By Lisa McEwen, SJV Water
The sun was shining and blue skies reigned over the 57th World Ag Expo in Tulare County Tuesday but inside seminar trailer No. 2 the mood was gloomy to dismal as panelists discussed the San Joaquin Valley’s water outlook.
The upshot is that with surface supplies from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta shrinking and increased groundwater pumping restrictions looming, more than 900,000 acres in the Central Valley will have to go out of production, according to Michael Ming, a broker with Alliance Ag Services LLC, which has been tracking ag land valleys with respect to water for nearly 20 years.
The bulk of that fallowing will be in Kern, Kings and Tulare counties, he said.
“Upwards of 625,000 acres,” Ming said, will need to be taken out of farming in those counties over the next 15 years to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which requires depleted aquifers come back into balance by 2040.
Ming predicted at least 250,000 of that total will be fallowed in Kern County. That’s about 28% of Kern’s currently harvested acres, per the 2022 Kern County Crop Report.
Yes, the numbers are alarming, he said to the packed, silent room.
Then he joked that he’d brought friends to handle any rock throwing.
The numbers come from a 2022 internal analysis by RRG Nature Based Solutions, which used the Department of Water Resources’ 2018 Crop Survey and review of submitted Groundwater Sustainability Plans as of February 2022. (It did not take into account fallowing caused by unrelated factors such as changing commodity prices.).
He said the biggest culprit is “hostile state water policies” that have curtailed imported surface water from the State Water Project, which brings supplies from the delta to towns and cities in southern California via the California Aqueduct along Interstate 5.
Environmental and water quality regulations have required more water to run through the delta, which has crimped supplies sent south.
The trend has gotten worse over the years, Ming said.
At this point, ag districts with State Water Contracts can count on just 34% of their contracted amounts, on average.
Areas reliant on State Water Project supplies will take the brunt of fallowing, Ming predicted.
On Kern’s west side where growers rely mainly on state water, districts will likely have to fallow between 35% and 50% of irrigated acres, Ming said. That includes the Berrenda Mesa, Belridge, Lost Hills and Semitropic ag districts.
“And I think it could go higher, except for districts with large farming operations that can bring water to bear,” he said.
That means growers big enough to be able to consolidate their water sources to the most productive grund or that can afford to buy water on the open market. In drought years, water has escalated to more than $1,500 per acre foot, something out of reach for most smaller farmers.
The lack of water security is also a driving force on land valuations.
Even in districts such as Arvin-Edison Water Storage District, which has access to federal, state and Kern River water, land prices have fallen recently from $22,000 an acre to an average of about $17,000 an acre.
Landowners whose parcels are not in a water district, called “white lands” because they appear as white on maps, are the real canaries.
Land prices have dropped from $15,000 to $4,000 an acre, Ming said, and he anticipates them going even lower.
“Most of these lands will go fallow.”
Other speakers on Tuesday included Ellen Hanak of the Public Policy Institute of California, who highlighted land use alternatives, such as converting to solar farms.
Consultant Stacie Ann Silva of Altum Aqua Logic dissected SGMA implementation for the many farmers in the room.
“I want to help you all understand the magnitude of the problem we are dealing with,” she said. “We have to, as a collective, get from where we are today in pumping which is 2.8 acre-feet per acre on average to sustainable yield. Surface water on top of that is helpful but if you’re in an area without access to surface water, that’s the future you’re planning toward.”
Sustainable yield is the amount of water that naturally enters a GSA and varies from region to region.
Aaron Fukuda of Tulare Irrigation District his district’s shift toward implementation of its groundwater sustainability plan versus building more recharge projects.
Finally, Johnny Amaral, chief operating officer of Friant Water Authority, joined Atlas Water CEO Eric Averett and other speakers for a question and answer session on topics ranging from groundwater recharge to continued subsidence of the Friant-Kern Canal.
SJV Water is a nonprofit, independent online news publication covering water in the San Joaquin Valley. Lois Henry is the CEO/Editor of SJV Water. She can be reached at lois.henry@sjvwater.org. The website is www.sjvwater.org.
