California Farmers and Cattle Ranchers Struggle to Survive Unprecedented Water Cuts

[Linda Poole]

In a May 26, 2022, article in Civil Eats, Rachel Becker covers the story of how Sacramento Valley growers protected for decades by their water rights are suffering for the first time during this record-breaking drought. Migrant workers, Tribes, fisheries and wildlife refuges are struggling, too:

“Nothing like I thought I’d ever see,” said Mathew Garcia, gazing at one of his dry rice fields in Glenn, about an hour and a half north of Sacramento.

In any other year, he would have been preparing to seed and flood the crumbled clay. This year, he had to abandon even the one field he’d planned to irrigate from a well. The ground was too thirsty to hold the water.

Garcia’s water comes from two different irrigation districts with settlement contracts. This year, the roughly 420 acres he farms will see water deliveries either eliminated or too diminished to plant rice. He’ll funnel the water instead to his tenant’s irrigated pasture where cattle graze.

“Without the water, we have dirt. It’s basically worthless,” Garcia said. “It’s very depressing.”

And, like the water, jobs for farmworkers have dried up.

For nine years, Sergio Cortez has been traveling from Jalisco, Mexico to work in Sacramento Valley fields. This is the driest he’s ever seen it, and he knows that next year could be worse.

“Aquí el agua es todo, pues,” he said. “Al no haber agua, pues no hay trabajo.” Water is everything, he said. If there’s no water, there’s no work.

https://civileats.com/2022/05/26/california-farmers-and-cattle-ranchers-struggle-to-survive-unprecedented-water-cuts/?utm_source=Verified+CE+list&utm_campaign=1f17058e36-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_7_3_2018_8_13_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_aae5e4a315-1f17058e36-294396226