Why Farm Output Is Up During Drought

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Concerned water officials warned last week that even a stormy season of heavy rain and snowfall could not counteract the past four years of withering drought. A few weeks earlier, they estimated that farmers and ranchers could lose $483 million this year and an additional $193 million next year, even if the dry spell ends.

Roll back the calendar to the end of October, and you find the state Department of Food and Agriculture mailing out its 1989 statistical review, which showed California farm receipts reaching a whopping $17.5 billion. That’s up over 1988’s $16.6 billion total, which was a jump over 1987’s $15.8 billion.

Four years of drought equals three years of agricultural growth? The arithmetic simply doesn’t work. Sure, you could always argue supply and demand: That less water means fewer crops, means less supply, means more demand, means higher prices.

But that’s only one part of the solution, the easy part. To get the full answer, you have to look at the whole of California agriculture--its products and its practices.

The products alone are daunting: 250 different types of food and fiber ranging from alfalfa to zucchini, diversity that has helped California growers save their sunburned necks. Does cotton take too much water for the money you get out of it? Switch to broccoli, and you’ll at least stay in business.

But before you think that this is a paean to produce, there’s one more item that needs consideration. Agricultural water use.

The years of drought have reminded farmers how to conserve. They’re switching to higher-value crops and drip-irrigation systems. They’re digging new wells and buying water from damper areas.

And that raises a nasty question: If California farmers can do so well with so much less water during a drought, why can’t they manage to do the same in easier times?

Some say the answer is that they can’t.

“Farmers are conserving through no choice of their own,” says Mike Henry, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “Some guy gets 75% of his water. Another gets 50%, another 25%. This is forced conservation, and you have to make do with less. You may end up planting a crop and not getting a full yield.”

But that, argues agricultural economist Ray Borton, is not always bad. Consider rice and processing tomatoes.

Rice production estimates for 1990 are down 10% from 1989, says Borton, senior agricultural economist for the state food and agriculture department. Instead of the expected 32.6 million hundredweights, the state’s crop is estimated at 29.3 million hundredweights.

“A lot of that is due to not having water enough,” Borton says. “But rice is something we’re having a hard time selling anyway.”

The processing tomato crop was originally estimated at 10 million tons. But with the harvest winding down, Borton said, it looks as if the crop will shrivel to 9.3 million tons. Is that bad? Nope. The processing tomato crop was only 8.5 million tons in 1989, a scant 6.5 million in 1988.

“We had plenty of tomatoes (this year) anyhow,” Borton said. “It wasn’t a problem. It may have prevented a problem. . . . We didn’t quite know what we were going to do with 10 million tons. Supply and demand are closer in balance than they would have been if we had a bumper, bumper, bumper crop.”

On the down side, though, is that long stretches with little water could threaten crops such as oranges and nectarines. Trees and vines can handle some deprivation, but too much stress will start to kill them.

“We don’t know yet what the four dry years has done to the trees,” said Chris Kapheim, general manager of the Alta Irrigation District in Dinuba. “Most of the farmers in our district, through transfers or exchanges or pumping ground water, did get by. Maybe they didn’t put on as much water as they would have liked. What that does to the tree in the long term I really don’t know.”

While Borton’s numbers show growth, they also raise a red flag. Adjust those numbers for inflation, and you still see increasing farm receipts, but the increases are smaller.

Others see even greater warnings in statistics that show agricultural growth at a time of water cutbacks. Their fears, they say, are for the state’s diminishing ground water supplies.

Under normal circumstances, 60% of the water used in agriculture is “surface water” provided through water projects, while 40% is ground water. Today, said Douglas Priest, manager of the state drought center, 60% is pumped from the ground.

“In a lot of places, people are switching form surface to ground water,” he said. “It’s not always a good thing, but it’s nice to have.”

The result, he said, is that 1990 will be “another record year” for farm receipts.

Marc Reisner, author of “Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water,” said, “One of the reasons farmers are doing OK is because they’re pumping up a hell of a lot of non-renewable ground water, especially in the San Joaquin Valley.

“They’re getting a tremendous amount of irrigation water from the ground that nature is not putting back in,” he said. “They’re robbing their children and grandchildren of a natural inheritance.”

Growth in Dry Times Statewide gross farm revenues for California in billions Amount Adjusted for inflation (in 1989 dollars) Source: California Department of Food and Agriculture Top Farm States California: $17.5 billion Texas: $10.7 billion Iowa: $9.1 billion Nebraska: $8.5 billion Illinois: $6.7 billion Top Farm States By Revenue Total U.S. farm revenue for 1989 was $158.9 billion Source: California Department of Food and Agriculture