Aerial photos capture the devastation of the California drought that’s shriveling vegetation and drying up reservoirs
Avery Hartmans
Aerial photos capture the devastation of the California drought that’s shriveling vegetation and drying up reservoirs
An aerial view shows former docks on the beach at Salton Sea in California. Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
An extreme drought in California is drying up lakes and reservoirs and straining electrical grids.
Agriculture and tourism could be severely impacted, and wildfires are likely to rage this summer.
Aerial photographs show how much the drought has already devastated California’s landscape.
Boats sit on dry land. Once-lush palm trees are now brown and shriveled. And waterways that were formerly deep and flowing have been reduced to puddles of toxic residue.
This is the landscape in parts of California, which is experiencing a historic mega-drought that is expected to strain the state’s electrical grid and dry up water supplies – water levels are 50% lower than normal at more than 1,500 reservoirs statewide, Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at University of California, Davis, told Morning Brew. Given that 25% of the nation’s food is grown in California, extreme droughts could decimate crops like avocados and almonds.
“This current drought is potentially on track to become the worst that we’ve seen in at least 1,200 years. And the reason is linked directly to human-caused climate change,” Kathleen Johnson, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Irvine, told The Guardian.
On Thursday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked residents to cut back on their water usage by 15% by taking shorter showers and running dishwashers and washing machines more sparingly.
Amid the devastating conditions, Reuters photographer Aude Guerrucci captured aerial photos of the impacts of the drought on California’s landscape. Take a look:
Inside Shadow Lake Estates in Indio, California, an artificial lake glistens despite the scorched landscape surrounding it. Reservoirs and lakes are drying up statewide, with some turning completely to dust with no rain expected until later this year.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: Insider
Elsewhere, dropping water levels have forced houseboat owners to remove their vessels from the water. These boats are anchored in Laka Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in the state, which is at less than 40% of its normal capacity.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: The Weather Channel
This canal in Salton City, California, is almost completely evaporated, leaving being only toxic residue. Salmon that typically swim in rivers and canals like this one between California’s Central Valley and the Pacific Ocean have had to be transported to the ocean via truck as those waterways become shallower and shallower.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: Insider
The dried up bodies of water are visible from space. Here, boat pillars that used to be submerged in the Salton Sea in Southern California are exposed by the receding water levels.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: Insider
Heat waves are sending temperatures into the triple digits. As another heat wave arrives, the Central Valley could see temperatures as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit, while Southern California, where this boat became beached, could reach 117 degrees.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: The New York Times
These heat waves are occurring more often, starting earlier, and continuing later into the year now than they did in the 1960s, according to Environmental Protection Agency records. At the Salton Sea, docks sit on dry land, hundreds of feet from the water.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: Insider
The extra-dry, extra-hot conditions are obliterating vegetation like these palm trees, and taxing power grids. As temperatures rise, people tend to turn up air conditioning units, increasing the potential for rolling blackouts.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: Insider
In Mecca, California, in the Coachella Valley, agricultural fields reside amid a parched landscape. Agriculture is a roughly $50 billion business in California, and the severe drought could hamper the industry for years to come.
Aude Guerrucci/Reuters
Source: Insider
The conditions mean this year’s wildfire season could surpass the record-breaking devastation of 2020. “Much of the western United States will continue the trend of hot and dry weather, much like the summer of 2020,” Brandon Buckingham, a meteorologist at AccuWeather, recently told Insider. “Each and every western heat wave throughout the summer will only heighten wildfire risks.”
Dahlen, N.D., rancher deals with burnt-up pastures and low or empty water holes
Ann Bailey, Grand Forks Herald
DAHLEN, N.D. — Grass crunched under Jeff Trenda’s boots as he walked across a parched pasture, where a herd of about 20 Angus-Simmental crossbred cows gathered under a tree as the temperature neared 90 degrees.
The combination of too much heat and too little rain dried up the pasture grass that usually would be green and lush in early summer. On this day, it’s brown and sparse.
Trenda’s situation echoes across North Dakota’s farms and ranches. North Dakota pasture and range conditions for the week ending Sunday, June 27, were rated 33% very poor, 32% poor, 27% fair and 8% good, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service-North Dakota. Stock water supplies were rated 38% very short, 36% short and 26% percent adequate. No pasture or rangeland in North Dakota was rated excellent and there was no surplus of water in the state, the statistics service said.
In late June, Trenda already was resigned to the fact that this year’s summer grazing season would be greatly shortened.
“If we get to the first of August, we’ll be lucky,” Trenda said. Most years, he would leave the cows in the pasture until mid-October.
Because pasture conditions are poor late last month, half of his herd of 120 cow-calf pairs were still in a corral, where he was feeding them hay and silage.
“We’re trying to hold them in the yard to let the grass get a little longer,” Trenda said. He’s grateful that last winter was mild so he didn’t use all of the hay he baled in 2020.
