Farmers reap record sales in record drought
Farming has become more expensive
A new state report shows California farmers reaping record sales despite the epic drought, thriving even as citydwellers have been forced to conserve water, household wells have run dry and fish have died.
FRESNO — A new state report shows California farmers reaping record sales despite the epic drought, thriving even as city-dwellers have been forced to conserve water, household wells have run dry and fish have died.
California’s 76,400 farms recorded $53.5 billion in sales in 2014, the year Gov. Jerry Brown declared the state in a drought emergency and launched what in 2015 became mandatory conservation for cities and towns. The sales figures are the most recent annual ones released by the state agriculture department.
With the punishing drought entering its fifth year, the figures are sure to stoke tensions between farmers on one side and, on the other, city-dwellers and environmentalists, who complain they are being forced to make greater sacrifices than growers.
Experts cite two key reasons for California farms’ strong showing even in dry times: a California almond boom fed by surging demand from China and elsewhere, and farmers’ ability to dig deeper, bigger wells to pump up more groundwater when other sources run out.
The state report tracked sales, not profits. Higher costs for water and other expenses of the drought outstripped sales for some farmers, but experts said it is clear many others made strong profits, as evidenced by the rush by growers and corporate investors to get into the almond business and take advantage of a run-up in prices.
Jay Lund, a water-resources researcher at the University of California at Davis and an influential voice in water policy in the state that is America’s agricultural powerhouse, said the sales figures show that California farmers are doing what they should be doing in a dry spell.
“To me it illustrates that you can actually have a fairly good job in managing water,” Lund said.
Some of those who consider themselves the losers in California’s water wars see it differently.
“The water they’re taking, they’re also taking from communities around them — like us,” said Guillermo Lopez, a resident of Fresno County, the state’s third-most productive farming county, who was forced to haul water when his family taps ran dry. “We’re the ones left with no water.”
Lopez’s family well was one of 2,520 household wells around the state to run out of water because of the drought and overpumping of the state’s underground water reserves, according to state figures.
Wells in Lopez’s neighbor- hood outside the city of Fresno began running dry a year ago, and his family was forced to buy bottled water until a state relief fund paid to have a large water tank installed next to the home. Lopez said that was about the same time he also noticed farmers nearby pumping heavily from deep wells to irrigate their crops.
Wildlife has also suffered, including endangered fish. Federal and state water managers, trying to balance competing demands from farms, cities and the environment, were unable to keep enough water in rivers for California’s endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, which have gone through record die-offs.
California farmers’ record sales come “at the expense of our rivers and fisheries,” said Kate Poole, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“There’ve been vast amounts of water taken away from the environment” by water managers in the drought, Poole said. “It’s caused many of our native fish to crash to the lowest levels ever.”
California just went through its driest four-year period on record. Brown asked California cities and towns to cut water use 20 percent in 2014, then made a 25 percent cutback for urban users mandatory the next year. Californians learned to take shorter showers and let their lawns turn brown.
Farmers say that they have suffered in the drought, too, and that the rising cost of irrigating their crops is eating into their profits. Not only are their water costs higher but their power bills have shot up because they’re running their well pumps more.