SACRAMENTO – (INT) – The impact of the ongoing drought is coming into sharp focus for California’s vast farming industry.

Last year, California’s farms and ranches received approximately $47 billion for their output. This represents a decrease of nearly 17 percent compared to 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2014’s comparable receipts were $56.6 billion. That’s a revenue loss of $9.6 billion in a single year. That equates to erasing the total sales of eBay.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) added these comparisons:

· CDFA reported that California lost 5,300 family farms and ranches between 2010 and 2014. The 2014 Crop Report stated that California had fewer operations in 2014 than at any time since 2007.

· Cultivated and grazed agricultural acreage dropped 700,000 acres since 2007.

· U.C. Davis estimates that 78,800 acres were idled in 2016 due to the California drought.

· A UC Davis’ study author, Daniel A. Sumner, confirms an additional 461,000 acres were left unplanted due to federal and state regulatory diversions of water from farms or for other man made reasons unrelated to low natural precipitation or short water supplies. “The rest really are due to long term regulations (or other factors in some cases),” said Sumner.

Story Date: November 6, 2016