KERMAN, Calif. — Salvador Parra Jr.’s earliest childhood memories are riding on a cotton picker with his dad.
“I became interested at a young age in farm management by watching my dad and how he, with a team of 100 employees, grew over 22,000 acres of cotton,” he said. “Today, I work for the same company (Burford Ranch) as the director of farming.”
The sprawling 10,500-acre Fresno County operation grows alfalfa hay, alfalfa seed, almonds, silage corn, wheat, fresh market onions, walnuts and winegrapes.
“Sal is an innovator on the farm, constantly looking for tools to utilize every input as efficiently and effectively as possible,” said Ryan Jacobsen, CEO of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. “Like so many farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, water is always on his mind, and he is constantly adapting to keep their farm viable during this time of volatile water allocations.”
Parra was a guest on the “Almond Journey” podcast recently, sponsored by the Almond Board of California. He discussed instruments such as dendrometers in almonds and helping manage water irrigation and fertilization on the Ranch’s 2,800 acres of almonds. A dendrometer is a sensor that measures the growth of a plant such as an almond tree and whether it needs irrigation.
Using the instruments, “We’re giving the trees what they need but only when they need it,” he said during a video presentation. “Now we’re seeing increased yields with less water use.”
Alfalfa hay and almonds take the most water. Implementing technology to manage and increase water use efficiency has helped reduce irrigation by 20–30%.
Boosting soils with microbes to buffer salts also improves root health.
“We have been dealing with water scarcity and drought since 2008 so drought is definitely an issue. It is the biggest problem California farmers now face,” he said. “We are part of the Westlands Water District and so we have had to adapt and become innovative about how we use water.”
One hundred percent of the crops are grown under drip irrigation or micro sprinklers, including the alfalfa hay and silage corn.
The implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will have a tremendous impact on the farm and reduce the number of acres that are farmed.
According to the state Department of Water Resources, the state law, passed in 2014, requires local Groundwater Sustainability Agencies in high- and medium-priority basins to implement Groundwater Sustainability Plans. Those plans provide a “roadmap” for the basins to reach long-term sustainability, according to the agency.
Parra says another challenge for California farmers is higher input costs.
“Major inputs such as water, labor, fertilizer, electricity and chemicals have increased exponentially,” he said. “Drought and water scarcity have made water very expensive, even for those who pump well water.”
Labor costs have doubled in the last 10 years and will continue to increase because of the shrinking labor pool, he said.
Fertilizer prices have increased in some cases by 300%, and the costs of certain crop protection chemicals have doubled, again because of the lack of availability.
To survive, farmers will need to become more efficient with all of their inputs, he said.
“California continues to have the world’s best soils and climate to produce anything, but the next couple of years we will unfortunately see many farms go out of business due to costs,” he predicted.
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