California Secretary of Food and Agriculture Karen Ross
California is now is in 4th year of drought. When you look deeper into where the water resources are allocated, the southern part of California uses two-thirds of the water. It’s used for cities for even more so, for agriculture producing $54 billion in agricultural products. California Secretary of Food and Agriculture, Karen Ross appeared recently on a podcast, Let There Be Water to shed some light on the subject.
What that means is that almost 80% of the water used in California is being used to grow ‘what we eat.’
California Secretary of Food and Agriculture, Karen Ross recently said in the podcast, Let There Be Water, “farmers grow food for people. The ultimate user of all of that water is the person who eats the food grown by the farmer. We are all in this together.”
Her deepest concerns is for the generations, not get born. Due to the drought and water restrictions, farmers have had to pump deep into aquifers and unfortunately, this isn’t a long term solution, as the aquifers can’t maintain the status quo for very long.
It’s just not a sustainable solution. “If we don’t do something today,” Ross says, “every year we continue to pump so much, we are putting ourselves into an ever greater deficit [of groundwater], and that isn’t a wise thing to do for the generations that will follow us.”
This leaves Ross and other state officials in a tough bind. There is the decision regarding the preservation of the delta smelt, an endangered species which keeps large amounts of river water off limits to farmers, the aquifers not being a sustainable solution, and the decision to keep California agriculture, the only solution is change, by way of new, updated technology. This would mean drip irrigation allowing for more use of treated wastewater. But is it too little, too late?
To hear Karen Ross’ opinion on this subject, click here.