This year’s hay crop is likely to be scanty, and Trenda figures he’ll get less than a third of the bales he usually does. He is hoping Conservation Reserve Program acres will be opened early for haying. If farmers and ranchers aren’t allowed to cut and bale CRP land until August, the quality of the grass, which generally isn’t good, will be even poorer, Trenda said.
“It’s going to be better than nothing, but it would be a lot better if we could get it earlier, quality-wise,” he said.
Trenda plans to sell 10 older cows in the next couple of weeks to ease pressure on his feed supply. It’s likely he’ll also have to sell some heifers that he wanted to keep and use as breeding stock.
The drought, besides damaging pastures, has resulted in dry or nearly dry water holes, like the one in his pasture east of Dahlen.
“There was water there a week ago when I put the cows in it, but now there’s nothing” Trenda said. The water hole not only was empty, but the top of the ground had cracked into brittle pieces, and the sides of the hole showed no signs of moisture.
Other pasture water holes have a small pool of water but it’s poor quality, and Trenda is concerned his cattle will get sick if they drink from them. He’s hauling water to his herd to ensure they have access to good water. For the past few weeks, Trenda has been filling a 3,000-gallon water trailer, pulling it to the pastures, and then pumping the water into troughs.
Two years ago, Trenda and his neighbors were struggling to cut corn silage because the fields were knee-deep in mud. That year, 2019, farmers banded together and modified manure spreaders and used them to haul their silage through the field.
“It’s a battle. Every day is a battle. You just don’t know what’ s going to happen,” he said.
Farmworkers face dangerous conditions as heat waves scorch Western U.S.
David Knowles, Senior Editor July 8, 2021
With temperatures expected to top 110 degrees in California’s Central Valley, and reach 120 degrees in the southern part of the state, migrant farmworkers will once again be forced to endure dangerous conditions born of climate change.
“Farmworkers really are at the frontlines of climate change,” Leydy Rangel, communications manager for the United Farm Workers Foundation told Yahoo News. “Unfortunately, that’s an issue that will not get better. We know that heat is the No. 1 cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S.”
When a heat dome descended over the Pacific Northwest last month, Sebastian Francisco Perez, a Guatemalan immigrant, was found unresponsive on June 26 at the farm where he had been working in 104-degree heat.
A farmer pulls a wind-felled almond tree with a tractor on an almond farm in Gustine, California, U.S., on Monday, June 14, 2021. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In response, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown directed the state’s workplace safety agency to implement rules designed to protect workers from extreme heat.
“All Oregonians should be able to go to work knowing that conditions will be safe and that they will return home to their families at the end of the day,” Brown said in a statement. “While Oregon OSHA has been working to adopt permanent rules related to heat, it became clear that immediate action was necessary in order to protect Oregonians, especially those whose work is critical to keeping Oregon functioning and oftentimes must continue during extreme weather.”
California’s heat standards — which mandate clean drinking water for workers, breaks and access to shade — were put in place following the 2008 death of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a 17-year-old migrant worker from Oaxaca, Mexico. Unaware that she was pregnant, she died while while harvesting grapes at a farm near Stockton, Calif., in temperatures near 100 degrees.
“Farmworkers have been excluded from many of the rights and benefits that protect other workers partly because they are immigrants and don’t have legal status,” Rangel said.
During last month’s heat dome event in the Pacific Northwest, which killed hundreds of people across the region, the UFW conducted a text-message survey of agricultural workers in Washington state. While the results are still preliminary and have not yet been published, Rangel told Yahoo News that of the 1,875 workers who responded, 56 percent reported experiencing symptoms associated with heat illness while on the job, 26 percent said they were not being provided with cool drinking water and 96 percent said that they believed heat regulations should be improved in the state.
Ben DuVal stands in a field of triticale, one of the few crops his family was able to plant this year due to the water shortage, on Wednesday, June 9, 2021, in Tulelake, Calif. (Nathan Howard/AP Photo)
Washington, California and Minnesota are the only states in the nation that have implemented heat rights for farmworkers, Rangel said, but the standards vary. As yet there are is no federal legislation to protect workers from exposure to excessive heat.
In 2019, the Asuncion Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act was introduced in the House of Representatives. Like California’s heat standards, the bill is named after an agricultural worker who perished while picking table grapes for 10 hours straight in temperatures over 100 degrees. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; and Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., introduced the bill in the Senate this year.
“Workers in California and across the country are too often exposed to dangerous heat conditions in the workplace. In the past year, Californians have faced extreme heat temperatures from wildfires, while trying to navigate the unique challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic — risking the health and safety of our workers,” Padilla said in a statement when the bill was introduced. “This vital legislation will hold employers accountable and ensure workplace protections are put in place to prevent further heat stress illness and deaths from happening.”
The bill’s sponsors noted that 815 workers in the U.S. had been killed due to heat stress injuries between 1992 and 2017, and more than 70,000 workers had been seriously injured.
