Don Bransford has been growing rice in the fertile Sacramento Valley for 42 years.

Not this summer.

California’s worsening drought has cut so deeply into water supplies on the west side of the Valley that Bransford and thousands of other farmers aren’t planting a single acre of rice.

“This would have been my 43rd crop this year,” said Bransford, crouching over a brown field east of Williams. “I guess I’m going to garden in the backyard. I don’t play golf. It’s going to be a long summer, a long year.”

It’s spring in the Sacramento Valley, normally the season for planting rice. It’s the region’s most important crop, a $900 million-a-year business that employs thousands of workers and puts Valley agriculture on a global stage. Rice grown in Williams and Arbuckle and Richland and other Valley communities turns up on dinner plates and grocery shelves as far away as Japan, where it’s wrapped around sushi.

Now the drought, in its third punishing year, is drying up wide swaths of California’s farm economy, and the rice industry is getting hit especially hard.

Plantings are minimal, prompting fear of job losses and anger at environmental policies that many farmers believe have worsened the water shortages. Meanwhile, the Valley’s rites of spring — farm trucks clogging the roads, agricultural airplanes dropping seeds — have been shut off like a faucet.

“A lot of our system is going to be dry,” said Thad Bettner, general manager of the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District, one of the largest supplier of water to farmers in California. “There’s this sense of quiet.”

In a good year, California rice growers plant a half-million acres or more, almost all of it in the Valley. In 2022, the footprint will shrink to around 250,000 acres, said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at UC Davis. Matt Alonso, who operates a rice-processing company in Woodland, said it could go as low as 210,000 acres.

On the west side of the Valley in particular, the decline will be staggering. The farmers of Glenn-Colusa usually plant more than 100,000 acres of rice. This year: 2,300 or so, according to Bettner.

“Never thought we’d see the day,” said Bransford, the district’s board president. He’s idling all 1,800 of his rice acres — along with millions of dollars in combines, harvesters and other machinery he ordinarily deploys. His main chore: working a small almond orchard that has adequate groundwater supplies.

Last year the drought erased $1.2 billion worth of farm output across California, according to a UC Merced study, and this year is practically guaranteed to be worse. After a critical three-month stretch with practically no rain or snow, water supplies are far worse than in 2021, Sumner said.

The drought will likely affect almost every commodity in California’s $50 billion-a-year farm economy. The tomato crop is forecast to drop 10% from last year, according to the California Tomato Growers Association. Walnut growers might be forced to some of their trees, Sumner said, as some almond growers did last year.

But no other California crop will see as steep a decline this year as rice, he said.

In Colusa County, unemployment is already three times the statewide average. The near-complete shutdown of the rice industry is shaping up as an economic catastrophe, with fewer jobs for farmworkers, rice processors, fertilizer sellers and equipment dealers.

“The local restaurants, tire shops, the truckers, all the way up the food chain,” said Sean Doherty, who grows rice and other crops in the Valley towns of Arbuckle and Dunnigan. “These are communities that can’t really afford it.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a revised budget proposal released Friday, called on the Legislature to spend $75 million to help stem the economic fallout in areas hardest hit by drought, including the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys.

The money would go for small business grants of $30,000 to $50,000 apiece to agriculture-related businesses, such as “the person who warehouses some of the fruit and vegetables, and because the land was fallowed, doesn’t have the ability to warehouse,” Newsom said. In addition, he also asked lawmakers for money to support “food assistance programs for farmworkers impacted by drought.”

For those who do lose their jobs, the Valley isn’t bustling with employment opportunities. Lewis Bair worries about where displaced workers will go.

Bair is general manager of Reclamation District 108, which supplies water to farmers in southern Colusa and northern Yolo counties. “It’s not like, if somebody doesn’t have a job farming, they can go to work at Amazon,” he said. “We’re a long way from the next job.”

Sacramento Valley usually cushioned from drought

Sacramento Valley farmers usually do OK in droughts.

Most of California’s rain and snow falls in the north, and many farm-irrigation districts in the Valley hold senior water rights, based on historical claims, that ensure them a decent supply. The worst hardships tend to fall on the San Joaquin Valley, which relies largely on government water pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the fragile estuary whose environmental protections mean that sometimes the water flows out to the ocean instead.

Last year, even as many farmers got no deliveries from the State Water Project or its federal counterpart, the Central Valley Project, districts such as 108 and Glenn-Colusa were entitled to 75% of their normal supplies.

This year, though, many Sacramento Valley farmers are suffering as badly, or almost as badly, as their colleagues to the south.

Despite their special water rights, Glenn-Colusa and District 108 won’t get anywhere near 75% of their water from the Central Valley Project this year. Instead, the federal Bureau of Reclamation says they can expect 18%, the worst on record.

“The drought is worse in the Sacramento Valley than much of the rest of the state, in part because it’s kind of new to them,” Sumner said.

