Unofficial estimates that some 20,000 acres of local farmland flooded in recent storms threaten a costly road to recovery up ahead.
earlier this month, which pushed the waterlogged state’s stamina to the limit. Meanwhile, Monterey County’s agricultural workers have grappled with it all, waiting and watching as fallout from one deluge bled into the other.
Because most of the Salinas Valley farmland was not in production during January’s floods, the majority of crop impacts were expected hits to the upcoming growing season, set to begin in earnest around March, rather than produce itself. River water flows into Monterey County fields at the Pajaro River Levee breach on Sunday, March 12.
The impacts will vary farm by farm, as will crops lost. There’s also a vast majority of local farmers who will be able to go on with their regular growing season largely unaffected by flooding, barring a couple of weeks of waiting for soil to dry out from rain, Groot explained. John Bramers with Merrill Farms, one of the top growers in the county, said they have experienced losses, but they are still assessing cropland and will not have a clear picture until floodwaters recede. Much of the good farmland is near the Salinas River, but it wasn’t just the flooding river that caused losses. Bramers said many of the river’s tributaries on the eastern side of the valley also flooded and damaged acreage.
Several crops can survive temporary flooding, but many buyers will be skittish about purchasing produce, like strawberries, from acreage that has been flooded, even if the crop is fine, both Bunn and Bramers said.Bunn noted that among the losses are incomes for farmworkers and undocumented workers will not be eligible for unemployment benefits.Some growers are recounting the kinds of things they see washed up onto their cropland, including dead wildlife and livestock.
“If you take the same ratio of new acres flooded today from January and apply that economically to the million in previously assessed impacts…you get a direct crop loss figure from March of another $160-200 million on top of what was already suffered,” he explained. “That puts us at a minimum crop loss figure of half a billion dollars.”
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