Pedro Lucas (left), nephew of farm worker Sebastian Francisco Perez who died last weekend while working in an extreme heat wave, break up earth on Thursday, July, 1, 2021 near St. Paul, Ore. (Nathan Howard/AP Photo)
From soaring temperatures to increased exposure to smoke from wildfires, climate change has made the conditions for migrant farmworkers, most of whom have come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America, increasingly dangerous. As California braces for its third record-breaking heat wave of 2021, farmworkers are having to adapt to a new normal.
“Every single year, we keep hitting record after record in terms of temperatures,” Rangel said. “That’s only going to continue. So it’s important that we do something now before we see more deaths. Everyone deserves to be protected when they go to work.”
Australia mice plague: How farmers are fighting back
Australian farmers have been locked in a months-long battle with hordes of mice devouring their crops
There’s a debate in Australia about how to deal with a huge plague of mice across the east of the country. Poison? Regulator says no. Snakes? That could create another problem. So what then? Steve Evans of The Canberra Times goes in search of answers.
A friend of mine still remembers the last plague of mice.
They took over his house in Dubbo in northern New South Wales. They were everywhere, hundreds of them, coming under doors, running loudly in the loft, leaving a revolting stench, not least by dying in inaccessible cavities.
His answer was a brutal trap made of sticky paper. The mice would stick to it and he would drown them in a bucket. He still remembers the horror of the squealing.
In the current plague, all kinds of other ingenious methods have been devised.
Most hardware stores have run short of commercial mice traps, so people are improvising. One fills buckets with water and coats the rims with vegetable oil, placing a peanut butter lure in the water. Mice find the peanut butter irresistible and slip on the edge of the bucket to their doom.
Some farmers have set up water-filled tubs to catch the rodents en masse
People are sharing recommendations.
“Plaster of Paris in flour will kill a mouse eventually but I prefer to see where the mice die and being able to get rid of the carcass,” Sue Hodge, a cleaner in the tiny town of Canowindra, three hours’ drive north from Canberra, told me.
She prefers traps, though they aren’t infallible. She reckons that what she calls “light-footed mice” can still lick a trap clean and get away alive.
Some farmers around here have turned whole shipping containers into traps. The trick is to lure the mice in their hundreds in at one end and funnel them through to the bait and a drowning in a tank at the other end.
But that is arduous and inadequate for the numbers involved, so some favour industrial scale poison.
In response, the government of New South Wales has allocated A$50m (£27m; $37m) in grants for a chemical called bromadiolone which has been described as “napalm for mice”.
Poison is one method being used on fields but there are concerns it is doing more harm than good
The snag is that it poisons pretty well everything else, too and destroys an eco-system.
The stuff kills mice within 24 hours but it stays active for months, and goes into the food chain as predators eat poisoned prey. That has now led the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to decline permits for its use in some places.
Other answers have been offered.
Dr Gavin Smith of the Australian National University says snakes, as natural predators of mice, would be a good antidote. He feels they should be allowed to do their natural work.
The snag with this holistic view is that they ARE doing it – there are reports that snakes are much fatter this year because of the abundance of mice. And the rodents are still multiplying.
Mice have bred like – well, I suppose you could say like rabbits – in Australia recently because of the end of the drought and the torrents of rain which have produced an abundance of crops. Thick crops mean good feeding for mice.
And for snakes.
But there’s another factor – a bit of blowback from agricultural progress.
Land is much more intensively used these days as farming methods have improved. Sowing machines are now so accurate that they can plant seed far more precisely – within a few millimeters, in between last year’s stalks – so the previous season’s old growth doesn’t even need to be cleared away.
This abundant growth is perfect for mice – and for snakes. Progress has a cost.
Why is there a mouse plague?
It started in the spring of 2020 during the harvest season
Ideal weather conditions for breeding and a bountiful harvest followed devastating bushfires and a years-long drought
Mice flourished with plenty of grain to feed on due to diminished populations of predators
Infestations reported at schools, hospitals, supermarkets and family homes
Farmers grapple with the costs of pest control and the destruction of their crops
Some farmers have also blamed damage to machinery on gnawing mice
Ranchers cut cattle herds as drought reduces pasture, forage supplies
Ann Bailey, Grand Forks Herald
DEVILS LAKE — A steady stream of cattle from farms and ranches across North Dakota stepped out of stock trailers and into corrals at Lake Region Livestock Co. on Tuesday as drought conditions forced producers to reduce their herd numbers.
The livestock auction is selling from 800 to 1,000 head of cattle weekly, more than double the number it sold twice a month before the drought.
“We draw from a big area: I-94 to the Canadian border and from Minot to the (Red) River,” said Jim Ziegler, Lake Region Livestock Co. owner.
“In May, they started selling replacement quality heifers they normally would have kept,” said Ziegler, who bought the auction company in 1988. Livestock producers also are selling old cows and cows that don’t have calves, instead of holding them for another year.
