The 2012 Alfalfa and Grains Symposium took place last week, with the first day of the Symposium being a field tour of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta region. Approximately 150 Symposium attendants boarded buses for the day-long tour, comprised of four stops in the San Joaquin County region of the Delta. The Delta spans 738,000 acres over five counties – San Joaquin, Sacramento, Yolo, Solano, and Contra Costa – with 43% of the Delta being in San Joaquin County (SJC Agricultural Commissioner's Office, 2011).

The Delta is one of the most contentious regions of California because its infrastructure is pivotal to water conveyance throughout the state. Approximately half of the state’s annual runoff navigates the rivers and tributaries of the Delta (DWR, 2008). The water supplies 22 million Californians with drinking water, four million acres of agricultural land throughout the state with irrigation water, and an ecosystem that harbors 750 plant and animal species (Water Education Foundation, 2010). What is not consumed in these ways leaves the Delta to the San Francisco Bay.

While the Delta is critical for statewide water deliveries, to the people who live and work in the Delta, the region is important for its history, tradition, and unique sense of place. The region is rich in agricultural history. When miners could not make their fortune in the Gold Rush in mid-1800’s, they turned to farming the fertile, organic soils of the Delta. The land was “reclaimed” by building levees, and bountiful grains, forages, vegetables, and fruit crops have been produced ever since. In 2012, the top Delta crops by acreage were corn for grain and forage (approximately 98,000 acres), alfalfa (72,000 acres), and wheat (43,100 acres).

Participants in the Symposium tour heard directly from the people who live and work in the Delta about forage and grain production, pest management, irrigation and soils, marketing, and how these are unique in the Delta. The tour stops included Lima Ranch – a multigenerational family dairy, ACX Pacific Northwest, Inc. – a hay export facility, Robinson Farms Feed Company – a multigenerational family farm, and M. & T. Staten Ranch – a farm that couples farming and wildlife objectives. Each of these stops provided understanding for why every Californian should care about the Delta.

The Delta occupies just one percent of California’s total land area, and only about a half a million people live there out of the state’s 37 million residents, but the spirit of the Delta abounds, and that was demonstrated on the 2012 Alfalfa and Grains Symposium Delta field tour.