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Drought Impact On Crops

May 2,2014
Screen Shot 2014-04-22 at 12.10.01 PMCalifornia Upland Cotton Acres At Record Low With California farmers starring at a nasty drought a first look at field crop intentions in 2014 shows dramatically reduced acreage likely to be planted.Hard hit this year will be upland cotton where USDA says cotton acreage is expected to be down 35% from acreage planted last year. Only 60,000 acres could be planted based on a March 1 survey. That would be a record low for upland that once saw plantings as high as 1.7 million acres in the state. For 2014 Pima type cotton may be down 28% to 135,000 acres.

Meanwhile USDA estimates corn acreage is likely to fall 28% to 430,000 acres in the state.Wheat acreage is down about 15%
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Processing tomato acreage will be impacted by the drought but by how much? USDA had estimated 13.5 million tons on 290,000 acres but the California Tomato Growers Association expects a lower number.They are running a contest to see who can get closest to final number. An April 4 estimate came up at 12.24 mil metric tons. Last year’s yield –  11 million tons.

Wine grape production from the Central Valley was about half the state’s total in 2013,over 2 million tons says Allied Grape Growers, up 8% from the year before. Average yield statewide is up over 7%. Allied’s Nat DiBuduo expects some drought impacts but an issue remains whether there could be a surplus rather than a shortage. Growers have planted 90,000 new acres of grapes in the state in recent years,yet to bare fruit.

New Trees: Tulare County Ag Commissioner Marilyn Kinoshita says she was amazed to see at the numbers of “baby trees” planted in the south and west part of the county,new almond and pistachio trees. “It’s mind boggling.” USDA estimate for almonds just came out forecasting 1.95 billion pounds in 2014,down from 2 billion pounds in 2013, not much of a decline in a drought year.

Pesticide Report: Kinoshita has been trying to correct the record on what she considers an inaccurate report from California Dept of Health on schools in the county impacted by pesticides applied to fields nearby. She says the report uses old data from the county. In any case  “you have to question the decisions to allow the purchase of ag land, because it is cheap, to plop down a school and then complain about pesticide use nearby.”

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