USDA announces funding to help California during drought

Jun 25, 2015

Upwards of $210 million being invested

As California continues to fight through some of the worst drought on record, the United States Department of Agriculture is coming to the state’s aid with a multi- million dollar announcement.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, along with Interior Deputy Secretary Mike Connor and John Laird, California Secretary for Natural Resources announced a partnership to help in the conservation and restoration of the Sierra-Cascade California Headwaters – which provides about 25 million Californians with drinking water and irrigates farms in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.

The investment breaks down as follows:

Approximate total of $210 million from the USDA’s Forest Service (FS), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Interior Department, State of California, non-profit organizations and private landowners.

Along with the partnership, the USDA is making $13.7 million available to California farmers and ranchers through the NRCS’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), and another $6 million for communities struggling with drought via the Emergency Community Water Assistance Grants.

"As several years of historic drought continue to plague parts of the Western United States, there is a significant opportunity and responsibility across federal, state and private lands to protect and improve the landscapes that generate our most critical water supplies," said Vilsack. "Healthy forests and meadows play a key role in ensuring water quality, yield and reliability throughout the year." Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack

The government’s investment will work together with California Governor Jerry Brown’s Water Action Plan – that will see about $81 million devoted to restoring the ecosystem in the Sierra Nevada.

In May, USDA set aside $21 million through EQIP for farmers and ranchers to use scientific methods to come up with ways to minimize the drought’s impact on a short and long-term scale. Of the original amount, $13.7 million is being reserved specifically for farmers.

Join the conversation and tell us your thoughts about the government’s investment into helping California battle its ongoing drought.

Video: Treating Sheep For Lice!

We are treating our sheep for lice today at Ewetopia Farms. The ewes and rams have been rubbing and scratching, plus their wool is looking patchy and ragged. Itchy sheep are usually sheep with lice. So, we ran the Suffolk and Dorset breeding groups through the chutes and treated them all. This treatment will have to be done again in two weeks to make sure any eggs that hatched are destroyed too. There was a lot of moving of sheep from pen to pen around the sheep barn but by all the hopping and skipping the sheep were doing, I think they enjoyed the day immensely! We hope you do too!