Posts Tagged: drought
Feeling the economic pain of drought
Reduced water allowances for farmers could mean layoffs and other economic impacts, says an article in the Wall Street Journal by Jim Carlton.
The article reported that some farmers have been told to expect just 30 percent of their allotments. In response to water cutbacks, many farmers must reduce planting and leave some fields fallow.
The article referenced a UC Davis study, co-authored by Richard Howitt, of 2009 water cutbacks that resulted in "285,000 acres going fallow and the loss of 9,800 agricultural jobs, for a $340 million loss in farm-related revenues."
California's rain is locked up in Alaska snow
Precipitation that would normally head toward California along the Pacific jet stream has for weeks veered north, burying Alaska in record snow, said an article by San Jose Mercury News reporter Lisa Kreiger. The story appeared yesterday in the Contra Costa Times.
The weather trend has left California drenched in sun this winter, but for many, sunny skies have worn out their welcome.
In the Central Valley, stock ponds are running dry -- and cows drink 10 to 15 gallons a day. Some ranchers are considering trucking in water or culling their herds, said Yuba City-based UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor Glenn Nadar. He predicts a surge in milk and beef prices.
Orchardists worry about their almond trees, whose buds are swelling -- but roots are dry. Winter wheat is also parched. To help, some water districts are diverting water into their canals.
"We're irrigating, which is unheard of," said farm advisor Franz Niederholzer, with UC's Cooperative Extension in Sutter and Yuba counties.
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California ranchers may need to truck in water for their cattle.
Winter warmth and wildfires reported in Nevada
In contrast to typical winter weather patterns, in 2012 Nevada has experienced some early January days that were downright hot, wrote Dennis Myers in the Reno News and Review. Wildfires, normally a feature of summer and fall, have been experienced during this winter.
The article said Nevada's cloud seeding program is prepared for any break in the weather pattern that will provide storms that can be seeded. Truckee Meadows is dependent on the snowpack for its water supply and a lack of snow threatens the tourist economy. Nevada’s farming areas have a stake in the cloud seeding program and forest recovery after wildfire also relies on winter rain.
After the 2007 Angora Wildfire, for instance, the effectiveness of reseeding was undercut by the dry winter. According to Susan Kocher of the University of California Cooperative Extension, “that very dry winter did reduce the survival rate of newly planted tree seedlings. … The later in the spring season they were planted, the worse the survival was as the drought just kept getting worse.”
Kocher said the California Tahoe Conservancy had to keep planting and replanting in 2008, 2009, and again in 2010 before it started having success in getting the number of trees up to pre-fire levels.
Dry winter weather inhibited forest recovery after the 2007 Angora Wildfire near Lake Tahoe.
It's beginning to look like drought
Among the first farming operations to be affected by lack of rain is livestock grazing, which is largely dependent on rainfall to grow forage for cattle and sheep, and to fill stock ponds the animals need for drinking water.
Josh Davy, livestock and range farm advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension in Tehama, Colusa and Glenn counties, said many livestock owners are in a waiting game. They're hoping for rain but are also making plans to buy supplemental feed in case it doesn't.
Another option for some, he said, is to begin selling off animals early to reduce herd size, thereby ensuring grazing lands can sustain the animals they keep.
"People are right on the teetering edge," Davy said. "We're going to have a lot of grass start dying here if we don't start getting some kind rains."
Some stone fruit and nut crops are also at risk. With these crops, such as almonds and peaches, root growth precedes bud growth. Without soil moisture, the roots don't grow, and then the trees don't bud out. That means less fruit production, said Roger Duncan, a fruit tree advisor at the Cooperative Extension office in Stanislaus County.
"They're starting to get concerned," said Duncan. "There is no such thing as normal. But I don't remember it being quite like this. We really could use the rain."
Swaying both ways
Imagine if rice – yes, that semiaquatic species that is typically cultivated under partially flooded conditions – could be both flood- and drought-tolerant. Such a rice variety would benefit rice growers and consumers worldwide and would be less vulnerable to weather extremes that may result from global climate change.Now UC Riverside experiments demonstrate that such rice is already here. Genetics professor Julia Bailey-Serres’ research group reports in a recent issue of The Plant Cell that flood-tolerant rice is also better able to recover from drought.
“Flood tolerance does not reduce drought tolerance in these rice plants, and appears to even benefit them when they encounter drought,” Bailey-Serres says.
She and her team – Takeshi Fukao, a senior researcher, and Elaine Yeung, an undergraduate student – focused on Sub1A, a gene responsible for flood or “submergence” tolerance in rice. Sub1A works by making the plant dormant during submergence, allowing it to conserve energy until the floodwaters recede. Indeed, rice with the Sub1A gene can survive more than two weeks of complete submergence.
Plant breeders have already profited farmers worldwide – especially in South Asia – by having transferred Sub1A into high-yielding rice varieties without compromising these varieties’ desirable traits — such as high yield, good grain quality, and pest and disease resistance.
Bailey-Serres’s lab found that in addition to providing robust submergence tolerance, Sub1A aids survival of drought. The researchers report that at the molecular level Sub1A serves as a convergence point between submergence and drought response pathways, allowing rice plants to survive and re-grow after both weather extremes.
“Sub1A properly coordinates physiological and molecular responses to cellular water deficit when this deficit occurs independently, as in a time of drought, or following ‘desubmergence,’ which takes place when flood waters recede,” says Bailey-Serres who was the lead recipient of the 2008 USDA National Research Initiative Discovery Award.
Next, her colleagues at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines will test the Sub1A rice for drought tolerance in the field. What are some other implications of this research? One that comes to mind is that the “Got Rice?” slogan might have to drop the question mark, and put in its place a solid period!