He has senior water rights, and while he still had to make difficult management decisions during the drought, he ended up with more water than many of his neighbors and found ways to share it, a tremendous display of collaboration in the farming community.
I’m the 6th generation of my family to work in California agriculture.
During the recent drought, we were able to leverage drip irrigation and continue to grow our operations.
To what degree do sustainability and conservation factor in to the management decisions you make on the farm?
What drives your conservation ethic?
Farmers inherently know what sustainability is.
We must be sustainable if we want to continue to grow good products and stay in business.
I may be able to grow a great crop of tomatoes, but I didn’t know what it took to successfully restore habitat areas on the farm.
We worked with biologists and habitat restoration specialists to reestablish water fowl habitat and riparian corridors on the property.
I think the dynamic is changing because the agricultural community and environmentalists are finding a lot of overlap in our work and shared goals for a healthy environment and reliable water supply.