Fortunately for farmers and ranchers selling cattle, there is good demand from livestock auction buyers, and prices are decent. At least so far.
“The rest of the United States is glad to have access to what we need to get rid of,” Ziegler said. That’s in contrast to a few years ago, when Oklahoma and Texas were in a drought and the liquidation of cattle herds saturated the market, weighing on prices.
Nine hundred and fifty to 1,150 cattle sold as slaughter animals are garnering an average sales price of about $1,000, and cow-calf pairs are selling for $1,600 to $1,800, Ziegler said.
Joe Bohl, a rancher from Rugby, watched cattle trot through the Lake Region Livestock sales ring on Tuesday, June 29, as he waited to sell the bull he hauled to the auction.
Bohl had a birds-eye view to watch the cattle from his perch about a half dozen rows above the floor of the sawdust-covered ring. Across the ring from Bohl, auctioneer Cliff Sanders handled the bidding while Marsha Duchsherer, auction clerk, recorded the sales.
Bohl sold only a single bull on Tuesday. But earlier this spring, he put up 50 black Angus heifers that other years he would have kept until January and sold as breeding stock.
After carefully building up his commercial herd for the past 40 years by selecting quality bulls and cows, it’s tough to part with the cattle. However, a potential feed shortage left him without another option. Bohl’s pastures are dried up, and the first cutting of his 300-plus acres of grass and alfalfa hayland yielded a fraction of what it usually does.
“Out of all my ground, this time I got a hundred bales,” Bohl said. That’s less than 15% of the number of bales he usually gets.
In dry years, sloughs are a typical Plan B for haying. But even those wet spots have dried up, said Alben Jallo, who sat in the chair next to Bohl at the auction.
“We didn’t drain our sloughs. We knew they would be good in dry times,” said Jallo, who has cows on his farm near Fordville, N.D. This year, though, the grass in the sloughs is dead and only cattails remain.
“In my lifetime, by far this is the driest situation we ever had to deal with,” said Bohl, 65. Only 1.6 inches of rain has fallen on his farm, 15 miles east of Rugby, this year.
“I think we’re in the bullseye of being the driest,” he said.
He has some hay carried over from 2020, but is downsizing his herd because he’s trying to conserve his supply so he will have enough to feed his remaining cattle this winter. Instead of feeding his 2021 calves until February as he usually does, Bohl likely will sell them in September.
Meanwhile, he may be forced to sell more of his cows if the drought doesn’t break soon. The price of feed is just too high to justify feeding the entire herd through the fall and early winter, Bohl said.
“I do have some carryover to get most of my cows through the winter, but I don’t have enough to get them all through,’ he said.
His is not a unique situation in the Rugby area.
“I would say every rancher has had to sell some,” he said.
Jim Ludwig, a cattle producer from New Rockford, N.D., was one of them. He was selling three cows at the sale and is feeding 30 cow-calf pairs because pastures are so short. He hopes for rain that will rejuvenate his pastures, but it looks like that’s not in the forecast, he said.
“The next 30 days (forecast) is for above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation,” Ludwig said.
Bohl and Jallo aren’t just concerned about their only livelihoods, but also the hit their sons will take as a result of selling off some of their cattle. Not only are they sacrificing future income, but they’re watching the genetic traits they’ve worked to build up over the years walk out the sales ring door.
“Those are the guys that are going to be hurt,” Jallo said.
Said Bohl: “That’s the hard part. … 40 to 50 years of genetics.”
Research shows the weed killer, once touted as a miracle farming innovation, may be introducing toxic chemicals into our bodies, water, wildlife, and soil.
This article is the first in our ‘Soil Series’, where we explore complex issues related to agriculture, our environment, and the future of our planet.
Herbicides have been a key — and normal — part of farming practices for years; they’re used to remove the past years’ crop to plant a new one, to form rows in orchards or vineyards, or to control weeds in fields. In fact, you may have sprayed herbicides in your own yard to get rid of weeds in your garden or grass. Sometimes, they’re even used to clear vegetation along train tracks or power lines.
In the 1970s, herbicides were used sparingly on farms; if you sprayed them everywhere, you’d kill weeds and crops. Then, in 1996, Monsanto (which is now part of the pharmaceutical company Bayer), created a new line of genetically modified, glyphosate-tolerant crops. Thanks to this new innovation, you could spray glyphosate herbicides in your field and your crops would remain hardy and thriving. In terms of efficiency and production, it was a huge win for farmers and appeared to be better for the environment than the more toxic herbicides that had been used in the past. All of this meant that glyphosate herbicides — which you can find in the store under the label RoundUp — became the most widely used herbicide in recent history.
But here’s the issue. In 2015, the World Health Organization and International Agency for Research on Cancer both classified glyphosates as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In other words, the human consumption of glyphosate herbicides was being linked to lymphoma and other cancers in a growing body of research. This 2015 announcement began an all-out battle between Monsanto, the farming industry, and researchers.
