Session focuses on new and ancient farm water systems
By Bob Johnson During the 1996 Kings River flood, Terra Nova Ranch General Manager Don Cameron had a 1-mile canal built that diverted 5,000 acre-feet of water to his fields to recharge the groundwater below. At the time, many of the neighboring farmers questioned the wisdom of flood- ing the fields. “When we started, people wanted to get rid of flood water,” Cameron said. “Now, they’re fighting over it.” He discussed his experiences and dis- coveries during a Jan. 19 keynote session on water management at the 43rd annual EcoFarm Conference. It featured several presentations on how farmers can re- think water strategies in an age of floods and droughts. It included topics such as groundwater recharge, using rice fields as flood plains for salmon and embracing ancient wa- ter-delivery systems, as some farmers are now doing. Decades after Cameron’s successful experiment with diverting floodwater to fields, the area’s farmers are working with the state of California to establish canals and pumps that will eventually be able to flood 30,000 acres during times of heavy rainfall. Cameron has flooded pistachios, al- monds, olives and grapes without dam- aging the crops. In his youth, Cameron saw wild grapes growing with their roots in the water near the banks of the Sacramento River outside Redding. He said he still remembers one flood that made him uneasy about leaving grapevines in multiple feet of water. “We put on water from February to late June,” he recalled. “Our vines turned yellow, so I got nervous and turned the water off. Ten days later, the vines turned green again.” While Cameron sees fields as infra- structure to recharge the underground aquifer, Jacob Katz views the edges of Sacramento Valley rice fields as nurseries for fast-growing baby salmon. “A 2008 study showed that salmon on the flood plain grew five times as fast as those in the river,” said Katz, lead scientist at the conservation group California Trout. He said rice fields are more nutrient rich than the river for baby salmon be- cause slow-flowing water allows the mi- cro-organisms salmon eat to reproduce and grow. “We think the fish belong in the riv- er, and the river belongs in the banks,” Katz said. Noting that the Sacramento Valley used to be a wetland, he said efforts are now un- derway to determine how to use rice fields to replicate those conditions. “It’s about welcoming the spirit of the wild back into our farms,” he said. Researchers have already succeeded
in raising baby salmon in rice fields in the causeway between Davis and Sacramento and releasing them into the Sacramento River when they are large and strong enough to survive the journey. “One of the great conservation suc- cess stories was the change of hundreds of thousands of acres of agriculture to mimic the lost wetlands for the water birds,” Katz said. “Can we do the same thing for fish?” Erica Gies, another speaker at the EcoFarm Conference, traveled the world for National Geographic, docu- menting water solutions. She described those solutions in her book “Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge.” She said water wants to slow down and spread out in ways that support the environment. Gies endorsed water storage projects that can also help maintain wetlands and the natural environment. “Our control-driven infrastructure is brittle,” Gies said. “I’ve met native people who see water as a relative or friend. “Putting ourselves first isn’t working because it ignores water’s agency,” she added. “We have drained 87% of the world’s wetlands. In California, it is 90%. We need to ask what water wants.” Gies noted that more than half of Peru lives on coastal plains that get less water than California. “The government requires water util- ities to invest in natural systems that store water and let it move to the coast,” she said. One of those investments is in peat wetlands, which slow down and store water in higher elevations. Peat occupies 3% of Earth’s surface and holds 10% of its water. Another of Peru’s water utility in- vestments is in amuna, an ancient wa- ter system employed by farmers in the Andes. It routes water to infiltration systems that slowly move it to springs at lower elevations. “If we plant the water, we can har- vest the water,” Gies said she was told in Peru. In Kenya, she said, a population boom led to deforestation at higher elevations, resulting in disastrous con- sequences for the water supply. “This leads to less water with more sed- iment,” Gies said. “You have bigger floods in the wet season and more scarcity in the dry one.” Gies found people worldwide who strategically let water move slowly on or near their farms. “The people I met were implement- ing solutions in their own community or land,” she said. “It’s empowering.” (Bob Johnson is a reporter in Monterey County. He may be contacted at bjohn11135@gmail.com.)
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