From the Fields - Gino Pedretti III

By Gino Pedretti III, Merced County farmer 

We finished cotton harvest the first week of November. We grew about 60% pima and 40% acala. We’re a little above average on yields but not as high as the last couple of years. I think some of that had to do with the colder springtime weather. We’ve been planting wheat and alfalfa and are doing prep work for next year’s cotton fields. We’re hoping to finish bedding before the storm comes.

On the dairy side, production components are coming up as they usually do in the fall. Our components being higher means we get a little higher price, so that’s always nice. Milk production flows are still a little lower than we’d like to see. The heat in September really knocked production back. Breeding is good, and we’re trying to get everything ready and buttoned up before the rain.

On the beef cattle, we have to supplement feed to them before the native grass starts growing. We also sell registered Hereford bulls to commercial cattlemen, and we’re hoping for a good grass season for the guys up in the mountains because they definitely need all that feed. Hopefully, the bull market will start picking up more.

We’re fortunate to be in the Merced Irrigation District. We only had a 1.1-acre-foot allotment but were able to supplement with well water to grow all of our acres. Our groundwater sustainability agency is doing a three-year allotment period where we’ll have a 1.1 acre-foot per year or a three-year average of 3.3 acre-feet of groundwater that we can pump. They’re trying to get farmers to understand that going forward, we’re only going to have so much groundwater we can pump. If it’s dry again in two years, we might have to cut back on some of the acres we farm if we do not get a full supply of surface water. We’re supposed to get some rain in early to mid-December, so hopefully that comes to fruition because we need as much snowpack as we can get.