North Coast grape harvest nears with smaller crop amid challenges of drought, wildfires [Santa Rosa Press Democrat]
As he surveys the area surrounding his vineyard in the Ukiah Valley, Tyler Rodrigue tries to remain upbeat about the North Coast wine industry’s two big worries: drought and another looming fire season. “There’s a lot of things out of our control … welcome to farming,” said Rodrigue, CEO of Noble Vineyard Management. “You kind of just layer on another one with the drought.”…Walking between organic vines in his 170-acre Haiku Vineyard, Rodrigue notes that it is shaping up to be a lighter crop this year. He is not suffering as badly from the drought as others because his farm has three irrigation ponds and two wells that can access water from the nearby Mayacamas Mountains. But even that is no assurance when it comes time to pick the fruit. Rodrigue noted his vines received “mixed messages” this winter with warm days in the 70s followed by near freezing temperatures at night, confusing them on whether to come out of their dormancy and start bud break.
Drought and bark beetle kill millions of trees, increase wildfire risk in North State forests [Redding Record Searchlight]
The bark beetle infestation that decimated large swaths of forest in the southern Sierra Nevada has moved into the North State, killing millions of trees and adding fuel to an already dangerous fire season. And the problem isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, according to the U.S. Forest Service, the federal agency responsible for managing much of the forested land in California. “What we have ahead of us, what we have in front of us, we can’t get ahead of. Not the way we’re staffed,” said Todd Hamilton, a silviculturist with the national forest. The ongoing drought throughout the West has made North State forests more susceptible to the beetles, according to the forest service.
Outlook for U.S. grains market grows tighter [Wall Street Journal]
Prices for U.S. grains are locked in a volatile pattern as growing areas of the country wait for rain. Following the long holiday weekend, grain futures trading on the Chicago Board of Trade have plummeted to start the week. Most-active corn futures closed Tuesday down by their limit of 40 cents a bushel, falling 6.9% to $5.40 a bushel. Soybean futures fell 6.7% to $13.05 a bushel, and wheat dropped 4.1% to $6.26 a bushel….Heading into the hottest days of the summer, above-average temperatures and dry conditions in the forecast may roil crop production in areas already in the grips of a drought. The volatility in agricultural futures is linked to the uncertainty that growing regions will get the rain they need….For U.S. farmers, the summer months are important for determining the health of crops. Dry weather during this period can derail the yields of crop acres, and large-scale rains can provide them with the moisture they need for plentiful growth.
Outlook for U.S. Grains Market Grows Tighter – WSJ
Former Secretary of Ag Dan Glickman talks bipartisanship and agriculture in his autobiography [Salinas Californian]
…Glickman, who served as Secretary of Agriculture from 1995 to 2001 and as chairman of the Motion Pictures Association of America from 2004 to 2010, spoke with The Salinas Californian about agriculture, bipartisanship and why he wrote his autobiography, “Laughing at Myself.”…There’s no ‘plastics’ answer for agriculture. One is nutrition and the relationship between nutrition, health, and agriculture. We’re going to see our health system look at how it can prolong and improve people’s lives, and nutrition and agriculture go hand-in-hand….In June, the Supreme Court decided to bar union organizers from accessing farm property in California to organize farmworkers. The Court decided it amounted to a “taking” of the property, but organizers say it puts farmworkers at greater risk of abuses. What do you think about the decision? In Kansas, we didn’t have a lot of farmworkers. We had a few, but mostly they were on the West Coast and Florida. My part of the country was mostly row crops, but I’m very sympathetic to the plight of farmworkers. You really can’t have California or Florida-type agriculture without farmworkers.
Comment: 2020 wildfires could be boon for water allocation [Exeter Sun-Gazette]
Last summer’s catastrophic Creek Fire burned about 380,000 acres in the upper San Joaquin watershed, the largest fire in the Sierra Nevada’s history. The fire literally exploded, fed by strong gusty winds and 150 million dead trees the fire scorched 43% of the burned area “with high severity” said the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state agency. Altogether, about 36% of the upper San Joaquin watershed was burned—the same watershed that supplies nine dams and impounds water that feeds a million acres of farmland below, along the Madera and Friant Kern Canals. Experts explain besides tree loss, “fire removes the absorbent layers of fallen and decaying plant matter on the forest floor. These layers, called litter and duff, can store more moisture than soil can. Without these layers, heavy rain can provide more water than the ground can absorb. This contributes to surface runoff.” Several agencies have predicted that the huge fire might have impacts on the 2021 spring runoff, which are important to communities and farms along the east side of the Valley including Tulare County…But as the California drought and extreme heat have grown more shocking in the past few months, fear has been building that there might be a zero allocation to east side farms who have little river water coming down the Kings, Kaweah, Tule and Kern Rivers either this spring.
2020 wildfires could be boon for water allocation – The Sun-Gazette Newspaper (thesungazette.com)
This Central California town has been without water for a month, experts say more to come [Salinas Californian]
…In Teviston, nearly a thousand Golden State residents have been without consistent water for almost a month, and water and climate experts fear it is only the first of many in California’s Central Valley….Many of those towns sit in the agricultural hub of the Central Valley. The largely-Latino workforce that grows and picks the nation’s nuts and produce often suffers first, and worst, when a drought hits. Eperts say these very same communities not only lack safe drinking water, but they also lack the money and resources to treat the water or even drill wells deeper to keep the water flowing….California’s Central Valley grows and ships two-thirds of the nation’s fruits and nuts, and a third of the nation’s vegetables. It’s also an important player in rice and milk production. Research shows that the last drought hit the Central Valley’s rural, low-income farmworker communities the hardest of any of California’s residents.
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