- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Above average rainfall in February benefits strawberry crops in the Central Valley
(ABC 30) Reuben Contreras, Feb. 28
…Above average rainfall in February will help this year's harvest last through October.
"It looks like it is in full bloom right now and it looks like it is going to rain. So we need the water as much as we can right now," said Michael Yang, University of California Cooperative Extension.
He works with small farms and specialty crops in the Hmong community, including a strawberry field in Northeast Fresno near Willow and Behymer.
Yang said the rain will add to the groundwater supply most farmers use to grow their crops plus it will help make the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Droughts, typically slow-moving disasters that unfold over a period of years, tend to provide opportunities to make policy changes that improve long-term water management regulations in California, said Doug Parker, the director of the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources California Institute for Water Resources. Parker was a guest on City Visions, a call-in talk show on San Francisco's local public radio station KALW.
"This is one of the things that has happened in past droughts," Parker said. "If you look at the drought of 1976-77, that was the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
More than a half million acres of California farmland has been left fallow this year, making a deep cut in the state's ag economy, reported Heesun Wee on CNBC.com.
"Land is incredibly productive. Nobody leaves land idle unless something really bad happens," said Dan Sumner, the director of UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' Agricultural Issues Center, based at UC Davis. The bad thing that happened is four winters of well-below-average precipitation in California.
According to Sumner and his colleagues' analysis, 564,000...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The California drought is so severe, it is drawing worldwide attention, including recent news coverage in Norway. Reporter Kristoffer Rønneberg visited a farm and reservoir in the Central Valley and spoke to a UC Agriculture and Natural Resources expert for an article in Aftenposten (Evening Post), Norway's largest newspaper.
"Look at this," said west side farmer John Diener. "In this field, I tried to cultivate a type of wheat that doesn't need as much water. But it did not (thrive). We did not get enough rain. Now the entire crop has withered."...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
If you take out 5.4 million square feet of turf across Orange County, you save 645 million gallons of water. But you also uproot an entire industry, reported Aaron Orlowski in the Orange County Register.
The reporter spoke to a yard worker who said customers are asking for service once a week, where they used to have it twice a week.
“The grass is starting to die out because they've been told to bring down their watering times. Before, they watered two times a day, four times a week. Now, they only water once a week," the worker said.
But in time, the industry is bound to adjust to a new water-conserving reality, assured...