Research conducted in 2005 by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the UN showed that glyphosate residue can stick around in water and soil for several months after it’s sprayed, which doesn’t bode well for the trickle-down effects on animals and humans. But authorities from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and European Food Safety Authority both concluded in 2017 that glyphosate was probably not giving people cancer. Again, the key word in all of these findings is “probably.”
Research conducted in 2005 by the Food and Agriculture Organization in the UN showed that glyphosate residue can stick around in water and soil for several months after it’s sprayed. Photo courtesy of Twenty20.
Individual people joined the battle over glyphosates, too. During the past five years, Monsanto has been sued more than 9,000 times by people who claim to have developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and other kinds of cancer after exposure to Monsanto’s herbicide. In three landmark cases, verdicts were made resoundingly in favor of the victims. Monsanto continues to maintain that there are no links between human health and glyphosates.
Now, research is starting to look at the impacts of glyphosate herbicides on animals and the environment. At first, RoundUp appeared to be a better option than past compounds; compared to paraquat (which killed anyone who breathed it in or swallowed it, meaning that farmers wore respirators while spraying). So, glyphosate was actually better for animals because it inhibits a nutritional pathway in plants that isn’t present in animals. But the EPA still maintains that animals should be kept away from any plants that have been sprayed with RoundUp; they risk digestive or intestinal problems.
And if glyphosate stays in water for several months, scientists are concerned about the effects of the chemical compound on fish, mollusks, and insects. Specifically, glyphosates appear to affect microorganisms and invertebrates more than larger mammals. In one study, herbicide use affected earthworms negatively; worm reproduction was reduced by 56 percent in the three months after herbicides were sprayed, and the soil also had increased levels of nitrates and phosphates.
In one study, herbicide use affected earthworms negatively; worm reproduction was reduced by 56 percent in the three months after herbicides were sprayed, and the soil also had increased levels of nitrates and phosphates. Photo courtesy of Twenty20.
What can we do about this? In the U.S., federal law requires that glyphosate-based herbicides would only be banned if the costs are greater than the benefits. Basically, if prohibiting the use of these herbicides made corn and soybeans more expensive, this could adversely affect food security, making it an issue that federal law is not willing to tackle.
The EPA has also set limits for the amount of RoundUp that can be used on a wide range of crops (known as “tolerances”), which, for the moment, is keeping the likely toxicity levels at bay. But still, it’s important to be aware of these farming practices so you can protect yourself.
Consider washing your produce with a light (2 percent) saltwater solution to remove most pesticide residue. You can choose to buy organic produce and fabrics; anything with a USDA Certified Organic or Global Organic Textile Standard seal must be grown and produced without the use of herbicides or fertilizers. And investing in a local CSA (community supported agriculture) program can help smaller, organic farms thrive.
Jenni is a freelance writer and editor who focuses on health, psychology, purchasing, and parenting. You can find her work in The New York Times, the REI Co-op Journal, Slate, the Guardian, and beyond. She’s also the co-founder of The Writers’ Co-op, a business-focused membership program and podcast for freelance writers.
In Fashion, Regenerative Farming Isn’t an Impossible Solution
Maura Brannigan
Eco-label Christy Dawn spent two years bringing 24 acres of depleted farmland back to life. Now, the brand is sharing the roadmap of how it did it.
In fashion, buzzwords aren’t always a bad thing. By promoting pillars of environmentalism or ethical labor, fashion swings its own needle toward a more transparent, accountable and equitable industry — theoretically, at least. It’s in the application that buzzwords can get lost.
Unsurprisingly, Patagonia has already been at it for years: The intrepid outdoor retailer started piloting its own Regenerative Organic standard with cotton farmers in India way back when in 2017. Eventually, regeneration received the ultimate big-business co-sign from Kering in January, when the conglomerate co-founded a group called Regenerative Fund for Nature, providing grants to farmers and NGOs developing regenerative practices around the world.
From an ecological perspective, regenerative agriculture is deeply practical. The industrial farming practices that have long provided cotton, wool and hides for our clothing have also depleted the earth itself. By some accounts, the world could run out of topsoil in just 60 years, at which point, growing plush cotton for our jeans will be the very least of our concerns.
But regenerative farming is not an overnight fix. It takes years to not only rejuvenate exhausted farmland, but to rebuild a supply chain that amplifies local farmers and centers their ancestral methods. It’s an investment smaller businesses aren’t always able to make — especially if they don’t know where to begin.
Los Angeles-based eco-label Christy Dawn, which recently debuted a “Farm-to-Closet” regenerative collection of its own, has a better solution. What if, by making everything available online, they could offer a kind of roadmap for all brands, even those outside the fashion industry, to reference and maybe even implement?
