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What California Can Teach Agriculture · Conservation Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:09
  Speaker B: Welcome back again to another episode of Conservation Stories. Conservation Stories is a podcast brought to you by the Sand Hill Research association, based on the Lubbock region. And we know that we have. Are facing all kinds of challenges today in agriculture and our economy, and we'd love to bring on people that are maybe working in areas that we see coming our way and having some ideas. So everybody says, in agriculture, what happens in California will eventually happen everywhere. And so recently, Lacey and I were at the Sustainable Ag Summit in California, and I sit down next to Paul and Paul Sousa. Is that correct? Say your last name. And we started having conversation about regulations and in California and what all that looks like. And I was like, you got to come on the podcast. We got to talk about this. I think it's. It's relevant to us in that there's obstacles and there's opportunities, and I think that being ready for those things to come. I know when I was there, we were with the Almond Board, and they said, we know we anticipate regulation continuing to come our way and increase, and we are preparing to be ready when it gets here. And so that is kind of some of the conversation that we kind of started on Paul and I'd love to continue on that, but why don't you first tell us a little bit about your background and who you work for now and what you do.
• 1:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. So I grew up on a California dairy. My family still dairies. Today my father and brothers run two dairies in central California that I'm involved with in helping them understand and comply with environmental regulations. Went to the University of California, Davis. Got a degree in environmental resource science. I've worked for the state of California as a regulator regulating water quality on dairies, and am now an advocate for dairy producers in the largest dairy producer trade association in California. Dairies voluntarily join our trade association for help, for information, for insight. And especially in California, I think it's especially necessary in navigating, you know, all the crazy requirements that we do have here. And so California is a tough place to do business. But there are some opportunities as we talked about when we met. And I think, you know, having an open mind, looking for those opportunities, I think is important. And that's what I help our members do. I know the regulations, I know the ways through the regulations, what are the exceptions, what are ways to navigate things. And I help our dairy producer members do that, also advocate for them as regulations are being written, help make sure that they're achievable and doable. And then once they're on the books helping to figure out how to comply with those.
• 3:20
  Speaker B: Yeah, so that's, that is interesting. I don't think I remember that you once worked as a regulator. So that's really interesting because you have literally been on both sides of this topic.
• 3:33
  Speaker A: Yes, that is very unique to me. I do have that experience. And I actually left the state of California as a regulator to start my family secondary. And so, you know, I was a dairy farmer. I was a regulator. I have been on both sides of that, especially on the water quality piece of it. I really understand what dairies are dealing with. I understand how the organization on the water quality side operates their, you know, just the way their structure is. The folks in there kept good connections and most of them have retired now since I've left, but, you know, maintain good connections and continue to work with them on a regular basis. But yes, I have seen that from both sides. I do believe in, you know, environmental compliance. Nobody wants to, you know, mess up the environment in which they live. And dairy farmers. And farmers, we live on the land, we raise our families on the land. I do believe in that. But I do believe in doing that in a smart way. Just, you know, hounding people, just throwing regulations at them, making them fill out paperwork, does not make sense to me. Let's achieve the goals that we really want in the most streamlined, simplest way possible. And that's my personal belief in, in how to get that done.
• 4:54
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That. It's what it, what an interesting position for you to be in and how it would have to be, you know, as a dairy farmer to have you coming out in position as a regulatory official to be like, oh, my goodness, I hear someone who actually understands where I'm coming from. And then I mentioned this story earlier that a friend of mine was getting certified and they were like, well, because she applied manure on the hoof instead of on the tractor. Through the tractor. They know how to. They don't know how to not calculate that.
• 5:29
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:30
  Speaker B: You know, and so sorry, we don't know what to do. You know what I mean? And so, and, and I understand, of course, they're not from, you know, I'm from this area and everything, but it's hard to, it's hard to know how to work with people that you feel like, don't have any kind of base of foundation of knowledge to start with on, especially the economic side, but don't even, you know, and if, if you feel like someone's already coming at you from a. As a position of an enemy instead of somebody that is like, we're partners and we have a. We have a goal. We want to keep the environment safe, and let's work together as partners. To do. I mean, that. You just don't. You don't see that very often, but I think that that's what it would feel like to have somebody from your background in that position.
• 6:21
  Speaker A: Yes. I had definitely some folks that I worked with that felt that, you know, when I know, I. I signed a letter approving the construction of a new dairy, and that guy still, you know, good with me, like, you know, this. You know, this guy understood. He knew. And, you know, I gave the approval for building that new dairy. And, um, so, you know, I. In some. There's some folks that do have that kind of positive relation that, hey, you know, we'd rather have this guy here. He knows what's going on. He's not out to get me. He's, you know, on our side in a way, but looking out for the environment also.
