Posted March 3, 2014
While California received significant rainfall last
week, it was not enough to offset years of drought, according to a Reuters
article available here.
“Despite these recent storms, it would still have to
rain every other day until around May to reach average precipitation totals,
and even then we would still be in a drought due to the last two dry years,”
said Richard Stapler, spokesman for the California Natural Resources Agency.
California is in its third year of a drought “that may
break all records in the most populous U.S. state, where lawmakers” recently
passed a series of drought relief proposals to Governor Jerry Brown.
California farmers say that another year of drought
could be catastrophic, according to a Western Farm Press article available here.
The World Ag Expo 2014 Water Forum in Tulare,
California, included two panel discussions on the current drought and the
“outlook for legislation and regulatory changes to the water delivery system to
the nation’s leading agricultural production area.”
The producers on the panel said they would ask what
they could expect from the “rollout of the legislation, primarily the
Feinstein-Boxer legislation.”
Federal drought relief passed in the 2014 farm bill has
also been expedited for livestock disaster assistance through the livestock
indemnity program (LIP); the livestock forage program (LFP); and a program of
emergency relief to producers of livestock, honey bees and farm raised fish not
covered by the two previous programs (ELAP).
Other drought relief programs include: funding through
the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP); the Emergency Watershed
Program (EWP), and through USDA- Rural Development’s Emergency Community Water
Assistance.
For more information on disaster assistance programs,
please visit the National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
