Rain headed towards the Central Valley late this week won’t be a drought buster, but it will be a welcome sight to farmers and growers. They need the rain on their soil now more than ever.
Ryan Jacobsen from the Fresno Farm Bureau: “There’s always something getting harvested in the valley, in particular, citrus right now is going full steam. The valley is really made or broken by three to seven storms. The one storm we had a few weeks ago was okay, but we need a couple of larger storms.”
Early November to Late January is the perfect time for it to rain, that way it won’t damage crops and wets the soil for planting next year. “Right now, we just need anything to come in,” said Jacobsen.
This comes as a new report by U.C. Merced shows the drought in 2022 was not as bad as in previous years, but water is still scarce. Dr. Medellin-Azuara is the lead author of the drought report. Medellin-Azuara: “The drought intensified and had some compounding effects.” While the rain is welcomed, it’s not making up for the groundwater being pulled out for ag and the water that is evaporating.
“The thing with groundwater is that it has been pumped unsustainably for decades and we need to fill that bucket of the overdraft that we’ve been having every year,” he said.
Source: yourcentralvalley.com