• 6:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. So one of the things that we talked about was what I always kind of had had this kind of thinking before I came to California and did that. The tour with the Texas Ag Leadership Program. Why do people stay in California? Like, what keeps them there? And, you know, I mean, you just don't hear anything positive as far as ag. Like, all this ag is there. But then you're like, why haven't they all moved? And when I got there, realizing these people are from here. Yeah. They haven't left for the same reason I don't think about leaving, because this is home.
• 7:37
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah, you said that when we met and that. Absolutely. You know, I was born here. I was raised here. My father immigrated from Portugal to California in 1963. This is home. And, you know, from a natural perspective, we have land, we have water, we have some of the best farm ground, you know, on earth. We grow. You name it, it grows in California. So it is a great place to farm. It's the people part, the political part that's the challenge, not where we're at. And there is a division in California where a lot of the agriculture is, where the rural areas are. There's a different political view than there is in the large urban cities, which then overwhelm, especially now with Proposition 50 that just passed in California, even more so, you know, our vote doesn't really count. But, you know, we have neighbors that think the same way. We have communities that think the same way. And so it is. It's home. That's a Good way to put it. And there are a lot of good things here and I'll get into some of those kind of opportunities. You have to look at it through that lens because you can certainly look at it from the, you know, this stuff is crazy and why are we doing this and why are we here? But if you look, there are opportunities.
• 8:57
  Speaker B: Now that's what I noticed was that it was forcing innovation.
• 9:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 9:01
  Speaker B: And that, you know, I think then you see California leading in different types of innovation. We had some farmers, we did a farmer exchange here from Poland. And one of them, I asked like, what was the thing that was the most surprising? And they said that you're behind, that we're ahead of you in innovation. You know, and I, I thought that was interesting and telling and I thought maybe like, okay, is that true in our area, but maybe not necessarily true in other areas. But I know that there's a lot of, you know, you guys are already, y' all think in circular economies and like that is a term that I think is, is just being maybe understood and heard here.
• 9:44
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I, you, you've got to, it's to make it in California. It is tough. The stuff is not a joke that you guys hear about California. It is tough. And I think it has forced innovation. There's folks that don't make it, there's folks that don't have that kind of forward looking mentality and unfortunately they don't make it. I wish everybody could, but it really is the innovators that are looking to dot the I's, cross the T's, maximize every efficiency. They're the ones that are really moving forward.
• 10:16
  Speaker B: That, that is really interesting because in a way here, even though it's not policy, there's other drivers that are pushing that for us. It's lack of water, you know, that are, that are really pushing people to have to make some changes. And I've wondered, you know, that same things like who, who, who will be left in 20 years and what will it look like? You know, and that, that's really interesting. And it's the same really kind of thing. You just see there's these standout, standout people that you see them doing things and trying things that you think, okay, those people will probably be here in 20 years because they are figuring out how to do, how to make it without the water.
• 11:02
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 11:02
  Speaker B: And some years. So water is a big deal in California. So let's finish talking about policy first. I could go like all over the place on this. So, so one thing I remembered Was that I met a woman that all she did was policy for one rancher. Like, she had done that, like, for several years for many people, but then she had, at that point was just working for just one, one single larger family. And is it pretty common for folks to have to hire people to help them meet these regulatory standards? I mean, there's like a whole industry that's grown up kind of around that, people that specialize in that.
• 11:47
  Speaker A: Absolutely. They're not always working for one ranch, but a ranch or a farm hiring somebody. We got water quality regulations. You've got to submit an annual report of where all the manure went, where it was applied. And so absolutely, there are industries. You know, it's an extra cost of doing business in California, but absolutely, those industries have grown up around our farms to help them comply with these things.
• 12:14
  Speaker B: So. And then the people that are doing that, are they. Are they people from within the industry that have kind of come out and said, hey, we see this need and. And we'll help you.
• 12:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, for the most part, yes, that has evolved over time, but for the most part, it is folks close to the industry, folks that want to see the industry succeed, folks that have come, you know, and folks like myself that are, you know, the sons and daughters of farmers that that's kind of the niche they, you know, see and feel. For the most part, it is folks within the industry that care about the industry, that want to see it succeed, that are motivated by that.
