Even as California receives massive amounts of rainfall, rural communities are still experiencing drought impacts. With recent atmospheric rivers sweeping through the state, California is now simultaneously operating under both a drought and flood emergency. California Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth said that despite the storm systems, there is still a lot of variability in water supply conditions.
“We continue to be in a drought state of emergency as our traditionally wet season progresses,” says Nemeth. “We will be in this state of flood emergency for quite a bit and then we will be reassessing in the later part of January what this means relative to overall drought.”
Even with the flood emergency, the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that a substantial portion of California remains in severe and extreme drought conditions. President and CEO of the California Rice Commission, Tim Johnson said drought impacts have far-reaching implications not just for individual growers. Johnson told AgNet West back in December that rice plantings were down by about half due to water constraints in 2022. The lack of rice production in the Sacramento Valley has had significant secondary impacts on the community. “I think it’s easy to focus on how many acres we planted or didn’t plant, of any crop, in a drought like this. Fortunately, most farmers will have some sort of crop insurance to be able to bridge a year like this. That’s not the case in our communities,” said Johnson.
Several more storm events are expected in the coming weeks. However, many reports indicate the state will still be dealing with drought constraints even with the additional rainfall. Johnson said that the trickle-down effect from a lack of production due to years of drought is having notable economic consequences for rural California as a whole.
“Entire communities depend on agriculture and certainly rice for their economic activity. We have things like rice dryers and rice mills. We have crop dusters. We have ag fertilizer suppliers and input suppliers. We have truckers. We have all of these businesses that don’t have crop insurance and have significantly reduced their economic activity,” Johnson explained. “So, those impacts on our communities we figure about 14,300 jobs, UC Davis does, were impacted by this year’s drought in the Sacramento Valley.”
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