It’s some of America’s richest farmland. But what is it without water? [New York Times]
In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the most precious crop of all. It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to actually grow rice. Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years. … These are among the signs of a huge transformation up and down California’s Central Valley, the country’s most lucrative agricultural belt, as it confronts both an exceptional drought and the consequences of years of pumping far too much water out of its aquifers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/28/climate/california-drought-farming.html
Water futures market fails to make a splash with California farmers [Reuters]
… Financial exchange operator CME Group (CME.O) launched the contract late last year to help big California water users such as farmers and utilities hedge rising drought risk and give investors a sense of how scarce water is at any given time. … But trades settle in money, not water, meaning water users cannot use the contract to solve real-world shortages. Farmers said without more participants, they cannot enter or exit positions without adversely impacting prices. The contracts are also not very useful if there is no physical water to buy in the spot market when government-managed water allocations are tapped out.
U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear Michael Abatti’s Colorado River water case challenging IID [Palm Springs Desert Sun]
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday unanimously declined a petition by Imperial Valley farmer Michael Abatti claiming he and a handful of other agricultural landowners, not the Imperial Irrigation District, held senior rights to Colorado River water that nearly 40 million people across the West depend on. The decision likely is the last stop for a torturous legal battle that dates back to 2013. As the law stands, farmers have a guaranteed right to water delivery but not a special claim above other users like homes and geothermal plants.
Northern California property owners flock to grazing companies as fire outlook worsens [North Bay Business Journal]
… Despite the hurdles ranging from government overtime laws and the prices of supplies, more grazing companies are popping up in the North Bay and beyond to rake California’s bucolic hillsides. … Beyond the obvious slew of expenses such as vaccinations, fencing, trucks, trailers, fuel and water, labor may turn out to be the straw that broke the camel’s back for some grazing operations. … Farm bureaus and agriculture advocates are lobbying Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators for an exemption to Assembly Bill 1066 for the herders. … “It doesn’t make any sense. We need this to fix the wildland fuels problem. I thought we turned the corner on this years ago,” California Farm Bureau Director of Labor Affairs Bryan Little said of the law.
‘Desecration’: Marin tribal descendants oppose Point Reyes plan [Marin Independent Journal]
Coast Miwok descendants in Marin County are urging U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cabinet secretary, to reject a controversial plan at Point Reyes National Seashore that it says prioritizes commercial cattle ranching over protecting archaeological sites and the environment. The Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin County, a non-federally recognized organization of Coast Miwok descendants formed in early 2020, wrote in a letter to Haaland this month opposing the park’s plans to extend terms of commercial ranches that lease about a quarter of the land at the 71,000-acre national seashore. Doing so, the council said, would be “permitting continued desecration of native sites by 5,500 cows and farming equipment.”
https://www.marinij.com/2021/06/28/desecration-marin-tribal-descendants-oppose-point-reyes-plan/
Bay Area man named chief of U.S. Forest Service, will oversee twice as much land as all national parks [Bay Area News Group]
… Biden selected Randy Moore, head of the Forest Service’s regional office in Vallejo, to lead the agency. Moore will become the first African-American to run the Forest Service, which is the second-largest landowner in the United States. … Moore will negotiate traditional controversies between industry and environmentalists on the proper uses of the national forest system. But he will face an immediate crisis the first day he is sworn in: A historic drought that has led to parched landscapes across the West and tens of millions of acres at risk of wildfire as the climate continues to warm.
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