• 12:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. So do you feel like of all of. I don't even know outside of. I cannot remember what we saw when we were. There was a lot of row crop production and then a dairy and then a little bit of ranch land. But in what is the. As far as the amount of dairies that are there, where are you guys? Where are y' all in the US as far as dairy production?
• 13:12
  Speaker A: Number one dairy producing state in the country producing about 18% of the nation's milk. Not always known. We talk about California and Hollywood and number one dairy producing state in the country. What we have seen, and we were kind of talking about this, a great reduction in the number of dairies, a slight reduction in the number of cows, a lot of consolidation, and we're down to about a thousand dairies left in the state. Because of the challenges that, you know, people are facing, some folks are just not up to the challenge. They sell out to the neighbor next door who expand, you know, takes on and consolidates the herds. But we have a lot of infrastructure in dairy processing, a lot of Knowledge that I don't see it going away because we've got, you know, the expertise, we've got, you know, processing facilities and they've had to be, you know, aside from the farm also cutting edge, innovative, energy efficient. It's just crazy how they're getting pushed, all of us. And so there's a lot of just strength in dairy here that will remain, it will change. We probably, unfortunately will continue to see fewer dairies, but we, California will continue to be a milk producing powerhouse.
• 14:33
  Speaker B: So what's interesting to me is that I, and this may just be a bad assumption on my part, but I, I feel like what, what drives the thinking that drives these types of policies are based on, you know, we want local, we want something local. We want support small farmers. You know, we want kind of a, maybe more of a nostalgic view of what a farm would have been rather than we don't want these big corporations. But the policy is actually driving the industry to be something that's the opposite of what maybe the modern, like the, the person that's voting, going to the voting booth and thinking that this policy is going to prevent what it's actually leading to. Does that make, do you feel like that's true?
• 15:30
  Speaker A: Absolutely. And we say that to our regulators. You know, they say they want the red barn, but we say your regulations are shutting down the red barn. And you know, the only way to comply with that is to be large, efficient, you know, economies of scale. And it absolutely is driving it. There's no doubt.
• 15:50
  Speaker B: Wow. What, what is the average size dairy there?
• 15:53
  Speaker A: Missed about 1400 cows.
• 15:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 15:59
  Speaker A: Wow. And we've got from, you know, 50 cow dairies to 10,000 cow dairies. And so there's an average and that average keeps creeping up significantly. But yeah, so the average doesn't mean much. There's not a lot of average sized areas. It's kind of, there's a broad spectrum. We do have diversity. So we have, you know, California is a very large state with different geographic regions. You know, we have desert all the way to rainforests. And so along California's north coast we have a lot of small pasture based organic dairies. In that area, the average is probably 250, 300 cows per dairy. Maybe 150 dairies in that region looks very different than further south in the, you know, very different look. So it's not a uniform look to the state and in how the dairies look either.
• 16:56
  Speaker B: Well, and I would guess that, you know, I'll just say one of the things that when I When we visited California, you know, it was kind of like this. We were hearing a lot about, you know, regulation and the anticipated million acres of ag land loss because of the water policies and that kind of thing. And then we visited the Redwoods. And I will tell you, I thought, man, if I lived somewhere where I saw these things, I probably this, this might make environmentalist out of me. Like the, that was pretty powerful. Pretty powerful, you know, and so it's easy. Like where we live, when you look around and go like, I don't know for sure what we're trying to conserve. You know, we heard sometimes we don't even have enough rain for anything to grow, you know. And so, but, and so it's easy to just out of sight, out of mind, you know. But I can see how it would push people to feel like, you know, maybe a feel of panic when they hear things that, you know, that would be easy to. For people to use law propaganda and motivate people to get out and vote.
• 18:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And that does happen. And we do move water. In your visit, you must have seen, you know, we move water that falls in Oregon as rainfall all the way to Los Angeles, I mean, hundreds of miles. We've got aqueducts. The northern third of the state is very wet. The northern, the southern third is basically desert. A lot of people live in the southern part of the state. We move water from the Colorado river, from the Sacramento River, a lot of water. We move in California to Southern California. So it is doable. I mean, there was a time when the state and the public policy was more innovative. Now we're stuck with a system that's, you know, 50, 60 years old. It hasn't been expanded, population has continued to grow and we're putting policies on that. Even hamper that 50 year old system to not work the way it was originally designed. We've certainly got challenges, but what we have been able to do with water, we've got water, I mean, we maybe don't have enough for all of the uses that we've had and we are, you know, cutting back. But we've got water in California and we have been just really innovative about getting it to where it needs to be. Unfortunately, we do have policies that are really hampering our ability to do that.