Little wonder that the California rice crop is shriveling. In the last drought, as tough as it was, production never fell below 420,000 acres, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report. The crop tumbled to just over 400,000 acres last year and will fall to 250,000 acres or less in 2022.

It doesn’t help that rice is a fairly thirsty crop. It takes about twice as much water to raise an acre of rice as it does an acre of tomatoes, for example.

Conditions aren’t uniform across the Sacramento Valley. On the east side, which is served by the State Water Project, many of the farm districts will get 50% of their normal deliveries, considerably more than their federal counterparts.

“I feel bad for those communities on the I-5 corridor,” said Ted Trimble of the Western Canal Water District, an east-side farm irrigation district fed by Lake Oroville. “It is tragic over there.”

One reason for the disparity lies in the complicated relationship between the two projects, and their legal obligations to release water into the rivers to help the environment. Federal officials had to release extra water last year into the Sacramento River, which meant Shasta Lake, the most important reservoir in the federal system, had very little tank when the year began, said Bettner of the Glenn-Colusa district.

The biggest factor, though, has to do with how the precipitation fell. Before the unrelenting three-month dry spell that began in January, the east side at least enjoyed the fruits of the snowiest December on record in the Sierra Nevada, the Shasta region got almost nothing.

“A lot of it does come down to the hydrology,” said John Leahigh, water operations executive manager at the State Water Project. “Shasta got largely passed over.”

Drought humbles a Valley way of life

This time of year, Bransford’s irrigation ditch should be neck-deep in water and his rice fields should be flooded.

“This barren ground would have water across it,” he said. “The seedlings would be coming through the water.”

With an 18% allocation from the feds, rice farmers on the west side of the Valley could try to squeeze out a tiny crop. But it would be a major risk.

Here’s why: Growers say they must water their fields continuously for five days in the spring before they plant. Then, as the summer heats up, they often need more water to compensate for evaporation.

Any hiccup in water deliveries, now or later in the summer, could dry out their fields and ruin what little crop they’ve planted. Conditions are so dismal this year on the Sacramento River that farmers say they can’t count on the water showing up on time.

“There’s no guarantee the water will actually be there in the river,” said Fritz Durst, who farms 550 acres of rice fields in northern Yolo County.

So, Durst has let all of his rice acres sit idle this year, a decision hundreds of others have followed. Instead of growing rice, farmers are selling their allotted water to neighbors — usually almond and walnut orchard owners who have to keep their trees alive.

The result is an unprecedented idling of vast swaths of Valley farmland.

“Normally we’d be seeing dust clouds all around us, tractors going fast and furious,” said Bruce Rolen, a farmer and owner of a rice-seed processing plant in Williams. “We’re not hearing airplanes in the sky, we’re not hearing tractors running.”

About 10 miles south of Rolen’s plant, farmer Sean Doherty has managed to cobble together enough water to plant about 550 acres of rice — a far cry from the 4,000 acres he usually oversees.

“It really sucks the motivation out of you,” Doherty said. “I have more rice combines than I have rice fields to harvest.”

Doherty also grows tomatoes, walnuts and almonds, but there’s little salvation in diversification this year. His almond orchard, like many others in the Valley, was hit by a winter freeze, significantly stunting the crop and creating further misery across the Valley.

Most rice growers won’t be left empty handed. They’re eligible for compensation under the federal government’s subsidized crop insurance program. The payouts will vary, depending on a farmer’s historical production, prevailing rice prices and the level of coverage purchased. Doherty said his insurance will allow him to avoid layoffs.

Beyond that, however, it won’t produce revenue for the seed suppliers, tractor dealers and other businesses that are vital to the Valley’s economy.

Bransford, for example, usually hires six seasonal employees to supplement his year-round crew of three. Those jobs will go unfilled in 2022.

“I feel badly about that, but I can’t manage it,” he said.

Valley rice helps feed Japan, Korea

Most of the rice grown in the United States comes from Arkansas and the Gulf Coast, but about one-third is produced in the Sacramento Valley.

The Valley’s soil is ideal for it — a hard clay that retains water so the field can stay flooded. “It prevents the water from percolating down into the ground,” said Luis Espino, a UC Cooperative Extension advisor in Oroville.

The region’s mainstay, known as Calrose, is a medium-grain variety particularly well suited for wrapping sushi. It got a huge boost nearly 30 years ago when Japan, under growing pressure from international trading partners, agreed to end its longstanding ban on imported rice.

It’s fair to say Valley rice farmers help feed the world. Besides Japan, Calrose is sold in Taiwan, South Korea, the European Union and parts of the Middle East; well over half the California crop goes overseas, according to data from the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

“If you go into a Korean grocery store, you’ll find California rice,” Sumner said. “The bag of rice may have Korean language on it or Japanese script but you turn the bag over and it’s grown in the Sacramento Valley.”

Exports are likely to take a hit this year. Chris Crutchfield, chief executive of Williams rice processor American Commodity Co. LLC, said he expects reduced sales to Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Instead, the industry’s major focus will be to make sure there’s enough product for North American restaurants and grocery shelves.

