Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
September 25, 2008
5. Agencies, Programs, People
IID tweaks fallowing plan
The Imperial Irrigation District is retooling portions of its fallowing programs after miscommunication led to landowners fallowing land that tenant farmers had intended to use.
“Then there’s suddenly a tenant that doesn’t have the farmland to farm,” said Ralph Strahm, chairman of the water conservation advisory board.
Strahm, along with Tina Shields, assistant IID Water Department manager, presented the problem at Tuesday’s IID board meeting, where the board approved a series of changes designed to alleviate the problem.
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Shields said in some cases, farmers were under the impression the landowner would renew their farming lease, but instead the landowners were deciding to end the lease and fallow the land without notifying the farmer. Shields said some tenants even had crops in the ground before they were told a plot of land was going to be fallowed.
“We were aware of sporadic instances” where communication failed between farmers and tenants, Shields said. She added while the problem wasn’t widespread, it occurred often enough that the IID and the water conservation advisory board decided it needed to be addressed.
Shields said there had been one alfalfa farmer in particular, who didn’t have a long-term lease in place and was operating on an informal agreement with his landowner that his lease would be renewed each year. Instead, the landowner told him that he had gotten a fallowing contract with the IID, and the farmer had to match what the IID was paying for fallowing the land, or leave.
After the meeting, Strahm said part of the problem stemmed from the IID essentially competing for farmland with the farmer, and that the competition caused the price of land to go up beyond what some tenants were able to pay.
Shields said the IID needs to fallow a certain amount of land each year in order to fulfill water transfer requirements for the Quantification Settlement Agreement.
Recently farmers have been pushing to farm as much as possible to take advantage of the high market prices for crops. This led to tension between the tenant and the landowner when they decided on different plans for the land.
Shields said the goal with the changes was to reduce the tension.
Traditionally, Shields said, the IID would send out solicitations asking for landowners to send in their fallowing bids starting in December, and the fallowing would start in July and run until the following June.
While both the landowners’ and tenants’ signature are required on the final contract, the fallowing contract process can take up to six months in some cases, leaving farmers little notice before their signature is required on the contract.
“It caught some of the tenants off guard,” Shields said.
The IID board agreed to inform tenants as soon as an application is turned in if their signature wasn’t on it.
“It starts communication earlier in the process,” Shields said of the change after the meeting.
Other changes to the fallowing process include starting the solicitations now, so that contracts can be wrapped up by February instead of May or June. This gives tenants time to react if a landowner does not renew their lease and opts for fallowing instead.
Finally, the IID will consider shifting the timeline for fallowing entirely, but a pilot program wouldn’t start until 2010.
Strahm said not all crops follow the July-June schedule set by the fallowing program. Instead, fallowing contracts could start in January and run through December along with the July-June contracts. Strahm said there could also be two-year contracts, which would create more stability in which plots of land are farmed or fallowed.#
http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2008/09/25/local_news/news03.txt
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