California’s Reservoir Levels Are High. Why Are Farmers Still Struggling?

California reservoirs are now at 114% of their historical average. It means that we have more water this year. Our guest today is Canon Michael, who operates about 10,000 acres of farmland in Central Valley. He also has served in multiple roles in water boards in California. He's here to tell us what's happening with water and farmers. Do we have enough water for everyone? And is the drought finally over? Just because the reservoirs are full doesn't necessarily mean that there'll be a lot of water available for farmers. It's not clear at this point how much in 2026 will be allocated for agriculture. I'm Siamak Khorrami, welcome to California Insider. Canon, it's great to have you on, welcome. Thank you so much, it's a pleasure to be here. It's exciting news that now the reservoir water levels are 115% of capacity. What are your thoughts on this? This must be exciting. It's actually really interesting because this is actually the third year that we've had above average hydrology. So 23, 24, and 25 have been all three consecutive years of above average hydrology. So we don't quite know what 25, 26 is gonna bring. You know, we just are starting our water year. We've already had quite a bit of rain already. So things look very good from starting of the year, but that doesn't always translate into a lot of extra water supply for agriculture, but we can talk more about that. Can you tell us what does this mean for the agriculture space? Are you guys gonna get more water? That's a good question, and it's complicated because California relies on a very intricate water system, and it was put together really in the 19, from the 1930s to the 1970s is sort of the infrastructure that we built. The dams, the canals, the aqueducts, the pumping systems. So all those things play a role in how we manage our water. So right now, things look like we should get a decent amount of water for farming, but because of regulations in the central part of the, in the delta where the water all comes together, that's where sort of the hub of California's water system is. And that's where water needs to be moved from the northern part of the valley to the southern part of the valley. And in that is where we have a lot of regulations around water quality and also the protection for fish species like the delta smelt and the salmon. So just because the reservoirs are full doesn't necessarily mean that there'll be a lot of water available for farmers, but the conditions right now look positive that farmers should get some allocation, but it's not clear at this point how much in 2026 will be allocated for agriculture. What was it like for you guys in 2025? You got 55%, something like that? The Central Valley Project federal system. So there's a federal system and a state system. So again, California water is pretty complicated because you have an interplay between the federal government and the state government. So on the federal project, growers ended up with 55%. They started actually with a pretty good allocation. So what you get in the beginning of the year, the Bureau of Reclamation who deals with the federal side of the water projects, they will come out with what they call an initial allocation. And that's sort of a conservative estimate of what they think they can deliver because they don't want to tell people they can deliver too much or then farmers will plan incorrectly and they might plant too many things and then not have the water to finish those crops. So usually the initial allocation is a conservative amount and then they come up with a final allocation. The challenge becomes farmers need to make decisions early in order to know what to plant. You have to buy the seed, you have to get financing from your bank. There's a lot of things that you need to do January, February before you even plant the crop to be ready. And if you don't know how much water you're gonna be allocated, it makes it very hard to make decisions. So that initial allocation is very important. So even if you say like this last year we got 55%, that final allocation didn't happen until like the May, June timeframe, which is often after a lot of the decisions have already been made. And farmers wanna be conservative because again, they can't plant too many crops if they don't have the water to sustain them all the way through the harvest. So it's a challenging situation. 2023 growers got a full 100% allocation, which has become very rare. But 2024, they got 50%. Last year, they got 55%. So even though the reservoirs were full and the hydrology was very good, because of regulations, they don't get 100% of the allocation or they get an initial allocation that isn't very much and they might get a little bit more later, but it's not in time to make decisions. You can't plant tomatoes if you don't know how many acre feet of water you're gonna have to grow the crop, so. As someone reporting on California's economy and policies every week, unfortunately, I see the middle class shrinking in California. Some of it has to do with our policies. And there is another side to this that we are facing major inflation here and across the country. Unfortunately, the dollar has lost 10% of its value just this year to date. That's why more and more people are turning to real assets to protect their financial future, like physical gold and silver from American Heart Fault gold. Unlike paper assets, these tangible investments can't be controlled or devalued by inflation or bad policies. 