Food production along the Colorado River Jan 20

Irrigating the Desert

The Colorado river supplies most  of the water to the cities of Los Angeles and San Diego as all of the other smaller cities in California and Arizona. On top of the the cities it also supplies the water to grow the 1000's and 1000's of acres of vegetables in the desert. 65 % of all the US fruit and vegetables are grown in California and Arizona.  Where we are in Yuma they only get 3.5 inches of rain a year. Most of this area gets less than 10 inches per year and the evaporation rate is higher than the rain fall.

Lake Mead' which  feeds the Colorado river is at approximately 1068 feet, at 1050 feet they enact level 2 restrictions which reduces the amount of water available to this area. They predict that the level will drop another 22 feet in the next few years.   

We walked along this field, and when I tried to pull a plant the earth was so dry and hard that couldn't even break it with my foot. 

The field are watered on a schedule . When watered the systems run for about 1/2 a day and give them a good soaking

There is a very complex system of ditches, canals and dams the moves the water from the Colorado to the fields and cities. The water that goes to Los Angeles and San Diego flows through open canals to get there. 

The water is ordered according to demand by the foot acre. enough water to cover an acre of land 1 foot deep . 43280 cubic feet. Notice how the water is dammed in the channel.

The water is then pumped from the canal into the sprinklers in this case,

These tanks add fertilizer to the water as it is feed into the sprinklers

A crop usually takes about a month to mature, so the piping system has to be installed and removed for each planting.  100's of miles of piping

In some cases they just trench around the field and flood the entire field

This field has about 2 or 3 inches of water on it

I don't have a picture but in some cases once planted they will flood the entire field but the water level will only fill maybe 1/2 of the trench , so the plants will not be under water.