• 19:24
  Speaker B: So. So is it kind of like a feast or famine with the kind of water you guys rely on? Because it's like if there's a lot of rainfall, like I know that we were there. Is it like Tulare that like there was a Lake, I don't know, that was like. Hadn't been. Hadn't had water in years and all of a sudden was huge.
• 19:43
  Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. And then, yeah, it was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. At one point it was drained and it's now all farmed. And then in 2023, that lake reappeared. Because it's a low spot in the valley. It's where the water runs when it's got way more than we can control. And so, you know, it is. It's a feasted famine. We had just come off of a drought. We'd had several years of drought before that. So our water primarily our input is rainfall. We and snowpack, especially Sierra Nevada mountains. We get a snowpack every winter to some, you know, a lot or a little. And we live off of that. And that's got, you know, maybe a one to three year supply of water that, you know, gets rained on California, depending on whether it's a wet or a dry year. And managing that. So you get, you know, three or four years of drought in a row, things get tight. We've got groundwater, but there's only so much of that that you can use and, you know, and maintain a balance. So it's really about that surface water and that surface water management. We can recharge the groundwater with surface water when we have excess. And there's a big movement to try to do that. We've got water in California. It really is about policy and doing, you know, the best we can with each drop rather than letting it go to waste.
• 21:05
  Speaker B: Right, and that's what you guys have really pushed the innovation to. Yeah, really, really pushing to. To maximize the use of every single drop of water. So what's the ratio of what gets used, you know, in, in agriculture compared to the municipality uses? Have they. Have they pushed for the same type of conservation efforts on municipalities as they have on agricultural land?
• 21:33
  Speaker A: Yeah, they have. So in California of the rain or, you know, that falls on California, 50% is for environmental uses to go out the rivers for fish, 40% is for agriculture and 10% is for urban uses. And they have pushed urban water conservation a lot. You know, that's just, you know, where the urban places are, Southern California desert. And so they have pushed.
• 22:04
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, and that's, I mean that's kind of really our most of the state of Texas right now is just. And people are just now, I think, really becoming aware and I usually we, Lacy and I travel a lot and anytime we're in the state, if we're like, you know, in an Uber will ask, what do you know about water in Texas? You know, and on so many, you know, people are just like, I didn't. I didn't know, you know, or somebody's like, man, I'm worried about this. I've been thinking about this. I heard it just the other day and I didn't know before, you know, so it's a large. You guys have the same thing. It's a large. It's a lot of people. And, you know, making sure that everybody's doing their part, you know, is. That's a big deal. And. And the truth is, is it's easy to think that that that number 40% goes to agriculture. So it's easy to think, oh, the farmers are getting 40%. Instead of thinking the consumer, the municipalities are also getting. Yeah, I mean that. Because. Because it's putting food on their table. And so it's. It's really not fair to say it's ag use. It's. It's groceries. It's a food especially for you guys.
• 23:19
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 23:20
  Speaker B: Because you guys grow a lot more, you know, that. I mean, like, than especially what we do here, like food that you actually put on the table.
• 23:26
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. I have a couple of examples to go through.
• 23:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 23:31
  Speaker A: California kind of, you know, challenges that maybe have a silver lining. So one of those is Senate Bill 1383, passed by the California legislature in 2016. It required a 40% reduction in manure methane emissions from livestock here in California. I mean, you just think it's crazy. And the media kind of took off with California's regulating cow farts, and it's nuts. Right. And it's not voluntary. It's not wishful thinking. It is a legislated mandate that we've got to meet. And so you think, well, why are these people in business in California? Why don't they move out of California? But then the state set up a program to help fund these emission reductions, and they have put $356 million so far into that program in building dairy digesters and other things that have helped us achieve the goal, and they've helped our farms to be more efficient, more innovative, more aggressive. And in the case of dairy digesters, they've also created a revenue stream. So a byproduct of our food production is now energy that we're producing on our farms to power trucks and buses. Here in California, we have something called the low carbon fuel standard that pays us for that gas that we produce because it's offsetting fossil fuel. It's not, you know, fossil carbon emissions. We're offsetting and leaving that fossil carbon in the ground and using byproducts of food production to power our trucks and buses in California. And that is revenue then for the dairies that have put in digesters. So we've met the goal and it's a new revenue source that we have on dairies. If you just look at the first part. Yeah. You know, why on earth would you do this? When you look at the second part, wait a minute. But then they helped you do it, they paid you to do it, and they're paying you ongoing to do this. It just makes sense. And you know, that is also applies. The low carbon fuel standard applies throughout the country. And so dairies, including in Texas, are taking advantage of that, of putting in digesters, producing methane for vehicle fuel and sending that to California and capturing some of that value also.