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And they also have to be released for flood protections. The best thing to happen is to get a lot of snow because the snow is like the bank account that slowly depletes. From the spring to the summer, we're getting the snow melt that then helps kind of measure out the water supply. But ultimately, most of the water falls in the northern part of the state, and most of the land mass and the people live in the southern part of the state. So we have to use those pumps in the Delta to move the water through the California Aqueduct and through the Delta Mendota Canal, or the two big canals that move the water south. But that's where all the regulations are is in the middle in the Delta, and those have to do with water quality and they have to do with species protection. So it makes it difficult to transmit the water from the north to the south. How much value does this water have for you guys as the farmers? I mean, it drives all the value really for farms because without water, we can't function. So it's important to talk, when we talk about water, there's surface water, which is the water that falls annually from the sky and that is transmitted in the canals. And then there's groundwater, that's water that has been stored underneath, in the aquifers that we have underneath the ground. So for many years, there hasn't been any regulation on how much groundwater is pumped. So if the projects can't deliver surface water or if it's a drought, the farmers have had the ability to tap into the groundwater as sort of a secondary lifeline. So in 2014, the state of California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, or you'll hear people refer to it as SGMA, S-G-M-A. So that now is restricting how much the growers can extract from the ground. So by the 2030, 2040, many growers in many areas will not be able to use much of the groundwater, which was really the lifeline that they had in the past. And so because of that, there's some studies that have been done. UC Berkeley did a study in 2020 that showed about a million acres of land in the seven counties south of the Delta will probably come out of production. So about a quarter of the land south of the Delta will not be farmed by about 2030, 2040. Because of the groundwater? Because of restrictions in the Delta, because of not being able to move the surface water, and because also at the same time, the farmers can't use the groundwater. Is there enough groundwater? Is it getting recharged? So I think there was an issue probably with farmers taking too much groundwater and so that's part of the reason why they had the law come into place. But the two things work together. So if you deliver the water from the surface, that replenishes the groundwater. If you stop delivering water from the surface because of things like regulation, there's not as much recharge. So it sort of works in both ways. So as the restrictions of surface water have limited how much water comes to the Central Valley, then at the same time, the farmers have been taking too much groundwater because they're short of water to irrigate their crops that used to come from surface water. So the two things sort of work in tandem, but because it doesn't look like the regulations are gonna be decreased, there still are the concerns of the species, there's still the concerns for outflow from the Delta, it doesn't look like that's gonna get much better. People are trying to work on it improving, but if it doesn't improve, the land has to come out of production because the law is now saying the growers won't be able to pull the water from the groundwater. How many years do you need for this to replenish? If you had 100% allocation for a few years, would that change? It would change the groundwater quite a bit. If you had multiple years of 100% allocation and these wetter years are showing replenishment, and now a lot of growers are actually doing what they call groundwater banking, where they're letting water come onto their farm fields at times when there's excess water in the system. So in the winter, if there's a big storm, sometimes we can move more water and put it onto the farm fields, and that'll actually percolate down and replenish the groundwater. So if you get water from the surface and you're able to put it back into the groundwater, you can do a lot of replenishment, but it does take time, it takes multiple years. To your point, you would need to do it pretty consistently, but it is something that can be done, and it's a solution that many of the growers are exploring now to try to deal with the rules that are coming into play about how much you can extract. Does these wet years help you guys in terms of the replenishment? Does it naturally replenish? The rainfall does help. Rainfall helps to some amount, but really nothing substitutes for being actually able to put a large quantity of water out onto the land. So rainfall, a couple of inches is helpful, but it's really putting on many acre feet and letting it sink into the ground, or just having the canals and rivers that are full in our area, that also does some replenishment as well. But you really need sort of larger quantities to be able to replenish the groundwater reliably. There's some really good news. Shen Yun is coming back to California. If you haven't seen Shen Yun, make sure to check it out. This show is amazing. It's showing what China used to be before communism, and I've been going to it every year. It's reviving this ancient culture that's been lost. If you have heard something negative about the show, just be mindful that the Chinese Communist Party has been trying to shut them down since their inception. They're showing what China used to be, and they're trying to revive the traditional culture of the Chinese people. Chinese Communist Party has been trying to eliminate this culture, and now Shen Yun has been growing across the globe, and they're performing everywhere in a lot of different countries. Let me show you a quick trailer for what Shen Yun looks like this year. Each and every one of them is what you've been waiting for. Shen Yun. Get tickets now at ShenYun.com. Tell us about the costs. How much does it cost, and does it impact the cost of the food or the agriculture? So water costs vary quite a bit. I would say the thing that's important to realize is that farmers are not asking for water that's drinking water quality. So if you look at urban water prices, they're very high, but urban water has to be consumed. It costs a lot of money to treat the water, to make it... Farmers can deal with what we would call raw water that is just the runoff from