For California Farmworkers, No Water Means No Jobs
Following the loss of more than 18,000 farmworker jobs, federal labor officials announced Monday that they are providing $18 million in funding for unemployed full-time, part-time, and seasonal workers in the Central Valley region, with $3 million released immediately.
The drought will cost California farmers $2.7 billion in 2015 alone, according to a University of California, Davis, study published in May, and 564,000 farms will be left idle during growing seasons, resulting in up to $856 million in crop revenue loss. As fields dry up, so do the jobs that California farmworkers, the majority of whom earn less than $19,000 a year, rely on for their livelihoods. The drought is expected to result in 17,100 jobs being cut.
"For those whose ability to provide for their families is most immediately affected by the drought, this funding will provide much needed temporary employment," U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez said in a Department of Labor press release.
For families that rely on farm jobs, the funding could mean an immediate return to work. The federal funds will pay for 1,000 laid-off farmworkers to do six-month stints on drought-restoration projects, such as removing dry brush, and a smaller $7.5 million state program will provide direct payments for covering expenses such as rent and bills. Still, the funding won't be enough to help everyone who has lost work owing to the drought.
With the drought showing no signs of abating, even if the strong El Niño pattern developing in the Pacific brings a wet winter, California's $46.7 billion agriculture industry will need to adjust to keep production—and farmworkers employed. The UC Davis study identified three ways that farmers can combat the drought’s effect on employment loss and crop growth in Central California: groundwater substitution, water market transfers, and grower use of limited water.
Regions with sufficient access to groundwater are able to irrigate most of their land, as opposed to farmlands that rely on surface water irrigation. The study estimates that surface water shortage will be greater in 2015 than it was in 2014, when many farmers in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys received no water deliveries from the federal Central Valley Water Project. However, if farmers increase groundwater pumping, it’s expected to reduce the shortage by 70 percent. Similarly, by transferring groundwater to farmers without access to their own wells, water districts can help provide near term relief for farming efforts in drought-affected Central Valley regions.
While groundwater pumping may be good for farmers and farmworkers in the short term, the over-reliance on aquifers is a disaster in its own right: According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California's groundwater stores need 11 trillion gallons of water to be replenished.
If farmers continue to use creative methods to combat the drought’s effects on their crops—such as shifting tomato production north or switching to less to where water supplies are more plentiful—then perhaps a long-term resolution to both the social and environmental effects of the drought will be possible.
Related stories on TakePart:
• 5 Ways Californians Will Change to Fight the Drought
• Will the Drought Topple California’s Towering Redwoods?
• Australians Survived a 13-Year Drought by Going Low-Tech
Original article from TakePart