• 25:48
  Speaker B: So that is very fascinating. And there's in Kansas, they've kind of did a similar thing with water. It's like we have to lower. Like we got to do this. You know, you've got to, you've got to stop pumping. Like I think they said 25% is what they all agreed on in a certain district. Water district. But then the state also came in and said, we're going to help figure it out for you because we, we've got to keep. If we don't have farming, we don't have anything, you know, and so we, we've got to have water. If we don't have water, we don't have farming. So we've got to figure it out. And so the state came in and started helping, you know, with the, the economics of all of this. How can we make it work? And I, that to me is, that's, that is not something that's necessarily, I feel like, been modeled here in Texas, you know, and, and it's not something that I was aware of until I went to California that, that they were investing. And actually not only are we going to regulate you and tell you, but we, we're not going to leave it up to you to, to figure out how to get. You know what I mean? Like, we'll help you get there.
• 26:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. That is.
• 26:54
  Speaker B: And, and we'll make another revenue stream for you.
• 26:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Speaker B: And that's the thing I think surprised me being on a farm with that digester. And the guy was positive about it because he's like, we're making money right here. Like, you know, and so it was, it was, that was one of My first eye opening moments.
• 27:11
  Speaker A: And that's the way to make success. And that is the example because instead of dragging somebody kicking and screaming, you give them the carrot and they like, you know, yeah, we can do this. And they make it happen. They become a partner to you instead of, you know, fighting you every, every step of the way. And so the reduction in methane emissions from manure has just been astounding in the last five years in California because of this. The state had a goal, they set the goal up and they provided some funding. And dairy farmers have just hit the ground running and had just tremendous success with this. It is the second most productive greenhouse gas emission reduction program that California funds is the digester and manure programs. Very cost effective. And a lot of emission reductions have been achieved with a small, very small part of the overall funding from the state to achieve these things.
• 28:13
  Speaker B: Yeah. That's amazing. Wow. Yeah, that's what I mean, it drives. Necessity becomes mother of invention. But, but sometimes like, I mean, you need that, you need that the help. If the state's going to regulate it, then come in and give the help for it.
• 28:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I was just talking to a colleague of mine this morning. I am not, you know, a subsidy guy. I'm kind of a, let's do it on our own. But when you've got the mandates like we do, if California says you need to reduce your manure methane emissions by 40%, you can't leave the farmer. You know, that's just not a possibility. We compete globally on price with, you know, Texas, Idaho, New York, New Zealand. We need a level playing field. And then that helped, you know, make it so that it was a level playing field and we continue to produce and be cost effective.
• 29:00
  Speaker B: Yeah. And have another revenue stream.
• 29:02
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 29:03
  Speaker B: Wow. Okay, so example two.
• 29:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. So another one. And right after we had had lunch together at that conference, I left to a another seminar from California. And it reminded me of just another great opportunity. So the drinking water standard is 10 milligrams per liter of nitrate nitrogen. And the California decided to take that federal standard and apply it to all groundwater so you could dig a hole with a post hole digger if you can reach water. And you're supposed to be able to drink the water anywhere under an agricultural field where you apply fertilizer, whatever it may be. And there's been a struggle to meet that. It's a very tight bar to meet for agricultural production and agriculture wasn't able to meet that. And at the same time we have folks that are impacted by nitrate who can't drink the water in their wells. And so this one regulator came up with this idea and got folks together. The idea is we'll give agriculture and others, not just agriculture, wastewater treatment plants, food processors, a 35 year extension of from having to meet the groundwater nitrate standard in return for you've got to supply safe drinking water to these folks whose wells are impacted by nitrate. So industry one, we got a 35 year reprieve to figure out the technologies and how we're going to do this and our neighbors around our farms and our communities one in that, you know, within a couple of years they started getting delivered bottled water to their houses. Now there is a cost, but that cost made sense for a business. It's, you know, it's a known. Okay, it's a small amount. Everybody pitches into the kitty. Nobody's arguing about who's contributing what. Everybody pitches in, drinking water gets delivered and for that we get some certainty in knowing what are the regulations. We can, you know, meet this and we're marching forward. It also added some additional kind of drive to address nitrate issues. It's not a 35 years free for all and then we'll figure it out in 35 years. It actually is. There's more going on to solve the nitrate problem as a result of this also. So it's that, you know, and this was just the ability to have a conversation. The regulators started the conversation, brought environmental justice, brought agriculture, brought municipalities, food processors to the table and like, hey, we got this problem. These folks aren't don't have clean drinking water to drink. How do we solve that in a short term? And this ended up being the solution that was a win win for everybody. So it's another example of being innovative. We sit down with the regulators and come up with the program that really does benefit everybody.