a mountain that comes down in a river, because we don't need to treat it for being able to drink it. We just need to use it for irrigation. That being said, there's a lot of costs because the system, California relies on being able to move water. We have reservoirs, we have canals, we have pumps. All that requires operations, and it also requires maintenance. So because the growers have to pay to maintain the system, and they have to pay for all the transmission costs. So it ends up being very costly for growers, not as costly as urban water that's for drinking. And then also at times of drought, the water costs could go up. But it also depends on your access to water. So California has a very complicated water rights system. So there's people who have have like what they would call a pre-1914 water right, which is the oldest water right. Those water users, because of their seniority, would have a lower cost water than somebody who just came along later and has just a contract for water. So you also have to understand there's like different areas that have different pricing of water. So not every farmer has the same, there's not like one ag price. It varies by region. It also, the water rights drive really the value of your land. So if you buy land in an area that has the senior water rights, that's gonna be more costly land than if you buy land in an area that just has a contract and that could be cut back severely like we've been seeing in these last few years. So it also depends where you are. But the cost of water is rising because the cost of infrastructure improvements, the cost of maintenance, all those things are rising. And just the cost of doing business in California is always rising. So the food question is interesting because I think we've done a pretty good job of not only California farmers are pretty resilient and they've made a lot of investments in things like drip irrigation technology to use as little water as possible to grow the best crops. But I think you also have to understand we're bringing in a lot more food from other countries and also from competing states around us. So that's a big challenge for the California farmers but the consumers don't understand that because the consumer just goes to the store and now we've sort of spoiled the consumers that there's gonna be food all the time in the market, especially in California where we have- We have everything. We have everything all the time so the people don't understand. So I think the biggest risk is that we're bringing in more food from other places and we're gonna displace a lot of good California farms. So I don't know that the consumer is seeing like a huge spike in costs because of farming. I think they're seeing a big cost- Because of inflation in general. Yes, and a lot of the packaging, transportation, all these other- So the farmers aren't really benefiting right now. You see a lot of articles about higher food prices but that's not necessarily translating into higher crop prices. So for you guys, you're selling at the same rate you used to sell but then in the grocery stores, we see different numbers. It's very interesting because this year there's been a big focus in a lot of the newspapers and coverage about the rising cost of food to the consumer but at the same time, farmers are experiencing some of the lower prices that they've ever seen. So there's somebody else making the money and it's not at the farm level but there are true costs like inflation, gas prices in California are the highest in the nation, packaging, all these different things cost a lot more money. So by the time the food is reaching the consumer, there's been a lot of layers of cost added but at the same time, the growers are also facing rising costs because we pay for fuel, we pay for a lot of the regulatory costs but we're not seeing our prices escalate at the same rate that we're seeing in the stores. You're involved with a lot of land. Do you see a change in what you guys are planting in California? I think what we've done is we've kind of come up with a strategy about being more resilient on our farm. So we've invested millions of dollars in drip irrigation technology to use water as efficiently as possible. We've also changed our crops to grow some crops that are grown and planted in the winter time. So right now we're planting carrots and garlic and onions. Those crops will be grown through the winter and harvested right before the heat of the summer. So we sort of have switched our water needs on about 20% of the farm to crops that don't require irrigation in the summer months. So we're trying to make sure we have enough water to get economic value off of all the land that we farm but we've done investments in water saving technology and then we've also changed our crops so that we don't necessarily have everything that has to be irrigated in the summer months. We have some crops that will be harvested before the heat of the summer. If we have water for this last year, for example, we planted carrots in the winter, we harvested the carrots and then we planted sweet corn and so then we got two crops but that was only because we had enough water to do that. If we didn't have enough water, we would have just grown the carrots and we wouldn't have grown the next crop. But again, that adds more food to the food system if we are able to grow two crops. You know, it's better for the farmer and it's better for the consumer because there's more food available and keeps food prices reasonable. So water is the only bottleneck for you to create more? Water is pretty much a huge bottleneck potentially for most growers. It's the biggest question mark usually every year. And what about almonds? A lot of people have been questioning the why we're planting almonds. They take a lot of water. