Lingering drought and record heat in the number one agricultural state in the nation has continued to cut into fruit and vegetable production this season. It has forced many California farmers to make very tough decisions about how to allocate their scarce water resources. In the end, some have left some of the highest price land in the country idle while they wait for rain.
Daniel Bays farms about 3000 acre near Westly, which is just 100 miles south of Sacramento. He raises a variety of row crops and higher value specialty crops like canning vegetables and fruits, plus walnuts and almonds. With continued record setting heat and drought in California and the lack of water for irrigation he only planted half of the 600 acres he would normally devote to tomato production. He says, “The price is up on tomatoes so it’d be a good crop to grow this year. We just didn’t have the water available for them.”
Instead he left those acres fallow so they could allocate the scarce amount of irrigation water to higher value fruit and nut trees. However, Bays was forced to take 170 acres of high dollar walnut and almond trees out of production early as well this year.
Bays says, “With what their production history had been and with what our input costs were gonna be and being short of water we made the decision to pull those orchards out early. And as soon as we finish almond harvest this year we have a 60 acre field and another 75 acre field that will be coming out.”
Bays says the trees in his orchard usually take about 7 to 8 years before they are producing enough produce to start paying back on their investment and their lifespan is typically 25 to 30 years. So to lose that long term investment is a tough financial hit that will cost him for seasons to come.
Bays adds that on top of the drought, the water restrictions they have in place in California have been getting much stricter over the last several years due to increased environmental regulations . That is making it increasingly a challenge to keep farming in the state.
