Irrigation districts pledged to keep up their fight against a state proposal to boost flows in the lower Stanislaus, Tuolumne and Merced rivers. They said the proposal, aimed at improving conditions for salmon and other fish, would hit hard at the region’s agriculture and lead to an increase in well pumping. “That’s water that’s lost,”
Congress leaves town today for its 4th of July recess without any agreement on California drought legislation. But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a water fight behind the scenes. House members from the Central Valley met with both California senators to discuss merging two separate drought bills -- one passed in the House and
Americans, on average, drink 37 percent less milk today than they did in 1970, according to data from the USDA. Forty years ago, per capita consumption was nearly one and a half cups per day; now it's nearer to 0.8. While the fallout spans every type of cow's milk—whole, low fat, and skim—it's been most
Arkansas farmer Tommy Young says Southern growers have lived through nearly a decade of torment, fighting a destructive, fast-growing weed that can carry a million seeds, grow as tall as an NBA player and is unfazed by several herbicides. Now that weed — Palmer amaranth — is in five Iowa counties on the state's border,
Groundwater management is as diverse and complex as the 515 distinct basins and sub-basins in California. For that reason, Farm Bureau believes groundwater must be managed locally or regionally, while protecting overlying property rights. To their credit, most of the pending measures do provide for local management, but working out the details is certainly a
The California Supreme Court has agreed to decide an epic battle over whether the state must condemn and acquire parcels on tens of thousands of acres of private property to conduct preliminary testing for Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to construct two large water-conveyance tunnels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The two tunnels – nearly 40
Competing interests on the Tuolumne River came into view at a cordial early-stage hearing. http://www.modbee.com/2014/06/18/3397924/views-diverge-on-tuolumne-river.html?sp=/99/1571/&ihp=1
Here is what 30 years of conservation without new storage has given us: Severe water shortages after one very dry year on the back of two below-normal years; productive orchards bulldozed in the Central Valley; hundreds of thousands of acres of food-producing land left idle; thousands jobless; a projected $1.7 billion economic loss in the
The biggest worry weighing on the nation's food industry may not be drought in the West, farmworker shortages or turbulent international trade negotiations, but a change in the regulatory code in Vermont. Under a law signed this month, the tiny New England state, population 626,000, will soon require that food companies tell consumers which products
Each year U.S. brewers, importers and distributors pay over $3.6 billion in federal excise taxes and almost $1.7 billion in state excise taxes. Ultimately these expenses are passed on to consumers. Today, over 40 percent of the cost of a bottle of beer is for taxes, including federal and state excise taxes. The last time