California farmers have always practiced innovative water resource management practices while producing food for us and the world.
The Golden State produces 400 different crops. We are blessed with the nation's No. 1 and world's No. 5 agricultural economy, but rarely do agricultural critics present a true assessment of what it takes to sustain the food and jobs that come with being a top agricultural provider. Critics tend to disregard the facts from people who get their hands dirty.
Over the last four decades, the amount of water used on California farms is relatively consistent while crop tonnage has increased more than 85 percent in the same period, according to the Ag Water Management Council, a group that champions farm water efficiency. This is not inexpensive. California farmers in the San Joaquin Valley invested more than $500 million in high-efficiency irrigation systems between 2004 and 2006. It costs $1,000 per acre and up to $100 per acre per year to install and maintain a drip irrigation system. Water use in California agriculture is enormously efficient. It's not used just once, but as many as eight times.
The current 10-year drought in Australia is a grim reminder of what happens to a nation's food supply when they fail to build a flexible infrastructure for water delivery that can adapt to the predictable challenges that come from historical drought, heat spells and other weather-related phenomena. Farmers cannot farm in unpredictable conditions … after all, unpredictable weather means unpredictable harvests.
Our current California drought shows more than $250 million in lost plantings and crops this year. But that doesn't include the huge amount of idle farmland that wasn't planted in past years because of cutbacks in the water supply from years of constraints on a water system that is straining to stay predictable.
We all need to conserve, while supporting an expanded statewide water management system that includes more efficiency, better water quality and enhanced water supplies.
One of the greatest strategic resources we have continues to be our food supply. It's what feeds a nation and a world. Let us use the hard-learned lessons of the past to take the steps now to ensure that we can pursue the California dream not a nightmare … ask Australia.
A.G. Kawamura, Secretary for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, is responding to the Sept. 9 Viewpoints article "Water: Get over the dams, toward efficiency."
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