LISSIE, Texas (AP) — Five generations of Ronald Gertson’s family have tilled the claylike soil of southeast Texas to grow rice, confident that no matter how fickle Mother Nature was, there would be one constant: water to irrigate their crop.
Until now.
For the first time since Gertson’s great-grandfather made his way from Denmark through Kansas to the flat, coastal area south of Houston, his family faces the likelihood officials won’t release water from two Austin-area lakes into the rivers and canals they use for irrigation.
Thousands of farmers in Texas’ rice-producing region are likely to be affected by action taken in response to one of the most severe droughts in state history. With water management agencies implementing emergency plans never used before, the Lower Colorado River Authority is widely expected to announce March 1 that it will not release water to rice farmers in three counties.
“This is the very first time this has happened,” Gertson said. “Rice irrigation was here before LCRA ever existed.”
Texas usually produces about 5 percent of the nation’s rice. Production also is dropping this year in the other five major rice-growing states, including No. 1 Arkansas, as farmers are pressed by rising production costs and dropping prices.
Gertson said he can grow about a third of his rice with groundwater. If he pushes it, he might get about 45 percent of the acres he normally plants. But he and other farmers are already looking at what they can do to cut costs and make it through what’s clearly going to be a hard year.
Related articles
- Unprecedented: Thousands Of Rice Farmers May Not Get Water Due To Drought (huffingtonpost.com)
- Texas Agency Likely to Cut Water to Rice Farms (abcnews.go.com)
- Texas agency likely to cut water to rice farms (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Drought May Cause Shutdown of Texas Rice Production (thinkprogress.org)