Christy Dawn and Oshadi Collective’s regenerative cotton farm in Kanjikoil, Tamil Nadu, India.
“We don’t want to own it,” says Christy Peterson, the designer behind Christy Dawn. “In fact, it’s not even ours to own. This has been happening for years and years before us. We’re a small brand, but our goal is to share this with the world in hopes that others can join in.”
Within fashion, Christy Dawn and its earthy, Californian wares are often said to exemplify a “cottagecore” aesthetic that celebrates a harmonious existence with nature. Christy Dawn isn’t a cottagecore brand in the literal sense in that it exists outside the definition set by teenagers on the internet in the late 2010s. It does, however, embrace the movement’s most basic ideal of romanticizing a more sustainable way of life.
This is as true in the brand’s chicken-coop-chic design sensibility as in its production practices. Since its launch in 2014, Christy Dawn has steadily gained cult-esque recognition for its use of deadstock fabrics, which artisans in Downtown Los Angeles transform into dresses fit for romping through prairie grass. No two garments are exactly alike, an eccentricity of deadstock that the brand famously commemorates by numbering each piece.
By 2018, Christy Dawn was thriving. But it was around this time that Peterson and her husband, Aras Baskauskas, who serves as Christy Dawn’s CEO, started seeing things differently.
“While we grew as a company and as people, too, we realized how toxic the industry was,” Peterson says. “We also realized that by using deadstock fabric, we weren’t necessarily a part of the problem, but we also weren’t part of the solution.”
Peterson and Baskauskas took issue with the intention of the word “sustainability” itself, which Oxford English Dictionary defines as an “avoidance of the depletion of natural resources in order to maintain an ecological balance.” At this rate, is avoidance alone enough? Climate scientists, categorically, say no.
“I have two small boys, and I remember looking around and thinking, ‘I don’t want to sustain this. How will my boys survive? How will there be food or even people left on this planet if we keep sustaining?,'” she says.
Enter regenerative farming, which doesn’t simply maintain that ecological balance, but accelerates it. Rebuilding degraded soil biodiversity can improve the water cycle and even capture more carbon dioxide from the ambient air. If performed correctly, regeneration can literally reverse climate change. Peterson and Baskauskas grew obsessed.
“We buy regenerative food,” says Peterson. “Could we grow fiber for our clothing in a way that could draw carbon down from the atmosphere?”
Christy Dawn’s “Farm-to-Closet” collection.
To help answer this question, Peterson and Baskauskas turned to Rebecca Burgess, the executive director of sustainable non-profit organization Fibershed, and asked if she knew of anyone who may be interested in creating a regenerative farm alongside them. She didn’t, but in a twist of fate or kismet or whatever sparkly, otherworldly force you believe, the universe had other plans.
That same day, Oshadi Studio‘s Nishanth Chopra was listening to a podcast on which Burgess was a guest when he guessed her email address and sent her a note asking if she knew of any brands that could want to partner with him on a regenerative farm in India. “This was maybe five hours later,” Peterson says. “You know when you have an idea, something you just feel all over your body? It was one of those moments.”
Soon, Christy Dawn and Oshadi Studio came upon a plot of nutrient-devoid land in Kanjikoil, Tamil Nadu, India that had once served as a conventional farm. They leased four acres. (Today, that acreage has grown to 24, with plans to develop 35 more by the end of the year.)
Then came the hard part: bringing effectively dead land back to life.
Regenerative farming can be compared to organic farming in that both encourage synthetic- and pesticide-free alternatives. But where regeneration differs is in its focus on biodiversity: A healthy cocktail of microorganisms, insects, plants, animals and yes, even humans, can create such resilient crops that there’s no need for chemical intervention in the first place.
“The farmers used so many creative techniques passed down through the generations,” says Mairin Wilson, Christy Dawn’s director of regenerative practices. In one method, farmers take a cotton pouch full of rice and bury it beneath the oldest tree on the farm, where it sits for a week, after which farmers make a tea out of the rice to spray seedlings. “The oldest tree has the most biodiverse nutrients and abundant mycelial network, so the farmers like to share that abundance with the young cotton plants.”
Meanwhile, for the land, farmers brought in goats to eat the cotton plants and generate enough manure to fertilize the soil, also planting a leguminous cover crop, like indigo or sugar cane, to restore nitrogen, without which a plant cannot grow, metabolize or produce chlorophyll. And because nothing is wasted, Wilson explains, that same indigo is later used to dye the garments while the sugar cane provides sugar that farmers can put in their coffee.
Indigo is first used as a cover crop, then used to dye garments during the production process.
In February 2020, Peterson, Baskauskas and their sons arrived in Tamil Nadu to help harvest the farm’s first batch of cotton. But Peterson is clear: The farmers here are the true protagonists of this story.
“I like to look at this initiative as a story of relationships and intimacy, and being in the right relationship with all the stakeholders involved,” Peterson says. “This isn’t a story of saviorism.”
