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The persistent drought is putting a strain on Bay Area food providers. Lack of rain and the puny snowpack this winter is leading to a fourth year of drought for California. The result could be fewer fruits and vegetables available for Mountain View’s neediest residents.
No rainfall and warmer-than-average temperatures in January left the state with a “dismally meager snowpack,” according to the California Department of Water Resources, and that has officials from Second Harvest Food Bank concerned. If the drought persists, some produce will vanish from the shelves of local food pantries, and the food bank may have to stretch its own pocketbook to buy food from out of state.
Second Harvest Food Bank provides more than a million pounds of food each week to about 250,000 people in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. It provides food — mostly produce — to Community Services Agency, which helps to feed the thousands of people in Mountain View, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills who struggle to make ends meet. About 1 in 30 people in the area rely on CSA’s food pantry services, according to the CSA website.
“Many of the families we work with are struggling,” said Cindy McCown, vice president of programs and services at Second Harvest Food Bank.
Expenses could rise
The drought threatens to interrupt the supply chain of produce from areas like the Central Valley and Salinas in a number of ways, according to McCown. Second Harvest receives produce from food suppliers that considered unpalatable by retail stores — either because it’s cosmetically flawed or is near the end of its shelf life — for free. All Second Harvest has to do is pay for the shipping.
“We receive the food for pennies on the pound, which is significant for us,” McCown said.
But as the drought looms, the amount of produce is expected to dwindle, and McCown said the worry is that retailers will start buying up the produce normally seen as unfit. Second Harvest will likely be forced to either pay more for California produce or buy from other states like Texas, Arizona or Oregon, McCown said, at an additional cost to Second Harvest of millions of dollars.
Some produce may not end up getting grown at all. Among the produce on the chopping block this year are row crops, including cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, watermelon, onions and tomatoes. Some Central Valley farmers say they won’t be planting row crops this year because of the higher demand for water, according to a press release by Second Harvest Food Bank.
McCown said Second Harvest tries to have staple items like onions and tomatoes year-round, and said it’s importantto make it available in the ethnically diverse communities it serves. Unfortunately, if the food supplies run thin, she said people will be more likely to go out and purchase less healthy food to save money.
“Two-thirds of our clients said they bought cheap, sometimes unhealthy, foods to stretch their dollars,” McCown said. “Families, many times, are working and can afford housing, but don’t have a lot of money left over for things like food.”
While there’s not much Second Harvest can do but wait and see what the crop yields look like later this year, McCown said people can help by either donating to Second Harvest financially, or contributing their own backyard produce. She said people can bring their produce to either the food bank or to one of their nonprofit partners, like CSA.
Dry winter keeps the drought going
Though the Bay Area was hit with significant rainstorms in early February, it didn’t do much to alleviate drought conditions, according to a report by the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Because the rainstorms were subtropical, most of the precipitation came down as rain, rather than snowfall at higher elevations. This did little to bolster the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and Cascades ranges, which has dwindled down to 20 percent of the average at this time of the year, according to Cindy Kao, Imported Water Unit Manager at the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
Prior to the storms earlier this month, San Jose precipitation gauges recorded no rain at all for the new year, despite January being historically the wettest month for the state, the report said.
McCown said Second Harvest officials have to wait and see how the drought conditions will affect the growers and crop yields this year. While the state is off to a bad start, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, it’s still possible for some rainfall to bring the state back up to speed, according to Vanessa De La Piedra, groundwater monitoring and analysis manager at Santa Clara Valley Water District.
“Obviously we had a very dry January and February (didn’t) turn out quite as we hoped, however there’s still a lot of big uncertainty on how the rest of the rainfall year will play out,” Piedra said at the Feb. 24 board meeting. “Were hoping for a miracle March and awesome April here.”
Email Kevin Forestieri at kforestieri@mv-voice.com
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