Drought damages dairies, waterfowl get “pop up” wetlands | Food and Environment Reporting Network

Three years of drought in California have withered pastures for dairy cattle and struck hard at organic herds, says the first of a two-part story on Grist. “Pastured dairies throughout California, once exemplary models of sustainable and organic farming, are in jeopardy of imminent collapse,” writes Madeleine Thomas. She says many organic dairies farms in the West have seen negative returns for four of the last five years, much of it due to higher costs of acquiring feed.

“Nationwide demand for organic milk might be rising, but it’s also costing farmers a lot more money to produce out of pocket, and dairy co-ops have been slow to raise their farmer’s salaries by upping milk prices,” says the story.

Wildlife conservationists are renting temporarily 14,000 acres from California rice farmers in the Central Valley so they ban flood field and create “pop up” wetlands as oases for migrating birds from the Arctic and subarctic regions, says the Associated Press. The flooded fields are one of the few tools available to prevent over-crowding of wetlands by waterfowl and shorebirds. Millions of birds could die if they do not have a chance to rest and eat on the long migration southward, say conservationists.