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Los Angeles, California, US – Last summer was the hottest that Kayode Kadara can remember since the late 1970s, when he began visiting the San Joaquin Valley, the vast farming region between the Sierra Nevadas and the California coast.
TAC Farm’s co-owner, a small farm in Allensworth said that temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius several days. He could only work outside for a brief time before returning to his air-conditioned house.
The San Joaquin Valley – the most profitable agricultural region in the United States, with eight million acres of farmland and 200,000 workers who provide food to people in the US, Europe, Canada, China and other countries – faces a possible rise in annual average maximum temperatures of 2.7 degrees Celsius by mid-century, and up to 4.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to a new state-commissioned Climate reportPublication in January
From 1950 to 2020, the valley’s temperature has increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius, the report noted. It also found that the climate crisis is already creating problems. Water scarcitygroundwater dependence, which can lead to small-scale flooding. FarmersIt is especially difficult for many Latinx, Hmong, and African American farmers.
A new report (PDF) says that droughts and earlier snowmelt runsoff will increase water shortages during the summer, especially in regions where irrigated agriculture is present. This will cause economic losses and increase groundwater pressure.PDF) released on Monday from the International Panel on Climate Change also predicted.
Kadara and Dennis Hutson, his brother-in-law, run TAC Farm. They dreamed of creating an economically viable farm to support Allensworth, an once-thriving African American community that was founded in 1908 by an ex-slave and an army colonel. They transformed a barren piece of sandy soil into a fertile plot that produces cantaloupes, wheat, oats and kale.
TAC Farm uses regenerative farming methods to add nutrients to the soil [Courtesy of Kayode Kadara and Dennis Hutson]But the farm’s lifeblood is a 720-foot well that pumps water to the crops, and they must compete for water against nearby agricultural giants with the resources to drill down much deeper. Their well ran dry nine years ago. Nearby Porterville has hundreds of wells that have shut down in recent years.
“The studies to me are true. The forecast is basically what we’re seeing right now,” Kadara told Al Jazeera. “As it gets hotter, I don’t know what the heck we will do.”
Dryer seasons last longer
Kadara and Hutson are an odd couple: Kadara is a pragmatic and innovative scientist and Kadara is an optimist minister who preaches in two churches nearby. In Allensworth, a low-income community of mostly farmworkers, Hutson envisioned the farm as a way to generate revenue so the county would “no longer view us as a community always with its hand out”. The farm is giving people “a sense of pride in their community”, he told Al Jazeera.
Kadara is proud of the farm’s sustainable practises; the wind used to blow chemical-filled dust from nearby farms onto the land, but they planted trees and shrubs as windbreaks. They use compost, resist tilling, and grow cover crop to improve soil health. They plan to install Owl boxes to allow natural predators to enjoy the gophers that eat the water lines.
The snowpack in the Sierra Nevadas is one of the main water sources for the San Joaquin Valley. It melts in spring and fills reservoirs. The snowpack in the Sierras is melting faster than usual as the region heats. The rainy season is expected to become shorter with longer dry summers. This will mean that surface water will be less accessible to farmers when they are in need of it, forcing them to rely more on groundwater.
Hutson and Kadara have water on their farm – for now. They might have to drill further in the future, at a cost of hundreds and thousands of dollars that they don’t have.
“We can talk about all the strategies to address climate change – stop using fossil fuels, switch to electricity and stuff like that – but what will it do now that the impacts are here?” Kadara said. “That’s the concern and the scary part for me. It’s here.”
Some communities in the San Joaquin Valley have black tap water due to high levels manganese. [Courtesy of Jose Pablo Ortiz-Partida]Vulnerable communities
According to the climate report, there are more than 4.3 million people living in the San Joaquin Valley. More than half of them live in disadvantaged communities.
The report’s lead authors, Jose Pablo Ortiz-Partida and Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou, told Al Jazeera that small-scale farms are most at risk from climate change because their shallow wells are the first to dry up when groundwater is depleted. They have fewer resources to adapt and less representation in the political arena than large farms. Language barriers can also make it more difficult for Latinx farmers and Hmong farmers.
Increasingly, farm workersOrtiz-Partida said that heat stroke is common in the field as well as at home because many people cannot afford air conditioning.
“People think of climate change as something of the future, but we see its effects here in California, but especially the San Joaquin Valley, every day,” Fernandez-Bou said.
This region is home to hundreds of thousands of people who do not have reliable water access. The levels of contaminants and sediments in the groundwater are increasing as a result of climate change and overextraction. High levels of manganese have made tap water black in San Joaquin, Fresno County. Other communities are affected by dangerous levels of arsenic, pathogens like E.coli and cancer-causing chemicals, such as chromium VI.
Climate change is exacerbating all these issues, while the lack of investment in critical infrastructure, including water and sewage systems, make these communities “some of the most vulnerable to climate change in the United States”, the report noted.
TAC Farm received small grants from the government to improve its pump and irrigation pipes, and to add nutrients to the soil. [Courtesy of Kayode Kadara and Dennis Hutson]Regulating groundwater
Fernandez-Bou, Ortiz-Partida. small farmersRegenerative practices can help address the climate crisis. They can sequester carbon on their land, increase soil health, and retain water. Small farms tend to reinvest in the communities they serve, which leads to better socioeconomic outcomes. Kadara and Hutson teamed up with UC Berkeley to develop a new method of removing arsenic in their well water.
“Regenerative agriculture is simply the practice of working in harmony with nature as opposed to working against it,” Hutson explained.
Kadara, Hutson and others know that the valley residents will be under pressure in the future. However, they don’t have any plans to leave.
TAC Farm has received small grants from the government in order to improve its irrigation pipe and pump, and to increase nutrients in the soil. The farmers also hope that a new law will increase water equity. California has been regulating surface water for a long time, but the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act was only recently passed. This Act requires regions to create plans to regulate groundwater in a prescribed timeline. The report said that the new law is still in its early stages and that some districts may not be capable of fully implementing sustainability plans by 2040.
“Instead of complaining, I believe you can seize the opportunities and make good things happen,” Hutson said.
“You see, it doesn’t take much to get me to start preaching,” he joked. “I choose to think positively.”
