Trying to grow in another year of drought

Joe Del Bosque: But by and large, the biggest topic is, is water because for most farmers here in the Central Valley, that's their biggest concern. Labor is for those of us who grow fresh fruits and vegetables, but everybody here and in California, actually all the farmers need water.

Paul Yeager: You are pretty much right in the Central of Central Valley. Is that accurate?

Joe Del Bosque: Yes, I'm on   the west side. But in the central part of the San Joaquin Valley, you know, Central Valley is really two valleys. San Joaquin and Sacramento, San Joaquin is the larger one. And I'm kind of in closer toward the middle. Yes.

Paul Yeager: And your farm, what is behind you over your right shoulder there.

Joe Del Bosque: These are cantaloupes right here behind me.

Paul Yeager: and what's to your left then.

Joe Del Bosque: And on the left that you can see that is fallow fields. Basically, we planted, we tried to plant some grain or cover crop there and hope that the rain, nature waters it, but we didn't. So some of it came up and just died. So there's no crop there. We're just, it's just something that if we get rain, we get something, but there was nothing. So it's important to understand that here in California, you know, we don't, we don't depend on what rain falls here. Really, these melons don't depend on rain that falls here. They don't want rain. They don't want rain right now. We're dependent on rain that falls in the north part of the state that is captured in a reservoir, save and brought to us when we need it, and where we need it. And that's the way it is not just for agriculture, but also for urban areas. You know, Southern California gets a lot of their water from Sacramento Valley and Shasta and, and the Bay Area gets a lot of water from the Eastern Sierra Nevada, or central Sierra Nevada. So we all in California, are dependent on a man-made water system that captures the rain or snow melt saves that for when we need it. And then we have a system of canals and so forth to distribute it.

Paul Yeager: What's the status of that reservoir right now?

Joe Del Bosque: I just happened to go by San Luis yesterday and I stopped there. It's at 44% of capacity, which is very low for this time of year. You know, typically, it fills up about the end of March, early April. And then it starts to come down slowly. But it never got full this year. It only got up to about 60 or 60 some percent full and it's been draining ever since because as the temperature gets hot, people use more water and of course agriculture irrigates more as temperatures rise.

Paul Yeager: I think I saw maybe Sacramento was back in March had a 90 degree temperature and it was the earliest 90. Was that right?

Joe Del Bosque: There were some very high temperatures back in March. And so that created a lot of snow melt. And typically snow stays up there in the mountains till about this time a year and then it starts to trickle down. But because temperatures are so high, most of the snow melted. And I don't know how much they captured the snow melt. I would like to think they captured everything they could, but you never know sometimes they just let it run out to the ocean.

Paul Yeager: Well, and that's when you see that happen that you just have to but I need you know that how serious is the water situation right now?

Joe Del Bosque: It's very serious. Everybody in California should be very concerned and the governor has asked people to conserve water. The ag people have and I'm talking residential. They've actually using more water than they did last year. And so I think he now has ordered or mandated that water in like, I guess unnecessary landscaping, like maybe dividers on the highways or maybe factories if they have some lawn, not to water anymore, but the residents have not been mandated to cut back the water. We've been mandated. We've, we've had our water cut in, there's no doubt about agriculture, we get cut every year. But it isn't very often that that residences are cutting back.  it almost feels like the state of California doesn't value our agriculture as much as we do. And as much as other parts of the country in the world do. I mean, people come all the way here from Sweden to find out what's going on with their supply their, their source of almonds, it's important to them. And yeah, we don't see that kind of urgency with California.   They're just they just basically say get used to it. You know, some of you are going to be gone and and that's it. But you can't this is food supply. You can't just are you going to tell people will get used to your food supply part of your food supply is going to be gone. So get used to it. People aren't going to get used to it. And and we're trying to save that we're trying to save the food supply that we all love and and enjoy both in California and out of California.

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Contact: Paul.Yeager@iowapbs.org