A Tool To Save California’s Farming Future
We’ve recently published a map based story on this past winter in California and a tool that’s helping farmers capitalize on the influx of water to recharge aquifers and store water for future dry seasons. Check it out on the Plotline here.
One of the unfortunate impacts of climate change has been the severe droughts which have struck California with increasing frequency. We eat food that requires 40% of California’s water. As resources become scarce, farmers have entered into a modern day gold rush drilling deeper and deeper into the California soil in search of the liquid gold of this new dry era. This year was different, it was particularly wet. The Sierra’s were (still are) buried under record snowfall and many rivers are flowing beyond capacity.
As the rain fell this year, it began to seem like this particularly wet year could be what farmers needed to recover from the droughts of the past decade, however, one wet year is not enough to support the needs of a healthy farm even if it did support growth in the wet season. To support California farms into the future, there needed to be a well thought out plan to capitalize on this extra water. To somehow capture a portion of it and use it to recharge aquifers.
Here at Earth Genome, we have been thinking about the balancing act of water supply as climate whiplashes us from drought to flood, and built a tool to help farmers store water from those rainy days. The Groundwater Recharge Assessment Tool (GRAT), co-created with partner Sustainable Conservation, is designed to support GSAs, state agencies, and irrigation districts trying to capture water in a way that allows them to recharge overdrafted aquifers, support their farmers, and help protect a quarter of the US’s food supply. To better tell the story of GRAT and how it’s empowering California farmers, our Food and Climate program, the Plotline, published a map based story on how we’re supporting the future of farming in California. Check it out, and let us know what you think.
