VIDEO: California Farmers Leave Fields Fallow As Drought Grows More Dire In West
By TYNE MORGAN May 28, 2021
As rains drop needed moisture for areas of the country dealing with drought and in need of relief, the situation is growing more dire in the West.
The latest U.S. Drought Monitor shows improvement in the Plains, especially in the Southern Plains. Heavy rains also falling across western portions of the High Plains this week, lessening the drought conditions in the western Dakotas. Those moisture improvements also pilling over into western Nebraska and Kansas.
The drought has become a mainstay in California. The Drought Monitor released Thursday shows exceptional drought growing, including Kern County, one of the top ranked counties for ag production in the nation.
Northern California reservoirs contain only half the water they normally do in late spring.
Both the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project have announced they intend to deliver only 5% of requested supplies this year.
As California farmers rely on Mother Nature and ground water this year, one farmer says it won't be enough to even grow a crop, with some farmers choosing to not plant at all. Some producers are even pulling out trees.
"There are land areas out here that are going to get one acre foot of water from the ground. That's what they're allocated," says Tyler Ribeiro, a dairy farmer in Tulare, California. "Good luck growing cactus on one acre foot. You're not going to be able to feed with that you can't grow trees out there. And we align with a lot of these tree guys in a sense of we feed their byproduct, I need those all almond hulls, I need those orange peels. I need a lot of those things. That's how we stay efficient [as a day farmer]."
USDA meteorologists telling AgDay there's not much relief in sight for California and the West. Forecasters expect the drought west of the Rockies to only get worse.