The latest U.S. Drought Monitor didn’t show any good news for the West. Drought still covers the entire state of California, with areas of exceptional drought expanding in the southern and eastern Sierra due to very poor snowpack.
Snowpack runoff is forecasted to be well below normal and reservoir storage levels at Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville are 48% and 41% of average, which is bad news for farmers who need irrigation this year.
The situation is so bad, it’s forcing farmers to take drastic measures. The owner of Del Bosque Farms in the San Joaquin Valley plowed an asparagus field under due to a lack of water.
It’s a really sad day. We’re destroying a field of organic asparagus. No assurance of CVP water for irrigation this summer. Dozens of jobs will be gone next year. It’s a sacrifice to keep our organic melons going. #CAwater #CAdrought #farms #foodloss #ag #jobs #farmworkers pic.twitter.com/ecQjiZOyNH
— Westside Farmer 🚜🍉🍈 (@JoeDelBosque) May 11, 2021
Federal and state water projects say they will provide little to no irrigation water to many agricultural customers, so farmers must calculate how much food they can grow with their limited supplies. That news is what forced Joe Del Bosque to plow under some of his fields.
The situation is dire for California farmers, and the reservoir picture is bleak.
“We’re down to one inch of snow pack,” says Brad Rippey, USDA meteorologist. “We’ve lost 17 of 18 inches already just in the last six weeks, a really accelerated melt. And the worst of that is not all that’s even reaching the reservoirs. We could be below 10 million acre feet of storage by the end of summer heading into the fall, making it really imperative to have a good year next year, or we’re going to be running the risk of seeing some of these reservoirs literally running dry.”
Rippey says generally speaking, California gets very little rainfall from now until October. The news comes as reports also surfaced productive orchards are being removed in the Central Valley. One Fresno County farmer says he’s pulling out almost 400-acres of almond trees.
