New study says California’s farmland is shrinking due to years-long severe drought

YUBA CITY — California’s farmland is shrinking as a result of a extreme three-year drought, in line with a brand new report ready for the California Division of Meals and Agriculture. 

The final three years have been the driest within the instrumental file and the multi-year deficits in precipitation have been compounded by “elevated crop evaporative calls for” in line with the report. Researchers on the report — which included authors from UC Merced, UC Davis, and the Public Coverage Institute of California — discovered that the state’s irrigated farmland shrunk by practically 10% which totals 752,000 acres of farmland. 

As for the roles, the acute drought circumstances have led to greater than 19,000 jobs misplaced between the meals processing and crop sectors in 2022. 

“Agriculture employs numerous individuals straight, and not directly, I discuss concerning the farm employee, however I might simply as nicely discuss concerning the individuals within the processing plant. There are tomato processing crops that simply aren’t going to make use of individuals lengthy into the 12 months as a result of it was a brief crop,” stated Daniel Sumner, one of many report’s authors and a professor of Agriculture Economics at UC Davis. 

Sumner stated he is lengthy studied the financial impacts of agriculture, however this 12 months marks the primary time he has seen the scale drop in rice manufacturing as ever earlier than. The report discovered rice acreage was lower by half in 2022.

“It is stunning and by no means occurred earlier than,” stated Sumner. 

“It is all the time sudden. You can’t management all of those components that go in it. You sort of should assume, ‘Is there one thing else that we ought to be doing so we’re being profitable and never shedding cash?’ ” stated Desiree Silva, the vp of enterprise operations at California Valley Nut Firm. 

Silva stated their household enterprise in Yuba Metropolis, which has been round for greater than 100 years, hasn’t been as unhealthy off as different industries on the subject of water, nevertheless it’s nonetheless going to impression them subsequent 12 months. 

“It is an enormous consider something that grows. It’s a must to have water for something to develop. So if there’s not sufficient water, what do you do?” stated Silva. 

The Silvas diversified their marketing strategy and just lately bought an agriculture spraying firm to maintain income in it doesn’t matter what the climate or water brings to their walnut orchards.