Fibershed (which partnered with Christy Dawn and Oshadi Studio on the project) strongly emphasizes the importance of regional textile districts, which is why Christy Dawn’s regenerative cotton is ginned, spun, woven and dyed all within six miles of the farm, by farmers who were paid a living wage and able to gain financial independence.
This spring, the brand was finally ready to release the fruits of its labor. Those 24 now-regenerated acres had been able to produce a significant yield of 6,500 dresses, the very first of Christy Dawn’s “Farm-to-Closet” collection. (The second drop arrived in early June, with a third due out July 9.)
Aesthetically, the capsule is nothing if not consistent: Shoppers are able to browse their choice of voluminous maxi dresses or smock-like frocks in a range of ditsy floral prints or rich, solid hues. Garments have been naturally dyed and/or block-printed using a host of regional flora, like wedelia flowers, madder and myrobalan, as well as that aforementioned indigo. The collection also incorporates peace silk, a cruelty-free alternative to regular silk used throughout India.
One day, Peterson aims to move away from deadstock entirely. “The goal is that eventually, we would just be a farm-to-closet company and only use the cotton that the earth provides for us,” she says. “Our projection is that in two years, we can have enough yield to sustain a whole year’s collection worth of clothing, but just from our farm.”
The impact would be considerable: Wilson estimates this initial yield sequestered 66 tons of carbon dioxide, per hectare, which rounds out to just about 22 pounds of carbon per dress.
The brand also has plans outside itself, because environmentally, one regenerative farm on a planet of dying soil is just a drop in a carbon-clogged bucket. Christy Dawn has published its progress on its website, and is open to forming a co-op with like-minded brands that share its values. Peterson warns interested parties, though: Regeneration isn’t like other buzzwords — it’s time-consuming and expensive, yes, yet the return is far greater than any investment, if the fashion industry decides to take the plunge.
“I know it’s an interesting thing that a fashion brand could be wanting to affect change while asking someone to buy a product,” says Peterson. “But we don’t even care if you buy a dress. This is just the vehicle through which we’re sharing a seed to be planted in you to create change. If we can do that while making dresses, then what a beautiful gift.”
Driving the news: The Department of Agriculture has responded by launching an extermination campaign against grasshoppers, the largest since the 1980s. Authorities have started to spray thousands of square miles with pesticide to kill immature grasshopper before they become adults.
But, but, but: Some environmentalists worry the pesticides could kill other insects, including grasshopper predators and struggling species such as monarch butterflies, AP notes.
The USDA said it would spray rangelands in sections to prevent other insect wildlife from being affected by the pesticide.
State of play: The USDA released a grasshopper hazard map that shows some areas have more than 15 grasshoppers per square yard in Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska.
Why it matters: “Left unaddressed, federal officials said the agricultural damage from grasshoppers could become so severe it could drive up beef and crop prices,” AP writes.
What they’re saying: “Drought and grasshoppers go together and they are cleaning us out,” Frank Wiederrick, a farmer in Montana, told AP.
The rodents gnawed away at circuitry and ceiling panels in Wellington Correctional Center, and have prompted a ten-day evacuation of 200 staff and 420 inmates to other prisons, Peter Severin, the Corrective Services commissioner, told ABC News.
“The health, safety, and wellbeing of staff and inmates is our number one priority, so it’s important for us to act now to carry out the vital remediation work,” he said.
The prison staff must quickly clear out dead and decaying mice from walls and ceilings or risk a mite infestation afterward, he added.
The state’s prison authority said the center’s operations would be reduced for four months while it is being restored, according to the BBC.
New South Wales, in particular, has suffered from the largest influx of mice in what has been described as a “biblical plague” in eastern Australia.
According to ABC News, millions of mice have poured into farming estates, ravaged grain stocks, invaded schools and homes, and spread disease with excrement and carcasses.
As the Wellington Correctional Center re-stabilizes itself, the prison will look into ways to safeguard its grounds from future mice plagues, said ABC News.
California’s Drought Is So Bad That Almond Farmers Are Ripping Out Trees
Elizabeth Elkin
(Bloomberg) — Christine Gemperle is about to do what almond farmers fear the most: rip out her trees early.
Water is so scarce on her orchard in California’s Central Valley that she’s been forced to let a third of her acreage go dry. In the irrigated areas, the lush, supple trees are dewy in the early morning, providing some relief from the extreme heat. Walking over to the dry side, you can actually feel the temperature start to go up as you’re surrounded by the brittle, lifeless branches that look like they could crumble into dust.
“Farming’s very risky,” said Gemperle, who will undertake the arduous process of pulling out all her trees on the orchard this fall, replacing them with younger ones that don’t need as much moisture. It’s a tough decision. Almond trees are typically a 25-year investment, and if it weren’t for the drought, these trees could’ve made it through at least another growing season, if not two. Now, they’ll be ground up into mulch.
