Jun 17, 2026 · 53 min · 13 segments
Today i am talking about acalifornia grapes and how agave and cactus farming may provide an avenue for many of these farmers to adapt, survive ot even continue growing grapes. I also talk about…
Now, obviously you know there's a lot of stuff going on in grapes in California today that makes me want to talk about this topic but let's maybe get into some history right to try to put this stuff into perspective so when I first came into grapes and vineyard consulting we were starting to get away from the peak of grapes in California so the early 2000s you know which was the peak of California grapes essentially combining both you know table grapes plus wine grapes we had an estimated 955,000 acres right so close to a million acres of planted grapes in California now Only 10 years later, the next decade, by 2018, 2020, we had dropped roughly to less than 650,000 acres.
So we had dropped over 300,000 acres, roughly a third of acreage, right? And now look at 2025 numbers, right? So we've gone from 650 to now 540,000 acres in 2025, right? So within just a few years, we've dropped over 110,000.
That might, you know, be skewed because obviously reporting, not everybody reports.
But, you know, say 110, 125,000 acres of grapes have just been taken out in the past, you know, five to six years.
And reading today's, you know, news and stuff like that, you can pretty readily assume that, you know, tens of thousands of acres are continuing to be taken out and we could potentially even drop now into...
the 450 range maybe we still have to see 2026 numbers obviously because the year is not over but um it's looking pretty bleak right and this is due to so many factors it's hard to fit in one podcast but You know, some of these factors can range from, you know, increased water costs, right? So now that Sustainable Groundwater Management Act aka SGMA has passed, a lot of people now, you know, their wells are getting meters.
They're being charged a fixed cost for the use of the well.
They can only pump so much water from, you know, the groundwater.
And already, right, when people talk about snowpack and the river or the snow melting and filling up all of our reservoirs, sorry, the snowpack's pretty light and we're not able to keep a lot of these reservoirs full throughout the year anymore.
surface water is more expensive right so as a farmer you could get your water from surface water groundwater or really cities i like to call it right and there are some other options too but the groundwater is being more expensive and highly regulated the surface water has gone up almost double or triple in some regions.
People ask me, why does San Diego have the first large-scale desal plant? It's because they were the furthest along the California aqueduct, so they actually were paying the highest per acre foot for water.
It only makes sense that the place where it's most expensive in California to deliver water was the first to put up a desal plant, right? Because it will make the most economical sense for San Diego before any other city, pretty much.
And now San Diego is even going to probably get paid for that desal plant by Arizona because it's like now that extra eight, 10 percent that that desal plant is producing for San Diego County allows, you know, the Colorado River water that was coming down here.
And then you go to city water, which is the most expensive water.
You know, they have tiers, and usually you can be paying, you know, compared to surface water, which could be, at the moment, depending where you are in California, you know, anywhere from, I'd say, $3,000 to even up to $6,000 an acre foot or more.
uh, really, you know, it's highly dependent on your, your region, right, but, um, city water costs can cost way further than that, you know, people are complaining right now in Little Rock, California, close to me, because a lot of them are not on the, on the grid water, right, so there's no pipes to physically come to their house, and many of them get water basically at this huge fill up right and it used to be i think four cents a gallon to fill up your water tanks and you could take you know those water tanks to your land which if you're not a farmer surprisingly a few water tanks go really really far You know, if I didn't farm here, you know, with like like say I could fill up a 265 gallon tote and I could probably go, you know, two, three weeks on that myself with the amount of water that I use.
But obviously, you know, my goat herd could probably drink that in a day or two.
Now, obviously you know there's a lot of stuff going on in grapes in California today that makes me want to talk about this topic but let's maybe get into some history right to try to put this stuff into perspective so when I first came into grapes and vineyard consulting we were starting to get away from the peak of grapes in California so the early 2000s you know which was the peak of California grapes essentially combining both you know table grapes plus wine grapes we had an estimated 955,000 acres right so close to a million acres of planted grapes in California now Only 10 years later, the next decade, by 2018, 2020, we had dropped roughly to less than 650,000 acres.
So we had dropped over 300,000 acres, roughly a third of acreage, right? And now look at 2025 numbers, right? So we've gone from 650 to now 540,000 acres in 2025, right? So within just a few years, we've dropped over 110,000.
That might, you know, be skewed because obviously reporting, not everybody reports.
But, you know, say 110, 125,000 acres of grapes have just been taken out in the past, you know, five to six years.
And reading today's, you know, news and stuff like that, you can pretty readily assume that, you know, tens of thousands of acres are continuing to be taken out and we could potentially even drop now into...
the 450 range maybe we still have to see 2026 numbers obviously because the year is not over but um it's looking pretty bleak right and this is due to so many factors it's hard to fit in one podcast but You know, some of these factors can range from, you know, increased water costs, right? So now that Sustainable Groundwater Management Act aka SGMA has passed, a lot of people now, you know, their wells are getting meters.
They're being charged a fixed cost for the use of the well.
They can only pump so much water from, you know, the groundwater.
And already, right, when people talk about snowpack and the river or the snow melting and filling up all of our reservoirs, sorry, the snowpack's pretty light and we're not able to keep a lot of these reservoirs full throughout the year anymore.
surface water is more expensive right so as a farmer you could get your water from surface water groundwater or really cities i like to call it right and there are some other options too but the groundwater is being more expensive and highly regulated the surface water has gone up almost double or triple in some regions.
People ask me, why does San Diego have the first large-scale desal plant? It's because they were the furthest along the California aqueduct, so they actually were paying the highest per acre foot for water.
It only makes sense that the place where it's most expensive in California to deliver water was the first to put up a desal plant, right? Because it will make the most economical sense for San Diego before any other city, pretty much.
And now San Diego is even going to probably get paid for that desal plant by Arizona because it's like now that extra eight, 10 percent that that desal plant is producing for San Diego County allows, you know, the Colorado River water that was coming down here.
And then you go to city water, which is the most expensive water.
You know, they have tiers, and usually you can be paying, you know, compared to surface water, which could be, at the moment, depending where you are in California, you know, anywhere from, I'd say, $3,000 to even up to $6,000 an acre foot or more.
uh, really, you know, it's highly dependent on your, your region, right, but, um, city water costs can cost way further than that, you know, people are complaining right now in Little Rock, California, close to me, because a lot of them are not on the, on the grid water, right, so there's no pipes to physically come to their house, and many of them get water basically at this huge fill up right and it used to be i think four cents a gallon to fill up your water tanks and you could take you know those water tanks to your land which if you're not a farmer surprisingly a few water tanks go really really far You know, if I didn't farm here, you know, with like like say I could fill up a 265 gallon tote and I could probably go, you know, two, three weeks on that myself with the amount of water that I use.
But obviously, you know, my goat herd could probably drink that in a day or two.
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