• 31:44
  Speaker B: That's an amazing story.
• 31:46
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 31:49
  Speaker B: So what is going to drop is the industry itself to figure out how to find the solution. And if industry finds the solution, then industry benefits from having, you know, you know what I'm saying? It's like, so the farmer figures out how they're going to do it and they come up with a solution, then that farmer can own that, you know, and, and it's another business too. So that, what do you see? You, what you're saying is that it's already moving forward and people are already trying to figure it out and they're not going to wait till you're 34 and then get on it. They're going to do it right now.
• 32:28
  Speaker A: We're on it right now. I mean, this, you know, it passed just a few years ago, three or four years ago, it started to get implemented. Folks have been getting water for two to three years. Once this thing happened, once it was adopted, water had to be delivered fairly quick. And so that is happening. But then there is, and it's a little bit technical, but local nitrate management zones, it's very local in how you're going to solve the nitrate problem. And so it's neighbor to neighbor. I mean, people know what's, you know, what's going on with the neighbor. And then those guys are splitting the cost. And so there is a big drive. It's not the state at this point. It really is the difference of this. The state still has its regulations and that's still happening, you know, kind of separately. But this local thing where local folks are getting together and meeting, they know what the issues are locally, there is kind of this push and pull of like, hey, you're more the problem, you know, than oh, we gotta step up and, and take care of this. People, you know, people are figuring it out. And it's real people. It's not bureaucrats in some distant place. It's your neighbor that's like, hey, why am I paying into this when I know you're a bigger problem than I am? And it's causing folks to have to step up and solve the problem. This is really what's driving our water quality improvements that I'm working with and I'm engaged in. So it gave us a 35 year reprieve, but yet it put the pedal, it put the foot on the gas pedal of getting this thing solved also.
• 33:59
  Speaker B: So they're literally locally identifying where the source of the flu, what's the major source of the pollution and saying, get that. The neighbors are saying, get it cleaned
• 34:09
  Speaker A: up, get it cleaned up. Because the neighbors are on the hook for it. Everybody's pitching in. And the neighbors that are pitching in and aren't the source are saying, hey, you need to clean up your act because we're all in this together. And so it's completely changed the way regulations happen. It's not coming from Sacramento, from some bureaucrat in an ivory tower. It's coming from your neighbor who knows what's going on, who looks over the fence and, you know, is putting some pressure to make things happen.
• 34:37
  Speaker B: Well, and then, and then you don't have like this universal list of every conceivable thing that's ever polluted, you know, groundwater with, with nitrates. Here's all of these things that have happened everywhere, you can't do any of them. You know what I mean? Like, so it's, it's definitely more. It prevents that overreach of, you know, like where we are, we just don't. Our. Our groundwater doesn't really. I mean it's never. Nitrates are. I just can't even imagine. It's just hundreds of years for it to recharge, you know, so that's not gonna be a problem where we are, you know, so it'd be ridiculous for someplace like us to have this list of stuff that would. We can do that here because it's not going to impact our, you know, water.
• 35:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, it is impacting our water. There's no doubt about it. You know, we've got places where folks can't drink the water because they are nitrate impacted. Our groundwater is relatively shallow and very rechargeable. That we're not dealing with fossil water. We are dealing with like I said, every two to three year time span of water getting replenished. And so if you've got something in the soil that it's carrying down, it's carrying down.
• 35:52
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's so interesting. And you guys have, we have a right of capture of course here for our groundwater, which means if you, if you can get to it, it's yours. And you guys have more of a system of like water. Water credits and how many, how much you can use is based off of. Some folks are grandfathered in in that system, right? Like that was their very old.