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, almonds have gotten a lot of focus and I think a lot of almonds have been planted. I think we are seeing now the amount of almond acreage has gotten to be at a stable level so you're not seeing more planting. I think a big focus was on how much water is required for almond trees when they're fully mature. I think it's important to note that they're very efficient in how much they produce. So they produce a lot of very high value protein, which is important. So it's important that we as consumers understand that every day that we eat a sandwich or have granola that has almonds in it, I mean, we're participating in agricultural water use. The farmer doesn't just use water and then keep all the product. They send the product out for everybody to enjoy. So having almonds as part of our food supply is actually very valuable. But even when I grow a tomato or I grow watermelons, all those things take water. So as a consumer, we need to understand that our choices really influence what farmers grow and the markets for our products. So people love almonds. They want to eat almonds. They like almond milk. They like almond powder, paste, butters, all those different things. So almonds can be used for a lot of good things. They're high in protein. They're a very efficient source of plant-based protein, which people are very focused on. So I think the people who are anti-agriculture will use like a gallon per nut. You know, I think it was an equation that people did. That sounds like a lot of water, but when you look at like producing a hamburger, might be 800 gallons of water to produce a hamburger. So when you break water down into smaller units, like a gallon or something like that from a farm scale, you know, the truth is it takes water to grow anything. So I don't think it's something that we should be ashamed of. I think it's something that you just need to have intelligent conversation about. So the people who don't like people growing cattle, you know, they'll tell you that, you know, if you eat a hamburger, it's 800, 900 gallons of water to make a hamburger, but people still eat millions of hamburgers every day. So, you know, I think it's important to understand people are making choices about their food supply. Farmers are using water as efficiently as they can to grow the crops. But at the end of the day, it just takes water to grow crops and it takes water to grow healthy food, which is a lot of the food that's grown in California are the things that people should be eating and almonds are a part of a healthy diet, so. As a farmer, you're constantly, are you constantly thinking how much water something takes, what's the price, how efficient it is? It's complicated. I think we're thinking about water and then we're also obviously thinking about economic value. Like the price of the commodity, how much demand there is for that commodity. How much demand and the partners that we work with. There's a lot of investment in California from people who process, like processing tomatoes are a big crop in the Central Valley. Tomatoes that would go into your pastas and your pasta sauce, pizza sauce, all the things that go in a can or a bottle. So people use a lot of tomato products in their diets and it's an important additive and a lot of other ingredients. And so we'll look at the market for tomatoes for us is an important one, but if there's an oversupply, we can't get contracts to grow them. So there's a balance between all the different partners that we work with. Sometimes like the carrots and garlic and onions are all done with very good processing partners like Grimway and other people that have big businesses in California. But the demand sometimes for carrots is down and we don't get a contract or things can change. So we have some choice, but you also have to remember that farmers make big investments in equipment to do the work on each different crop. So- So you can't switch fast. It's very hard for us to switch very fast. Yeah, and also we work with partners who also want us to grow every year, a certain amount of crops they want us to grow. So it's very hard for us to pivot very quickly. So we can pivot to some extent, but it's difficult. And it's also very dangerous to sort of try to chase different crops. So we have a model of where we have a very diverse portfolio of crops, but we don't wanna take risks and just say like, this year we're gonna grow only tomatoes or this year we're gonna grow, we wanna balance our risk by having multiple different crops that we can grow. So every grower kind of approaches it differently though, I would say. How much of the products did you guys grow and ends up in California? I mean, I know the statistics are that California is producing over 50% of the fresh fruits and nuts and vegetables for the rest of the country. So a lot of what California is growing is also going to the rest of the United States. Because if you think about the Midwest and if you think about the Northeast, their weather and their climate and their soils don't permit them to grow some of the very healthy food that comes from California. The fruits, nuts and vegetables essentially are the things that we should all be eating more of. I mean, I think the new administration has highlighted, eating healthier can be part of reducing diabetes, obesity, a lot of the things that are weighing our health system down with a lot of extra costs. So I'm a strong believer in that food can be medicine, essentially, and you're seeing even Medicaid is starting to pay for certain people with diabetes and other obesity issues to actually get food boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables from California to actually lower some of those health-related problems. Instead of taking a pharmaceutical option, you could actually solve a lot of the healthcare needs by eating a healthier diet. So California does produce, we're very fortunate because when we go to the supermarkets here in California, we have a cornucopia of food and good, very healthy options. And I think it's important that we're also delivering that food to the rest of the United States that doesn't have the climate to grow the crops that we grow. Canon, you are a sixth generation farmer in California. How's it to be in this position you're in? I think it's interesting. I mean, I take a lot of pride that we've been