Kern farmers make do under drought conditions [Bakersfield Californian]
Kern County ag producers are making changes big and small — from redeveloping entire orchards to fine-tuning their irrigation systems — as they try to adjust to worsening drought conditions across the Central Valley. Strategies vary depending on access to water and ability to shift irrigation to different fields. Some landowners are trying to hold onto as much water as they can in case prices rise later in the year. … “Growers with permanent crops will be making difficult decisions if their surface water allocations are limited this year,” Kern County Farm Bureau President John C. Moore III said by email.
Klamath, Modoc, Siskiyou county leaders throw support behind Basin ag [Klamath Falls Herald and News]
At a rare joint meeting between all three of their leadership boards, Klamath, Siskiyou and Modoc Counties discussed ways to support agricultural communities during the Klamath Basin’s historic drought this year. … Though organizations representing irrigators are engaged in litigation against what they see as a mismanagement of the Endangered Species Act causing recent decades’ water shortages, the primary purpose of the meeting was to request more immediate federal funding for drought relief this summer. … Each county leader signed two joint letters — one calling for increased federal funding to assist Klamath Basin irrigators and one in response to a letter from Basin tribes and conservation groups sent to President Joe Biden April 16.
‘We got unlucky.’ Why melting Sierra snow won’t save California from extreme drought [Sacramento Bee]
California’s drought conditions have gone from bad to worse in scarcely a month. In the weeks following April 1, the traditional end of the rainy season, warm temperatures have burned off most of the Sierra Nevada snowpack and left the state’s water network gasping. Instead of delivering a generous volume of melted snow into California’s rivers and reservoirs, the snowpack has largely evaporated into the air or trickled into the ground. … The rapidly worsening drought has led to even sharper cutbacks in allocations to those who depend on California’s elaborate complex of dams, reservoirs and canals for their water.
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/water-and-drought/article251238879.html
Opinion: Abatti and friends knock on the U.S. Supreme Court door [Imperial Valley Press]
… In both of the legal briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, Mr. Abatti and the Farm Bureaus imply that having a right to water service means getting all they water they want. Does this make sense? … No, it doesn’t make sense. … We’ll find out soon enough if the US Supreme Court agrees to let Mr. Abatti and friends in its doors. I’m guessing it won’t. Meanwhile, Mr. Abatti and his Farm Bureau friends will probably be saving their money for the next legal challenge as the IID struggles to answer the question that each water user might pose: How much water do I have a right to?
Gray wolf from Oregon is the second to enter California’s Siskiyou County in 2021 [Redding Record Searchlight]
For the second time this year, a wolf from Oregon crossed into Northern California. A radio-collared male known as OR-103 arrived in Siskiyou County on Tuesday, according to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and environmental group the Center for Biological Diversity. … The new male is the second wolf known to have traveled into California in 2021. OR-93, a young male gray wolf from Oregon’s White River pack, entered Modoc County in February.
Opinion: COVID pandemic highlights need for California to invest in farmworker health [Sacramento Bee]
… The COVID-19 Farmer and Rural Immigrant Community Advocacy Coalition, a diverse group of community-based organizations rooted in the Central Valley, has offered four recommendations to the state’s Community Vaccine Advisory Committee to ensure farmworker communities are granted access to vaccines. The coalition is calling for a sufficient number of vaccine doses reserved for farmworkers and their families; coordination with migrant health clinics and local organizations that have close ties to farmworker communities; assurance that farmworkers receive their allocated vaccines and culturally appropriate educational outreach efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy and myths.
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article250367246.html
Opinion: Biden may make a big missed steak: The war on meat is no figment of the right-wing imagination [Wall Street Journal]
… It’s true Joe Biden hasn’t stated he wants to curtail meat production or consumption. But people he listens to have. … The Biden administration has acknowledged that its climate targets require the U.S. to “reduce emissions from agriculture,” but officials also realize that Americans love to eat meat. … So the strategy to reduce the production of meat is indirect and subtle. … That AP story let slip why the left is so nervous. The red-meat story “could seriously undermine [Mr. Biden’s] climate change plan before he even announced it.”
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