• 36:19
  Speaker A: So there's surface water and groundwater. So for surface water, we have had a water right system since pretty much the state was founded. I mean it was during the gold mining and water use for gold mining that our water rights, surface water rights system was founded. For groundwater, we had the same as what you guys had. If you owned properly over property overlying groundwater, you had the right to use that groundwater. That changed in 2014. We were in the middle of a drought. We were seeing impacts of over pumping groundwater. And so legislation was passed, you know, kind of driven by a drought, to the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. And that's. It's about using what is available. You know, it's a bank account type of thing. You can use if you make deposits, you can make withdrawals of those deposits. If you don't make deposits, you can't withdraw more than you're depositing. And so there is a lot of pain and there is, you know, it's going to be some challenges to get there. But we do have water. It really is about the policy of managing it. But yeah, that's. The surface water rights thing goes way, way back in. Folks that have those water rights, basically all the surface water rights are pretty much appropriated. The only thing that's available now is flood flows. And so flood flows have become the thing like you mentioned in 2023, there's excess water for everybody. And those flood flows are above and beyond what anybody has the rights to. And so if you can get some of that water and recharge it into groundwater, create credits for yourself. And that's what people are looking for to solve those issues.
• 37:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so, I mean, it really, you guys, in many ways, you are, like us, very dependent on how much it rains. And is. Are you seeing a lot of. Do you see through your lifetime changing in. In weather patterns there like that? You feel like you're. You guys are. Are you getting less water? Is it. Is it raining less?
• 38:20
  Speaker A: Yeah, so not less. But there is a big change that's very important to us. So in reality, and, and this is, you know, coming from my local irrigation district also and talking to their meteorologist, and they've looked at this and things have definitely changed. I wouldn't say less water, but we used to get more snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains that would slowly, over the summer, come down. And we can use that. We are seeing less snow. There's no doubt about it. More of our precipitation is coming as rain. And so, you know, it might be February, March or January. You get a huge rainstorm, you can't really deal with it at that point. It, you know, all at once. And that's where you get flooding. You get, you know, flowing down the rivers and out into the ocean. When it snowed up in the Sierra Nevada mountains and slowly trickled down through June and July, that that water would come down. You could manage it a lot better. And so for that, we are seeing a huge difference. And that was our reservoir, was the snowpack. And we're having to find ways to deal with those changes in that that water is coming much sooner, it's coming much quicker. And how do we deal with that? Just, you know, flood of water and trying not to lose it also. And.
• 39:33
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, right.
• 39:34
  Speaker A: Water storage is an important piece of that.
• 39:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I saw, saw some of that while we were there. People that were trying to find ways to capture that water and, and store it. So 50% of the water is reserved for environmental purposes. So that's one of the things I've heard here And I'm curious about too. Like, how did we come up. How did they come up with that number? Like they. And it's not about one single species of fish, which is like what I have heard, but I know that that can't be.
• 40:07
  Speaker A: No, no. There's multiple salmon, a smelt. We have a little smelt. We have an inland delta, which is unusual here in California, and there's a little smelt that lives there. But there's multiple species of fish that, you know, are at issue there. They haven't decided on 50% necessarily. I mean, they just make policies kind of like disconnected. And that's just what it's kind of settled on. And so water has to free flow out into the ocean. And, you know, we've got a lot of people, we're in an arid environment. It's a tough situation to kind of push pull of what to do with this water. And is that the best use?
• 40:51
  Speaker B: Yeah. Have you read the book Cadillac Desert?
• 40:54
  Speaker A: I have not. I'm aware of it. Very interesting. Actually. I did read it and I actually disagree with, you know, that if I remember correctly, he was saying that, you know, the government putting money into this, into water projects in California was a waste. But if you look at what we've created, the jobs, the income, the income taxes. So his thing was, you know, the government put the money into this. But we've got food, we've got salad, we've got all kinds of food that we grow in California. You've got, you know, income taxes that people are paying today because of investments made by the state 50, 60, 70 years ago. And I think he's changed his tune on that. But it is a very interesting book. And I think it was Mark Twain that made the statement in California, whiskeys for drinking and water for fighting over. Absolutely true.
• 41:43
  Speaker B: Pretty much how it is here. I tell you what, although the alcohol industry, and I'm sure you guys are feeling that too, the wine industry has been so hit so hard by the. I mean, a lot of it is. In fact, I was talking to a friend yesterday that she's like, it's mushrooms, mushrooms and, and marijuana that are part of that hit, you know, so I'm like, we have to change that to be like marijuanas for smoking, I don't know, waters for fighting or something. I don't know.
• 42:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, so huge hit here. We kind of talked about that when we met. A lot of wine growing in California, the Napa Valley. And I'm seeing it around my home. I had a vineyard maybe two Miles from my house, didn't go picked for two years and they finally ripped it out and planted corn. They're just, if you don't have a contract, you are not shipping your grapes.
