The Californian of southern Riverside County covered the concerns of farmers over water cutbacks. Reporter Jeff Rowe said farmers are turning to science and ingenuity to try to save county agriculture - and help keep food prices down.

The story highlighted one farmer who plans to use water absorbing polymers on a watermelon farm and another farmer who is working to secure grants to build a plant to extract salts from water discharged from sewage-treatment plants.

For the story, Rowe spoke to UC Riverside Cooperative Extension vegetable crops specialist Milt McGiffen about the possibility of farmers throwing in the towel if water allocations are cut too severely.

"Any time water rates are raised, some farmers go out of business," McGiffen was quoted. "Our ability to grow food has diminished. The less we grow, the more expensive it is (for consumers)."

Milt McGiffen

While there have been whispers of skepticism about the Great California Drought of 2009, all would likely agree that California's water woes are complicated. The Wall Street Journal today ran a story outlining the decision process for farmers considering whether they should use the water allocated to them to grow crops, or whether they should sell the water to the state and let their land lie fallow.

Writer Pete Sanders penciled out the equation for Don Bransford, who grows rice on a 700-acre farm north of Sacramento:

• The state is offering $275 per acre foot of water
• Take 100 acres of his farm out of production.
• Sell the water for $90,000

To me, that sounds like a lot of money for leaving one-seventh of a farm unworked. But the implications go far beyond Bransford's farm - think of the laborers who won't be working and the inputs that won't be applied. That's the type of information that UC Davis agricultural economist Richard Howitt has taken into consideration in his calculations about the cost of the drought.

Sanders noted in the Wall Street Journal article that Howitt has determined the drought and resulting water restrictions could cost as much as $1.4 billion in lost income and about 53,000 lost jobs, mostly in the agriculture sector.

Dought continues to be a hot topic. The international news wire Reuters moved a story today about the California drought, which was picked up as far away as New Zealand. The story quoted "state officials" as saying the farming cutbacks because of the drought will cost as many as 95,000 agricultural jobs. 

California rainfall and snowfall have been below average for three years, but some people are calling the 2009 crisis a man-made drought because of restrictions on the amount of water that can be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to protect the delta smelt, according to Reuters.

Whether the work of Mother Nature or human decisionmaking, UC Davis economist Richard Howitt told the reporter the crisis is sure to prompt action.  "If you look at California, things happen with crisis and we are in one right now," he was quoted.

California legislators are considering whether to reinvigorate the state's water infrastructure with new canals and storage facilities, according to an article published last week in the Los Angeles Times. Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto) introduced a $10 billion water bond that includes funding for reservoirs and infrastructure.

But the plan is sure to face opposition. President of the Natural Resources Defence Council was quoted in the Reuters story as asserting that agriculture can no longer own the water of California without drastically changing their practices.

The drought debate likely will continue for some time, but amid the doom and gloom,  Howitt told Reuters he remains "unfashionably slightly optimistic." He suggested that growers may be able to skirt water problems by switching to higher value crops.

"We can downsize in land area and water use, but because we grow crops that wealthier people like to eat, we can actually offset much of this downsizing by expanding the fruits, nuts and vegetables," he was quoted.

UC Cooperative Extension director for Tulare County Jim Sullins says a "Perfect Storm"  brewing in the San Joaquin Valley is turning the coming spring and summer into a time of uncertainty and challenge about water, according to an article in the Porterville Recorder.

The convergence of three years of below average rain and snowfall with recent court decisions about the fate of water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is just one of farmers' concerns.

“It’s almost a perfect storm situation. We have low commodity prices, the economic situation and now the uncertainty that the drought has brought,” Sullins was quoted in the story. “Any one of those things would have made life difficult and now we have all three.”

Reporter Jim Stone provided a breakdown of water availability in Tulare County with information from the Friant Water Authority. A FWA public information consultant told the reporter that a significant amount of Tulare County’s water depends on supplies pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and delivered through the Friant-Kern Canal as a result of a complex set of water exchanges that date back to the 1870s.

The first 800,000 acre-feet of water is allocated to irrigation and water districts that carry Class 1 contracts. Any water over that amount goes to districts with Class 2 contracts. As it now stands, only 25 percent of Class 1 supply is scheduled to be delivered, leaving farmers to rely on more costly alternatives such as pumping groundwater, fallowing acreage or suspending irrigation on crops already planted.

“Some crops that are particularly vulnerable [to drought] are citrus,” Sullins was quoted in the story. “There’s not groundwater available in many of those locations.”