The California drought has hurt several sources of food, but none more so this year than rice crops. “This is a year that is just a disaster.”
Note: 2022 data as of August 22. Counties with less than 10,000 acres of rice planted in 2021 or 2022 not shown.California farmers sowed 285,000 acres of rice this spring, a 30% drop from the year prior and the lowest since the 1950s, according to a June estimate by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is the steepest decline for any major California crop this year, said Daniel Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, who expects even lower plantings.
“Farmers will farm again when it rains. The question is, will we have the businesses we rely on?” said Mr. Johnson.or walnut orchards, which take years to yield their first crop and can’t be fallowed for a season. Some rice farmers have been able to stem their losses through sales of their shrunken government water allotments to neighbors. Halbert Charter, an almond farmer in Colusa County, recently bought water originally allotted to neighbors for $575 an acre-foot, nearly five times what he normally pays the government. “It’s allowed us to survive,” said Mr. Charter.
In Colusa County, the top rice producer in California, officials project a $2.4 billion hit to the economy due to the drop-off in rice and other crop production, said county supervisor Daurice Kalfsbeek Smith. She said the county anticipates that a rise in unemployment will show up by October. Colusa’s unemployment rate of 7.9% as of July is more than double the national rate of 3.5% and higher than the 5.5% average in other northern Sacramento Valley counties.
At California Heritage Mills, a local firm that sells and ships rice around the world, revenue this year is expected to fall to $20 million from $50 million in 2021, after the farmers who own the company cut production 85%, said CEO Steven Sutter. The company laid off 20 of its 60 workers in August while leaving seven open positions unfilled.
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