Boxer Calls for Drought Aid for State Farmers
By Dennis Pollock, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Jun. 27–U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer is urging U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer to quickly provide drought assistance to California farmers using an agricultural disaster program authorized by the recently enacted Farm Bill.
In a letter sent Thursday, Boxer, D-Calif., said the drought has caused farmers “to walk away from thousands of acres of crops, an event with the potential to cost California’s economy hundreds of millions of dollars in lost agricultural production.”
Gov. Schwarzenegger recently declared a state of emergency for nine California counties with severe water shortages, which followed his previous declaration of a statewide drought.
In Fresno County, short-term losses resulting from unplanted acreage already have exceeded $73 million, county agricultural officials report. More than 40,000 acres were not planted, and production on another 170,000 acres could decrease by as much as 50% this year.
Boxer also cited the potential damage to crop and grazing land caused by the more than 800 wildfires burning throughout California.
“With the ongoing drought and wildfires in California and flooding that has damaged and destroyed crops in the Midwest,” she wrote, “there is now an urgent need for USDA to develop and implement regulations related to this new disaster program.”
One provision would allow California farmers to more easily get insurance for crops that previously were not insurable.
Apart from the disaster program, Boxer said, the Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service also has begun exploring ways to provide financial help to growers to protect fallow acreage.
Boxer said programs like the agency’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program could be used to help farmers introduce cover crops in drought areas, transfer farmland to more effective irrigation systems and protect against the introduction of environmentally harmful “dust bowls” that may result from the combination of fallow cropland and limited irrigation water.
The reporter can be reached at dpollock@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6364.
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