able to stay around as long as we have. We've had to innovate and we've had to stay very creative in order to do that. It hasn't been easy to stay in business in California. So we're always looking to innovate. We're always looking to do more. I think the longevity for us also helps us think about how we treat the land and how we treat our people differently. I think we're very invested in our local community. We're very invested in the lives and futures of the people that we employ. I think it's one of those things we feel a big responsibility for having been around so long. I think we also feel that we have a role and potentially leadership to demonstrate how to do a good job today and also into the future. So we take our role very seriously, but at the same time, we don't just sit there saying, we've been around for six generations and it's gonna be easy to be here for six more. We know it takes a lot of work. So I think we're constantly, we've evolved from my ancestor started the business and only cattle was the only, it was mainly about beef production. Now we're a diversified vegetable growing operation and fruit growing and melon production. So we've had to shift and change. We're not static and we're proud of the history that we have, but one misstep, it's getting harder and harder all the time. So if we make mistakes, there's not a lot of forgiveness. Just because we've been around a long time doesn't mean you can't have a bad outcome. So we're very serious about trying to keep going. Was there a moment you decided to continue the family tradition, get into farming and why did you do that? So I was actually not gonna be in the family tradition originally. I was in Atlanta, Georgia when I graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, I moved to Atlanta, Georgia and I got into commercial real estate. At the time, my great uncle and my uncle were running the farm. And so I didn't think that there was really a place for me at that time. I love the farm and I was interested in it, but I just didn't think it was the time for me to be involved. So I moved to Atlanta, I got into commercial real estate, but it happened that my great uncle was diagnosed with a terminal illness. And so the decision was made by the family to ask me if I would come back and help learn about the business and work in the business. And so I did that and it's been interesting and I've changed the farm quite a bit since I've became the president in 2014. We've gone in a lot of different directions that we hadn't gone in the past. So it's been very rewarding to be in the business and I'm proud of what we're doing, but it wasn't my initial plan, but I'm happy that I made the decision to come back and help the family. And what's the impact of family farms like yours? I think the impact is huge. I think family farms, like I said, I think mostly have a longer history and also the way that they think about farming is different. We've seen some outside people come and invest and I'm a capitalist. I believe people can make money in whatever different way they want, but something about using resources like water, employing a lot of local people, there's a different feeling, I think, when a family is running a farming business than if it's just a line on a spreadsheet of an investment somewhere. I think family farms are very valuable because of that kind of consistency and because of the care, it's a little bit different. I think if you look only at farming as just purely as a investment asset, it's not the same feeling as if you raise your children on the farm and you see the employees' children and see their life trajectory. And I just think there's a difference. So I think family farms are really important to the fabric of agriculture in California and in the United States really as well. You mentioned that you treat the land and the people differently. Can you give us some examples? Sure, I mean, I think from a land standpoint, the way we look at it is our soil is really one of our most important assets. If the soil doesn't perform well, we can't grow the high value, high quality crops. If we're degrading, I think you see examples, people in other countries where they're really doing damage to their soils. To us, it's very important. That's really the foundation of what we do every year is to have healthy soil. But beyond the soil, it's really the people to me is the most important thing. Agriculture is difficult work. There's long days, it's hot, it can be dusty, and it's not an easy business. So we're very fortunate to have long-term employees, multi-generations often. The lady worked in our office for over 46 years. We've got other guys who've been driving tractors for us for over 40 years. And a lot of their kids have either come to work for us or we also have a scholarship program for all the kids of our workers. And so we've seen their kids go on to do other things. We have an employee advancement program on the farm. So employees who demonstrate that they want to do more can transition into, from an hourly position, they might start. But we have a lot of people who've started in hourly positions who are now in salary, doing supervision of a lot of our crops and doing really wonderful things. We do a lot of work in our community. Education and healthcare are really important to us. We want the people who work for us to also live in a positive community. And so us making investments in the community really makes a big difference. People are a huge aspect of what we do. And I think giving them opportunities, growing food and fiber is something that I think is really important, but also giving opportunity to people is something that's even, to me, more important. And to watch these kids go on and do amazing things, get their PhDs, run major companies. And a lot of them were raised on our farm. And so it's really unique. I think it's a very, like an honor to be able to give them money every year to go on to the higher education. And so those are important things. And we also farm in a really unique environmental area in California. So we're farming next