• 42:39
  Speaker B: Oh yeah. There wasn't a single vineyard last year that wasn't, wasn't just like they just walked on contracts. Yeah, just totally walked on them, you know. And so this year, I mean, it's, it's, it is, it is hard. It's hard. It's a global. It's a global.
• 42:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:58
  Speaker B: You know, so it's definitely, there's definitely a cultural shift. I did see that. There is like, there's some articles and information out there on this Neo Prohibition, I think is what they call it. So it's like a, a real concerted effort to kind of change the narrative around alcohol during COVID So it's a, it's a really interesting kind of, it's a completely different topic than dairies. So I won't go on that rabbit trail, but it's very interesting. Yeah, so we have to find somebody else on that. But, but anyway, I, I, this is so interesting and I, I knew that, that it would be and I, I think that it's important for us. We are living such an all or nothing society and it's so important for us to remember that, you know, not everything is all bad or all good. You know, it's a mixed bag. And, and it's that way in California and there are people that live there that are as conservative or more than parts of Texas. And you know, that it's that same, that same divide, that urban and rural divide just seems to be getting wider and wider. You know, what the priorities are.
• 44:11
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's a challenge. The voters don't know where their food comes from, where their water comes from, or where their power comes from. And we're trying to do our best to produce food in this state with the voter base that, that's their knowledge.
• 44:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's so true. And if you aren't doing things to scare people, you can't get their attention. So it's like you either you gotta find some way to talk to people where you know, they can whether, where they will stop and listen because there's so many voices going on these days. I just, it's amazing. So you mentioned Prop 50. Can you go over that just real quick? I don't want to take too much of your time, but I'd love to hear, hear what all that is entails and what's going to come of it,
• 44:55
  Speaker A: so, and it has a connection to Texas. California decided to gerrymander our election districts for Congress basically to cut the Republicans out, put a few more Democrats in Congress, try to, you know, control the next Congress in this upcoming election. And so a lot of folks in rural California are disenfranchised, you know, got cut out of their representation. We're going to have some urban representative who doesn't know where food comes from representing us. And that's just, that's a reality that we're facing now. It is tied up in litigation, so we don't know, you know, where it's going to go. But the voters did pass it overwhelmingly. It was framed as an anti Trump. So California's most folks are, you know, you say anything, this, you do this to fight Trump, they'll do it, you know, go jump in the ocean. To fight Trump, they'll go jump in the ocean.
• 45:49
  Speaker B: So that's what was with Biden in Texas. Whatever we could do.
• 45:54
  Speaker A: Yes, Prop 50 was, you know, get back at Trump, no kings. And there were no kings protests. And so we made our own king here of our governor in California as a result of that. I don't know why that didn't apply to him, but that's where we're at with that. So it passed by the voters. It's, you know, being legally challenged. We'll see where it goes. Certainly doesn't seem like a fair way to draw districts to try to make one side win or the other and disenfranchised a lot of folks, a lot of folks in California.
• 46:24
  Speaker B: So I don't know, I don't know for sure. Of course it was in response, right to Texas doing the same thing. That's what it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but ours, I think that if I remember correctly that, I mean, I know ours was also challenged, but it, it passed through this. But I, I, I don't, that's where
• 46:46
  Speaker A: it stands kind of in limbo and in court and, and waiting to see. The California one has not been settled. It is in court and we'll see where that goes.
• 46:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it'll be interesting. But I would think that I, I don't know if they'll apply the same, you know, if they'll look at each one of them individually, you know, or they'll say, no, it's, it's wrong in total or this particular case is wrong or this, I don't know enough to, yeah, I have to get somebody in to talk about that too. So anyway, Paul, thank you so much for your time.
• 47:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, sure.
• 47:18
  Speaker B: Thanks for sure to be on, coming on and talking to people in West Texas that don't have any connection to you, but are probably looking sometime in the future at some of the things you guys are dealing with and, and the interesting possibilities of maybe tagging on to some of these. They're not regulations for us, but if there's, if there's markets there and it's worth doing, then like pursuing some of those things like you were saying that the dairies are doing. That's, that's really interesting.
• 47:44
  Speaker A: Yeah, some of that is happening. There are dairies in Texas putting in digesters and getting funding through California's low carbon fuel standard. So.
• 47:52
  Speaker B: Amazing. That's amazing. Okay, well, thank you so much, Paul. And thank you, listeners of the Conservation Stories podcast. We are so grateful for you and we are bringing these folks like Paul to you. So we hope that you find it helpful and we look forward to having you join us again for another episode. Thank you, sir.