – less than one tenth of one percent of the river’s flow. But the New Mexico discussion over the possibility of a diversion high in the watershed of the Gila River in New Mexico, raises fascinating questions about what could be one of the last big pieces of water-moving infrastructure in the basin. My colleague Lauren Villagran in the Albuquerque Journal’s Las Cruces bureau had an interesting piece in the morning paper (behind surveywall) looking at the drive to develop the water, even though we don’t know how much it will cost, who will pay for it, or how the water will be used:
“You would think that would get decided before it gets built, because you would think (the beneficiaries) would have to say they are willing to pay, especially if it’s a for-profit company,” said Norman Gaume, a former director of the Interstate Stream Commission.
Former Southern Nevada water chief Pat Mulroy explains that, while Las Vegas is an easy rhetorical landing spot because it is right next door to Lake Mead, the dropping Colorado River reservoir is a basin wide issue:
What we are experiencing is not a Las Vegas problem — it is truly a regional problem that encompasses an area responsible for 27 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
The entire piece is worth reading, and the comment thread is actually pretty good.
Even with the fizzling El Niño forecast, the winter outlook for the United States released by the Climate Prediction Center yesterday looks awfully El Niño-like, with odds favoring wetter weather across the southern tier of states. But for the bulk of the Colorado River Basin’s water-producing region, which is in the central Rockies, the forecast looks like even odds of a wet or dry winter this year:
December-February outlook, Climate Prediction Center
Continuing a decades-long trend, California farmers will increase their almond acreage next year, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report.
An estimated 48,000 acres of new almond orchards will be planted next year, an estimate based on a first-ever survey of nursery sales. The increase is roughly 40 percent higher than the 10-year average.
Richard Waycott, president and CEO of the Almond Board of California, which commissioned the survey, told Circle of Blue that the numbers reflect commitments made at least two years ago, when growers would have submitted orders to the nurseries.
“The report reflects decisions not made in the context of the current drought and current water availability,” Waycott said.
There was a great bit of humorous business that my offspring Reed helped me cook up over the weekend for this column, which ended up on the self-editing floor. The column was in part about how we all put too much stock in El Niño as our savior from drought, and Reed reminded me of that great scene in Life of Brian where a frustrated Brian is trying to explain to the throng assembled outside his Mum’s apartment that he is not the Messiah:
BRIAN: Look. You’ve got it all wrong. You don’t need to follow me. You don’t need to follow anybody! You’ve got to think for yourselves. You’re all individuals!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we’re all individuals!
BRIAN: You’re all different!
FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!
DENNIS: I’m not.
ARTHUR: Shhhh.
FOLLOWERS: Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.
BRIAN: You’ve all got to work it out for yourselves!
FOLLOWERS: Yes! We’ve got to work it out for ourselves!
BRIAN: Exactly!
FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!
BRIAN: No! That’s the point! Don’t let anyone tell you what to do!
So many layers there – El Niño, named after the Christ child, but as the column explains, it’s really not our savior. But it was a bridge too far for a newspaper column.
Zetland, worth elevating from the comments:
Most farmers tend to underplay their flexibility when talking about how much water they “need” but not when allocating the water they have.
On KNME’s In Focus with historian Sonia Dickey and the Bureau of Reclamation’s Mike Hamman, talking about the risks and possibilities of our western water future: