Groups work to widen SGMA engagement

By Caleb Hampton

Makhan Singh had farmed in California for more than two decades when, in 2017, he bought a 300-acre ranch in Madera County. About half the ranch was planted with almonds. The other half was bare. To qualify for a mortgage, Singh agreed to plant almonds on the rest of the land, taking on more debt to make the long-term investment in the new trees.

He had little reason to doubt the business plan. Almond prices were high. And while the land was in a “white area,” entitled to no surface water from an irrigation district, farmers in the San Joaquin Valley had pumped groundwater for generations to sustain the region’s farmland.

Singh didn’t know California had adopted a law in 2014 regulating groundwater for the first time. It was only in 2022, when he received a notice about groundwater fees on his property tax bill, that Singh learned of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or SGMA.

“It was like a hammer to the head,” Singh said of finding out about the law.

As implementation of SGMA ramped up during the past couple years, state leaders received feedback that many farmers were left in the dark. 

“We’ve learned, even within the farming community, how few really small-scale farmers, farmers where English is not their first language, are just now understanding what is going to happen,” California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross said last month.

The pumping reductions needed to achieve sustainability under SGMA are projected to dry up as many as 900,000 acres of farmland in the San Joaquin Valley by 2040, according to a report published last year by the Public Policy Institute of California. The law will alter the way farmers across the state operate. 

Educating California’s roughly 68,000 farmers about SGMA’s complex, locally implemented framework was never going to be simple. Ross said groups such as California Farm Bureau and Community Alliance with Family Farmers, or CAFF, led the way in “trying to anticipate” the need for extensive outreach. 

But despite yearslong outreach campaigns, “it’s hard to catch everyone,” said Alexandra Biering, director of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau. 

In 2021, CAFF conducted a survey of small-scale farmers. Of those who responded, nearly a third said they had never heard of SGMA. In 2022, five water and agricultural organizations published a report analyzing 14 local groundwater sustainability plans. It found none of them required targeted outreach to small-scale or non-English speaking farmers.

“There are a lot of gaps,” said Ngodoo Atume, the report’s co-author and SGMA technical assistance for small farms coordinator at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. 

This year, researchers at California State University Water Advocacy Towards Education and Research, or CSU-WATER, surveyed hundreds of farmers in five counties in the San Joaquin Valley about their perceptions of SGMA. Around 10% of respondents had not heard of SGMA. A third hadn’t attended any SGMA-related meetings or events.

“Logistical barriers and the perception of not being well-represented were the most cited reasons for not participating,” said Anita Chaudhry, professor of economics at Chico State and survey co-investigator. Least likely to be engaged were small-scale farmers, those who worked jobs outside agriculture and farmers who did not belong to an irrigation district.

For Singh, the Madera County farmer, learning late about SGMA may come at a high price. This year, his pumping has been capped at 27.4 inches—less than the amount of water almonds need—with penalties imposed on overpumping. During the next 15 years, that amount will reduce by more than half. 

“It could make it so I can’t irrigate my trees,” undercutting his ability to pay back his loans, Singh said. 

Arshdeep Singh, director of the Punjabi American Growers Group, said dozens of the group’s members face similar circumstances. The long-term outlook has eroded the value of their land—used as collateral to secure loans—impacting their ability to get the yearly financing they need to farm. 

“This is a huge deal for us,” Arshdeep Singh said. “We get growers calling us, saying, ‘Banks are sending us bankruptcy letters.’”

Some of that pain may have been avoided, the PAGG director said, with more proactive outreach. A couple years ago, “our growers did not even know what SGMA stood for,” he said. “They should have been counseled far better than they were.”

Arshdeep Singh has spent much of the past two years on the road, meeting with state leaders, advocating for farmers, organizing workshops and making individual farm visits. He hosts a weekly Punjabi-language radio show on farming issues. 

“All of that effort is to keep the small-scale family growers in business,” he said.

Moving forward, groups working to educate farmers about SGMA said there are examples worth following.

Kassy Chauhan, executive officer of the North Kings Groundwater Sustainability Agency in Fresno County, has earned recognition for her outreach to Hmong and Punjabi farmers. Chauhan said partnering with groups such as PAGG that are already trusted sources in immigrant farming communities has been essential. 

“It does require additional effort and intentionality,” she said of reaching out and engaging non-English speaking farmers. 

This year, with funding from the Department of Water Resources to operate through 2026, CAFF and UCANR began staffing a new program to provide technical assistance related to SGMA to small-scale farmers. The program aims to connect farmers with their local groundwater agencies and provides education, groundwater-level monitoring and legal assistance.

“Farmers generally operate on slim profit margins,” said Catherine Van Dyke, water policy and organizing manager at CAFF. “It’s critical that as they’re thinking about infrastructure investments and crop planning, they have a clear understanding of their water picture.”

As groundwater management tightens under SGMA in the coming years, researchers and farm advocates said outreach will continue to be important.

“It’s a paradigm-changing law,” said Chaudhry, the Chico State professor. “These farmers have never had to do this before. We have to put that in context.”

To register for a Dec. 18 webinar discussing the findings of the CSU-WATER farmer survey, visit http://tiny.cc/SGMA_Farmer_Survey.

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)