New programs look to clean up water for farming

 Few specialty crops growers like me ever see money from the Farm Bill, the nearly $300 billion, five-year legislation that provides federal funding mostly for crop supports, food stamps and nutrition programs. Since the Great Depression, the Farm Bill's crop supports have benefited primarily Midwest corn, soybean and wheat growers, and to a much lesser degree, California dairy, rice and cotton producers.

Fortunately, this year specialty crop farmers in the northern San Joaquin Valley are getting a bigger share of the Farm Bill pie to support something everyone in the West is focused on: water.

However, the money isn't being spent on building dams or expensive canals; it's to help cash-strapped specialty crop growers and dairy producers who farm next to rivers and streams to make costly improvements to their fields, leading to better management of irrigation and drainage water.

 For the first time, specialty crop farmers in the northern San Joaquin Valley who make these improvements -- which benefit the public by improving water quality -- will split the bill with Uncle Sam through two new programs in the 2009 Farm Bill championed by Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture, and Rep. Jim Costa, D-Bakersfield, a member of the House Agriculture Committee's Subcommittee on Conservation.

Under these new programs, the Agricultural Water Enhancement Program and Cooperative Conservation Partnership Initiative, San Joaquin specialty crop growers are eligible for $2.6 million in annual funding over the next five years.

The funds will help make changes to farm fields that lessen water quality impacts from irrigation and storm drainage. These changes are expensive in the best of times and include practices such as installing sediment basins and irrigation tailwater recirculation systems, planting native shrub hedgerows for integrated pest management, and creating riparian buffers for erosion control.

Such practices help capture runoff that can carry pesticides, fertilizers, heavy metals, salts and sediment to creeks and rivers in the northern San Joaquin Valley.

The two new programs, which are administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service, are designed to encourage and reward cooperation among stakeholders in achieving conservation objectives, while also benefiting production agriculture.

The partnerships formed to push for the funding for producers in the northern San Joaquin Valley are quite an achievement in themselves because they include an unlikely mix of local agricultural groups, including the Coalition for Urban Rural Environmental Stewardship (CURES) and Lodi Winegrape Commission, environmental organizations such as Environmental Defense Fund, resource conservation districts and watershed coalitions, including the East San Joaquin Water Quality Coalition and Westside San Joaquin River Watershed Coalition.

These new initiatives hold tremendous promise and will jump-start many similar projects: multi-stakeholder efforts that ensure growers get the assistance they need to actively address local, state, and regional conservation priorities. And although the funds will not solve California's perennial water deficits, they will result in improvements in water quality that will be realized for decades to come.

Klassen grows pomegranates, watermelon and sweet corn on 60 acres in Fresno County and is the executive director of Coalition for Urban Rural Environmental Stewardship.