The LandFlex incentive program offers farmers financial support as part of the effort to address water availability. Producers in critically over drafted basins will have the opportunity to enroll in different incentive options. Chief Executive Officer of Western United Dairies, Anja Raudabaugh explained how the program would be beneficial for dairy farmers.
“If a farmer is double cropping wheat and corn, for example, you’re looking on average, depending on your basin, at about five acre-feet per acre of consumptive water use from the aquifer. If you wanted to transition to, for example, upcycling byproducts, nonhuman consumables like almond hulls, citrus pulp and peel, bakery waste,” Raudabaugh noted, “DWR will pay him by the acre approximately $2,200, and depending on what you’re transitioning to, the transition payment goes up or down.”
Farmers have a high probability of being selected for an award if they are in an over drafted basin and are located adjacent to domestic wells. The overall goal of the program is to reduce the demand for groundwater demand. Financial support is being made available for farmers to rotationally and temporarily fallow ground that relies on groundwater needed for domestic wells.
“If they were to enroll some acreage they would be paid immediately for that year of fallowing,” said Raudabaugh. “They would then be paid to transition per acre, so if they wanted to transition away from that double cropping to simply wheat or cover crop – cover cropping is a requirement as part of LandFlex, we want to make sure that we don’t create any nuisances – then they could also choose to either cap the amount of overdraft they wanted to enroll in these acres. But they will be required to give up some if not all of their transition water. We want to relieve pressure on that demand problem that we have within the groundwater system immediately.”
The grant solicitation period for the LandFlex incentive program is set to begin on January 17, with an applicant workshop scheduled for January 19. Final awards will be announced at the end of February.
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