“I don’t think a lot of people understand just how risky this business is, and it’s a risk that’s associated with something you can’t control at all: The weather,” she said.
It’s a stark reminder of the devastating toll that the drought gripping the West will take on U.S. agriculture, bringing with it the risk of food inflation. Dairy farms are sending cows to slaughter as they run short of feed and water. Fields are sitting bare, because it’s too costly to irrigate the rows of cauliflower, strawberries and lettuce that usually flourish in abundance. Meanwhile, fieldworkers are being put into life-threatening conditions as the brutal temperatures increase the risk of heat stroke and dehydration.
The famed farming valleys of California were once romanticized as an Eden for the Joad family escaping the Oklahoma dust bowl in John Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath.” The state’s more than 69,000 farms and ranches supply over a third of U.S. vegetables and two-thirds of its fruit. The annual almond harvest accounts for about 80% of global production. But after years of what seems like permanent dryness, some growers are starting to wonder if Steinbeck’s story will start playing out in reverse, with unstoppable drought posing an existential threat to the future of agriculture in the state.
“Are we going to be able to farm here?,” asks Sara Tashker, who’s worked at Green Gulch Farm just outside of San Francisco for almost 20 years. This is the first time she’s ever seen the reservoirs the farm depends on to water its lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, not fill with winter rain.
With so little water, there was no way around planting less, so total acreage got cut by about 25% from last year. And the crops are getting put into the ground closer together, in about half the typical amount of space. It’s an attempt to make the root structure denser and keep moisture in the soil. The limited spacing means fieldworkers are having to cultivate by hand, instead of using tractors. But in the midst of an early heat wave, Tashker can’t help but wonder if the new methods will be enough.
“Is there going to be enough water? Are we going to be able to adapt? Is it going to be too dangerous to live in these fire ecosystems? Is this just going to become too expensive?,” she said.
Of course, this isn’t just a California problem. Climate change is here and it’s wreaking havoc on food production across the world. This year in Brazil, the world’s biggest exporter of coffee, sugar and orange juice, the rainy season came and went with very little rain. Water reserves are running so low that farmers are worried they’ll run out of supplies that are needed to keep crops alive over the next several months, the typical dry period. In recent years, drought has plagued wheat growers in Europe and livestock producers in Australia, while torrential downpours flooded rice fields and stands of palm oil trees in Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia.
All told, about 21% of growth for agricultural output has been lost since the 1960s because of climate change, according to research led by Cornell University and published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Meanwhile, this year’s production problems come at a time when the world is already saddled with the highest global grocery costs in about a decade and hunger is on the rise. Extreme weather is combining with the economic shocks of Covid-19 and political conflicts to leave 34 million people on the brink of famine, United Nations’ World Food Programme has warned.
For California, “over time, unless something changes in regard to weather patterns, ultimately it’s gonna be fewer, probably larger farming operations controlling most of the water,” said Curt Covington, senior director of institutional credit AgAmerica Lending LLC, one of the largest non-bank agricultural lenders in the U.S.
“And the price of those commodities would typically increase,” he said.
California gets the vast majority of its precipitation during the winter months, when the state’s mountains get blanketed with snow and rain fills the reservoirs that farms and hydropower plants depend on. This past winter, the moisture never came. From May 2020 to April 2021, the state posted its driest-ever 12-month period.
Meteorologists have a saying: Drought begets drought. When land is dry, the sun’s energy is focused on heating the air instead of evaporating water. That raises temperatures, which leads to more dryness, which allows drought to spread even further. That’s why the brutally parched conditions of this year could spell additional trouble down the road, especially if next winter isn’t a wet one.
“It’s been a couple of years of pretty solid drying, and so the whole region out there, from a fruit and vegetable perspective, is at risk,” said Drew Lerner, president of World Weather Inc. in Kansas.“ A lot of pressure is going to be put on for better rainfall during the winter next year, in order to prevent a larger crisis.”
California’s drought could have significant impacts on both the production and price of crops, according to analysis by Gro Intelligence. Tree crops, like almonds, avocados and citrus, are particularly vulnerable to dry conditions. It’s still too early to say with any certainty how much prices could increase, but avocados might be providing an early warning sign — they’re already up about 10% from last year. That could mean that prices for nuts and even products like almond milk could increase down the road if harvests continue to be constrained.
Meanwhile, almond farmer Gemperle is ready to invest $250,000 on a “Cadillac” water system that will more efficiently irrigate about 92 acres of her orchard. Between that and the younger trees getting planted, she sees an opportunity for water savings on her farm, at least for a few seasons.
Still, it’s unclear when she’ll recoup the cost of the new water system, especially if almond prices stay low. A massive crop last year has kept the market well supplied.
Farming “has never been riskier,” Gemperle said in an email.
“But farmers are tough, they are survivors and they don’t like to give up. They can’t, farming defines them, it’s in their blood.”
