Word: farm
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...Even though Ray Slach's farm in West Branch, east of Iowa City, isn't near a swollen river, he's had his share of troubles - most recently, hail damage to some crops from a fierce storm on Saturday that included a brief tornado. "We're assessing now whether it's a total loss or we can replant or it will come back," says Slach, who farms 1800 acres of corn and soybeans. "We're not going to have yields like we had last year...
Diedrich's farm is located on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, traditionally a cornucopia of tomatoes, almonds, cantaloupe, pistachios and lettuces. The area around Firebaugh has been hit hard by a severe drought caused by two years of below-average rainfall, a diminished Sierra Nevada snowpack and new court-ordered environmental restrictions on pumping. Despite having officially recognized the drought on June 4, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has yet to declare a state of emergency that would lift some of the environmental restrictions on providing relief to the farmers - although he is pushing the state legislature to approve...
...stricken farmers face another wrenching decision: which of their long-time employees to send home. Diedrich has just laid off 25 employees, and he is hardly unique. The impact is noticeable in Firebaugh's community of some 7,500, mostly Latino farm workers. At noon on a Monday, the small town's streets are full of pickup trucks and vans that would normally be in the fields this time of year. Butch Fleming, who owns the town's Ag & Industrial Supply, gestures at his empty store, which he says is usually packed with customers. "Farmers don't know what they...
...hazards. But the farmers around Firebaugh have more to lose. "This is the first time water has ever been rationed like this," says Sarah Clark Woolf, spokeswoman for Westlands Water District, which has been forced to cut irrigation supplies to hundreds of thousands of acres of agricultural land. California Farm Bureau Federation President Doug Mosebar estimates that Fresno County could lose 20% to 30% of its agricultural output this season...
...beleaguered Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Last August, a Federal court set limits on pumping from the Delta, in an attempt to help endangered smelt fish. In a further measure to protect smelt, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced just last week it would cut San Joaquin Valley farm water supplies to 40% of the contracted amount. Many of the farmers in the region have been allotted only one sixth of the water supply they need to sustain their crops through the crucial summer months. "This is a death sentence," says almond and wine farmer Shawn Coburn...