California situation, page-17

There have been a few updates on the situation in California in recent days from some local news websites. On the whole, it does appear increasingly likely that the floods and storms might have had a fairly substantive impact on agriculture in parts of the state.

I think this local news website gives a good overview: it has a slide show of photos submitted by locals showing the extent of the flooding in Northern California.

Apparently, the flooding inundated millions of acres of farmland. Apart from the direct impact of the flooding on crops, all those swamped orchards and washed out country roads must have caused some headaches for beekeepers who were operating in the area during the important almond bloom period.

As I understand, last year a large number of almond trees were planted across California (I think the figure may have been as high as 70,000). You would assume that those small, one year old almond trees would be particularly at risk from the deluge of water in California.

I noticed that there was a mention of this in a local Californian website last week: a farmer, Joe Valente, who had lost a recently planted orchard:

Joe Valente, a manager for Lodi-based Kautz Farms, said he stands to lose an almond orchard his farm planted last year in Thornton. The young trees flooded three times in a month.

"They're about year-old trees," Valente said. "They're about 6-7 feet tall, and the water depth in this area has been about 5 feet deep for quite a while now. I'm talking well over 40 days."

Typically, almond trees would be blooming now, he said—but the flooded trees aren't, which he called "a bad sign that more than likely they're not going to make it."

It will probably be a few more weeks before the full extent of the damage is known, but based on some of the reports it doesn't look good.