American consumers can expect to see increases, though.

Last week, Raley’s was advertising a 20-pound bag of the Hinode brand of Calrose rice — produced by SunFoods LLC of Woodland — at $19.98. That was an increase of about 20% from a year ago, said SunFoods CEO Matt Alonso. With the decline in plantings this year, prices will probably rise another 15 to 20% over the next 18 months, he said.

But it’s hard to estimate with any confidence.

“We are in uncharted territory,” Alonso said.

Farms vs. fish: Environmental debate rages

Five truckloads of rice seed went out the gate the other day at Sacramento Valley Seed Co. in Williams, a total of about 60,000 pounds.

In normal times, the daily shipments would top 300,000 pounds.

Bruce Rolen, a rice grower and majority owner of the 25-year-old seed producer, said he fears for the future.

“We’re going to take a loss,” he said. “Our banker is understanding. But if we have another year like this, I don’t know if we will survive.”

In the Valley agriculture community, the anxiety is accompanied by anger. Many farmers believe the effects of the drought are being exacerbated by state-imposed environmental restrictions that tilt too much of California’s water supply toward struggling fish species. They also blast state officials for not moving forward quickly on water-storage projects such as Sites Reservoir — a dam proposed for a site just north of Williams.

“We’re all for saving the fish,” Rolen said, but “it seems to be at ag’s expense.”

Republican elected officials are also upset. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, the congressman who represents much of the Valley, crashed a drought update on Zoom for reporters last week, demanding to know why more water wasn’t being released from Lake Oroville for agriculture “in a nation where food prices are up significantly?” Jeanine Jones, an official with the state Department of Water Resources, said the water is needed to reduce salinity levels in the Delta.

Environmentalists — who’ve been fighting with farmers for years over California’s fragile supplies — dismiss the idea that too much water is being given over to fish.

Doug Obegi, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that only 2.6% of juvenile winter-run Chinook salmon survived last year on the Sacramento River. The fish are on the federal endangered species list.

In an interview, Obegi blamed the salmon deaths on federal officials’ operation of Shasta Lake, saying they handed agriculture an overly-generous water supply early in the year. That depleted the pool of cool water in the reservoir. As a result, the remaining water released into the river was so warm that it cooked most of the salmon eggs.

The prognosis is better this year. Federal officials expect about half to survive, thanks to a stricter temperature-management plan that is resulting in stingier water deliveries to agriculture. But even that isn‘t much of an improvement, Obegi said, and will lead to further dwindling of the salmon population.

As for farmers, he acknowledged “this is going to be a really rough year.” But he added: “For decades these contractors have been privileged to divert unsustainable amounts of water from the Sacramento River .... This is a necessary re-balancing of the system, albeit a really painful one.”

How drought is punishing Valley’s economy

Cesar Gutierrez’s phone rings nearly every day. It’s people looking for work.

He isn’t doing any hiring, though — he’s struggling to keep his 24 employees busy.

Gutierrez is general manager of C&C Engineering, a family-owned Williams company that designs and manufactures grain-sifting equipment, bagging machines, conveyor belts and other equipment for the agricultural industry.

Although business remains fairly steady so far, Gutierrez said he can see the slowdown coming. Farmers, food processors and other clients are signaling that they’re about to postpone projects.

Some customers have told Gutierrez to finish assembling equipment they’ve already ordered — but they’ve told C&C to hang onto it instead of installing it at their facilities. That eliminates a major source of C&C’s profit.

“I have equipment sitting out in my yard,” Gutierrez said as one of his employees welded together some flour-milling equipment. “It doesn’t do me a bit of good.”

Colusa County supervisor Denise Carter, who’s also a rice farmer, said the economic fallout from the drought will be considerable.

“When you lose 90% of your rice acreage in your county, that’s significant,” Carter said. She’s planting just 300 acres of rice this year, half as much as usual.

Juanita Martinez can see the consequence from behind the counter of Rancho Viejo Western Wear in downtown Williams.

The tiny shop, which Martinez co-owns with her husband, caters mainly to farmworkers. On a recent weekday afternoon she didn’t have a single customer.

“Usually this time of day it’d be really busy, with customers buying their gloves, their hats, their protective wear for working in the sun,” she said.

Martinez said workers are telling her their hours are being scaled back because of the lack of rice planting.

“It is affecting the whole community,” she said. “It’s a domino effect.”

In the Valley, social service agencies are already bracing for the fallout, including the Arbuckle Family Action Center, a nonprofit in southern Colusa County that relies heavily on state dollars.

Program coordinator Kim Owens said her organization expects to repeat the work it did in the last drought, when the center gave out hundreds of boxes of nonperishable food to unemployed farmworkers.

Already, she said, “there is a strain. They’re not working as many hours.

“People are going to be in a real need of food.”

This story was originally published May 15, 2022 at 5:00 AM.