Last month the California Farm Water Coalition invited me on the Sacramento Farm Tour, and as always it was amazing. We toured the Lundberg Rice facility, met its owners (the most humble of family businesses by the way), rode in a combine (rice harvester), and got to go on a mini shopping spree in their store.
We also visited a Kiwi and Chestnut farm. Being a huge fan of chestnuts, I loved this farm. It was also interesting to see how kiwis were grown, something I had never even thought of before.
After the Kiwi farm we stopped and toured and sampled olive oil from Lucerno Olive Oil. This was an amazing experience because we were taught how to properly sample oil from an Olive Oil Sommelier!
Our stop on the tour was a walnut farm. Here we learned how the walnuts are grown, harvested, and dried. He also sent us home with a ton of walnuts which will make for some killer Italian cookies in the coming weeks.
Now the reason that we were invited on this tour was to see first hand how the drought is affecting our farmers. I have talked about the issue many times here on the blog, and it has become an issue near and dear to my heart.
However, now that we are living in a home (before we lived in an apartment) and paying our water bill, it has been even more eye opening. As we struggle to keep our 30 year old fruit trees alive by water only on the days we are allocated and paying a ballooned rate for water, I am really starting to understand the farmer's frustrations that much more. Don't get me wrong, we are not trying to make a living off of our trees, but the farmer's are!
California farmer's are facing this issue day in and day out. With zero surface water and having to depend solely on their wells, these farmer's are struggling to keep not only their family business afloat, but also their life long investment.
Their crops are being significantly cut because they do not have enough water to keep them alive. Do you know what this means? It means that the cost of food goes up! With California farming producing such a significant amount of the nation's produce, a reduction in farming will be a huge deal.
The CFWC has added a new FB page called Faces of the California Drought. Check it out and read the stories of real farmers and what they are going through in order to survive! For more information about the drought, visit the Food Grows Where Water Flows page. Also, check out my previous posts from Fresno, Imperial Valley, and Fresno again 🙂
CFWC paid for my trip however all opinions are my own.
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