Sustainable Groundwater Management Act

We can get rid of some of these what I call alphabet entities.

I really do believe that the Coastal Commission has too much power, and I would like to investigate Coastal Commission, California Air Resources Board, SGMA, State Groundwater Management Act.

There's all these alphabet entities that are unaccountable to the voters.

All

We have six, uh, native species here in California of agave, so six versus 17 to Arizona, right? Um, so yeah, during food shortages and drought would be actually the perfect time for a lot of people to utilize agave and, um, that's actually the, the, you know, what a-- why a lot of people are having or wanting, I'll say, to plant agave in California and, and elsewhere, right? Like, I've worked with farms in, like, uh, you know, Italy that have been dealing with drought and then, you know, all their olives or wine are just getting destroyed by plague or drought, and then they're ha- they're starting to shift to plant the cactus or agave.

And, uh, here in California, we have the groundwater, uh, or the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, SGMA, and then that act started taking away, no joke, for some farmers, 30 all the way up to, like, in many cases, 80, 90% of their water away because so many people were dependent on farming in California on groundwater.

And now that they don't have water, there's very few crops that are applicable to their farm if they don't wanna fallow that, right? If they wanna keep their tax cuts under the Williamson Act, if they wanna keep getting, you know, all these benefits of being a farmer, um, they actually have to farm.

They can't just fallow it, right? So cactus, agave, yuccas, Hesperoyuccas, you know, or I guess here we're mainly talking about agave.

We still had to plant a full amount of water.

So these irrigation districts have really looked forward as far as just replenishing the groundwater levels and making sure that we're following a lot of the new legislation that's going to get going to place here sometime about 10 years from now with the SGMA regulations.

Before I talk with the pumpkin king, Brian, I had no idea there's 60 plus varieties of pumpkins.

Did you?

Let's say Steve Hilton pulls it off, because I keep hearing that he's a underdog and I don't understand why.

What would happen to SGMA? Would that change a little bit if we did get someone else in the governor's seat?

I don't think SGMA's gonna go away, but it will get our surface deliveries up, is which, was what, is what we need, which will balance our, our numbers and our basins.

That's what we need to happen, and that's why our, our numbers are...

A lot of our numbers in these ba- in these GSAs, in our basins, are upside down is because we're not getting our surface deliveries.

So, and that's what a lot of this basis is gonna be of, is like, it's gonna be important for get our water farming to our, our water deliveries to our farms, and it's also gonna benefit underprivileged communities as well because it creates, these farms create jobs, they create, they, they do create wealth, and the taxes for, for the cities and the counties that go along with it.

So this, this is why water deliveries are important.

And also, going back to the health aspect of it, if we have more ground fallow because of SGMA, because we're not getting our water deliveries, that is more cause of valley fever, more cause of asthma, more cause of different things.

Also understanding that every drought ends with a flood, and that happened to us five years ago.

We've learned a lot about how to recharge our groundwater basins, which helps us with implementing Sustainable Groundwater Management Act.

We don't talk enough about all the bugs that like California, people like California, the bugs like California.

Loss of chill hours obviously has a huge impact on our sensitive perishable fruit crops in particular, but it also lengthens the bug season and more generations of those pests that are really, really invasive.

And if he doesn't, then following those rules and who's watching over him or her.

Taking away the farmland because of SGMA, um, isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing, and that is let's go find water rather than let's penalize the community, the farmers, the, the cities.

It's gonna show because the... at the end of the day, this year we've lost since...

This is incredible, Nick.

1992.

1992 to 2022, in California, we've lost 14,000 farmers, I dropped from 29 million acres down to now 22 million acres of all farmland, all farmland, cattle, all of that.

Just from that date and time, and with SGMA and the GSAs and all of that, in the...

when the next census is taken in 2027, we are going to see another massive drop in farmland and in farmers, and that's a, and that's a real, uh, shame on this country, but on this state and this legislature.

And let's just take the one agency that's really out of...

Is the State Water Board under SGMA.

If you don't respond, they cite you a penalty, and then they're gonna sell your farm.

Wait a minute.

Welcome to the Maddie Report.

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA, is a 2014 California law placing new targets on groundwater recharge.

Today we'll be discussing research from the Public Policy Institute of California, analyzing SGMA-ready crops, which are low-water winter grains and forages that would keep some farmland productive while using much less water.

I'm joined today by Katie Peterson, Associate Center Director and Research Fellow, and Brad Franklin, Research Fellow with PPIC, Thank you, Katie and Brad, for joining the Maddie Report today.

Really appreciate you being on the program.

And beyond that, you know, it's really... a question of incurring some costs but generating a revenue, whereas the alternative is you'll have lower costs, sure, but no revenue to offset that.

And unfortunately, that will be the choice that many growers have where they have very limited water supplies.

And Brad, from a grower's perspective, under what conditions can farmers actually make money and be profitable by adopting SGMA-ready crops?