to what's called the Grasslands Wildlife Management Area, which is a combination of state, federal, and private land that makes up the second largest contiguous wetlands in the United States. So over 200,000 acres of wetlands. This time of year, it's amazing. It's one of the most important parts of the Pacific Flyway. So we have birds coming in from all the way from the north of Alaska, all the way down through Canada, down to our Central Valley. So we have also a lot of biodiversity on the farm. We do a lot of restoration work to make sure that there's the right plants being planted, right species to be protecting our pollinators, species that we rely on. So we're doing a lot of different initiatives, but I think it really comes out of that care, not just for growing food and fiber, but also all these other things that help us be successful. Because I truly believe that if we have any of those things unhealthy, if our soil's not healthy, if our people aren't healthy, if our community's not healthy, and if the environment around us is not healthy, that we won't be successful. So that's part of our long-term philosophy. And I think that's what's made us successful over the long-term. How did you learn to do this? How did I learn to do it? Oh, that's a good question. I think it was probably looking at what my family had done over time, but I've also looked at how other successful farmers around us have done their work and their business. So I think it was coming from outside of agriculture in a way, because I was raised in the Bay Area. I was part of the farm, but I would visit with my grandparents, but I wasn't born and raised on the farm. So I think when I got there, it was really to just open my eyes and learn from not only my family, but also learn from those around me and those people that I really respect. I mean, there's some leaders in California that have been very visionary and that also do an excellent job. And so I think I've served in a number of different leadership capacities on different boards, and I've been able to be around some of the top agricultural minds. And I think there's an instinctive part of me that values people and values the longevity and history that we have, and just values California as a state. I think California is great because it's got really good agriculture, but I think it also is great because it's got amazing communities and it's got an amazing environment. And so I think those are things that kind of inspire me to not just listen to agricultural people, but also listen to kind of the broader, people living in the big cities, I'm interested in what they're interested in. The environmental groups that are constructive, there's a lot of people who are passionate about fish and birds, but they're not just wanting to sue farmers, they're wanting to work together. So I've always looked to kind of form relationships with people and I think that's helped me learn a lot kind of about the bigger picture too. What should California do for you guys when it comes to water to solve that problem? Yeah, I think California needs to make sure that we enact policies that are balanced. I think, unfortunately, we tend to kind of have policies that maybe favor one side too much and don't maybe respect kind of the larger picture. So I think we're seeing right now the tension between the current federal administration and the state administration, kind of maybe more one-sided approaches. Those don't work very well in California because they might, a very aggressive administration on one side or the other, they might get something done for a little while, but it'll probably be reversed by the next administration. So I think we have to be careful because California is so different than a lot of the other states. You know, we have kind of unique water systems. We're the only Mediterranean climate in the United States. So I think our water issues are very different than other places. And so I think we have to be very careful about not letting politics enter water too much. I think we need to treat water as something that is a resource that we have to work together to figure out the solutions. And I think often the approach is like fighting one resource user versus another. So I think we need better leadership. I think we need people who can be more of like the adult in the room and not let people, you know, try to blow up discussions and keep people kind of together. I always admired Senator Feinstein. I got to know her fairly well. She was very good at convening people and sort of forcing compromise. So unfortunately, I think what we see often is that people don't want to compromise and that they just want to fight or sue people. And ultimately that doesn't usually end up in a very good situation. So a lot of the discussions are hard, I think, because California has not invested in water infrastructure as much as I think we should have. If you look at the history of when like the dams that we put in place, they were really stopped. We stopped doing that in the 1970s. You know, we don't have any large dams that have come online since that time. And if you look at the population has grown, you know, exponentially. And so we have more people relying on this old infrastructure, but now we don't make the investment in new infrastructure. And so that's putting a lot of stress on the system is because we have everybody's competing over this resource. And at the same time, we haven't invested in making that more plentiful. So I think that's a real challenge. So we need to invest more. Hopefully we'll see a lot more investment in this space. I hope so, I do. Canon Michael, sixth generation California farmer. It was great to have you on California Insider. Thanks for having me. It's been great conversation. I appreciate it. What do you think of the water situation in California? Do you think farmers should get more water allocation? Let us know your thoughts. You can always email us at siamakacaliforniasar.com or comment. We read all of your emails and comments. I'm Siamak Khorrami. This is California Insider. We'll see you next time.