ABC 10 meteorologist Brendan Minchev here.
I want to talk to you a little bit more
about the drought and we've talked
a lot about drought and how we are
below average here in the Sacramento
region specifically, we're OK.
We're about an inch and 1/2 behind where
we normally would be on the water year,
which is about to reset at the
end of this month.
But that's just specifically
here really in Sacramento and in
the suburbs of the capital city.
And that's thanks to that big storm
that we saw last year elsewhere,
even in Northern California.
We are still seeing quite a bit
of drought and this is because
it's not just this year.
I mean, this is a prolonged
drought that's been happening over,
I mean as everybody knows over the
last several years and it just
keeps getting worse and worse.
Severe drought is now 57% of the state,
exceptional drought still standing at 17%,
mostly around the Fresno area.
But this drought is actually impacting
something that really we only grow in
the Central Valley and that's rice.
California produces more rice than
every state in the United States except for.
Arkansas,
but it's only grown in the Central Valley
and especially in the Sacramento Valley.
And if we wanna narrow it down even further,
that's three counties.
That's Butte, Colusa and Sutter
counties grow a large amount of rice,
especially of the rice that's
grown in California.
Most of that comes from
these three counties here.
Now,
Colusa County is very dependent on reservoirs
and on rainfall to grow their rice.
There's not as much groundwater here,
so they really need the rivers to
irrigate the rice crop and rice.
Very water intensive.
Whereas in Butte County been
a little bit better,
they have a lot more groundwater
that they that they can use
to irrigate their crop with.
But specifically Colusa has
been hurting for rice.
In fact,
California farmers have planted 50% less
rice this year and wouldn't you know,
it has a lot to do with climate
change and specifically the drought.
So Rice is a crop that's grown a lot in,
in California, especially in the
north part of the Central Valley.
And rice requires water in order to grow.
And because of the drought,
the there's been a lack of water,
as we know in in throughout the state.
And in particular,
the water that comes from Lake
Shasta down through the Sacramento
River feeds a lot of the rice
fields up there in Colusa County,
Glenn County that that area in
the north part of the valley.
And what happened is they didn't
have enough water this year.
And so they weren't able to plant rice.
So the amount of fields that are
planted to rice in California
is down 55% from what they had
planned because of lack of water.
California usually plants upwards of
600,000 acres of fields to rice every year.
And so that's down now down by 300,000 acres.
And so that's that's a really big
chunk of land that rice would normally
bring in sort of on the order of
$900 million of total revenue.
Into that N part of the valley.
So by cutting that in half,
that's a lot of revenue that's
that's lost to to the that region.
Sometimes
farmers plant in a certain field
one year and leave it bare the next
before planting in it yet again.
This is called fallow.
It doesn't have anything to do with one
year's rainfall or the lack thereof.
It's just part of the plan.
An idle field is a field that
a farmer thought they might
plant but decided not to.
The category that's biggest though,
here is what's called prevented
planting so farmers can get.
Insurance from the government
in case of a failure of a crop.
So what happened in the case of rice here is,
Farmer said we want to plan a whole
lot of rice and then they looked around
and said we don't have any water,
we can't plant that, right?
So we were prevented from planting.
So they're able to get
some insurance payout for,
for that prevented planting.
So the biggest category by far this year
and also last year is the prevented planting.
And in California that means mostly rice,
but also some cotton.
Why have California farmers been
unable to plant so much rice? This year
because of climate change we're
we're in another long drought.
We only had our got out of our most
recent drought just a few short years ago.
We're expecting to have more drought.
So we expect that this is going
to be sort of working towards
perhaps the new norm rather than
just an isolated one year incident.
So that portends I think large
potential changes in in activities
in in that region in terms of the
total amount of rice that's lost
you know proportion to all the rice
that's grown in the whole world.
It's not. A huge amount.
The rice that we grow in California
is mostly a short grain rice that's
used in sushi and and a lot of
sort of similar dishes like that.
And so this is going to be less of
that rice produced in California.
But we, you know,
we can import that from from
from other countries.
And so people who so well to get
their sushi and maybe it will
cost just a little bit more,
but probably not a whole lot more.
So that's where we are.
All right. So As for whether we could
see a rice shortage similar to the
great sirracha crisis of 2022. No,
no, I don't see that happening.