drought

Millions of Ethiopians will need food aid through 2016 as a result of abnormally low rainfall during the main growing seasons this year, says a monitor funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Caught in a multi-year drought, California voters approved $7.1 billion in bonds last year to improve the state's water infrastructure, and now faces the choice of where and how to spend the money, says the New York Times.

Almonds faced the agricultural version of the water-shaming that was directed at wastrel urbanites in California, called out as one of the thirstiest crops on the planet. Yet almond acreage has gone up every year during the drought and the harvest consistently is larger than before the drought, says Gizmodo.

Scanty vegetable supplies are causing "exorbitant prices," says the chief executive of Landec Corp, which sells salad kits, vegetable trays and fresh-cut bagged produce in the food and biomedical markets.

A multi-year experiment in California is testing the idea of flooding fields and orchards with excess river water during the winter as a way to recharge underground aquifers, says Western Farm Press.

In an unprecedented step, the Washington State Agriculture Department will survey farmers and ranchers on losses to drought this year, says Capital Press.

"As California’s water crisis looms over the agricultural industry, conversations have focused on the threat to big growers while often overlooking the devastating potential impact to the laborers and small migrant communities," writes Carolina Wilson at Peninsula Press, a Stanford Journalism project.

Drought and limited supplies of irrigation water in California will reduce the almond crop by 4 percent at the same time that the global appetite for the nut is on the rise, says the USDA. The biannual Tree Nut: World Markets and Trade report forecasts a 5-percent increase in U.S. exports, to 600,000 tonnes, "largely on additional shipments to China and India."

For Huey Johnson, the "grand old man" of environmentalists in California, "the idea of rearing salmon in fallowed rice fields started in a duck blind," says Yale e360. Surrounded by acres of flooded fields, Johnson wondered what could be done with all the water. "His answer: Grow fish."

Central America and Haiti are suffering one of the worst droughts in decades due in part to the strong El Niño weather pattern, "with small-scale farmers sustaining heavy losses in staple crop production," says the Famine Early Warning Network (FEWS NET) created by USAID.

Crane crews from the California Department of Water Resources are removing a temporary rock barrier that kept salt water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, said Capital Press. The barrier was necessary due to drought that reduced water levels in the rivers, an important source of irrigation water.

For the first time in three decades, India has "experienced back-to-back monsoon failures," says The Indian Express.

Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada last winter "was the lowest it has been in more than 500 years," the Los Angeles Times reports, citing research published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Snowpack is a primary source of water for California.

The Australian government forecasting agency raised its estimate of beef exports in the trade year that ends next July 1 by 20 percent, as ranchers liquidate their herds in the face of drought worsened by El Niño, said Reuters.

Blistering heat and arid weather pushed the wheat crop to maturity two weeks earlier than usual in Washington State and undermined its value, says the Spokane Spokesman-Review.

The government is spending more than $150 million a week battling wildfires in the drought-stricken West, and that number "will likely grow in the days and weeks ahead, says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

One-quarter of the world’s crops, from bananas and plantains to rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans, are grown in areas where the water supply is highly stressed or highly variable, said the World Resources Institute on Wednesday. Rice, wheat, and corn, three of the most important crops, are particularly vulnerable, it said.