ONE Growing community

Managing The basin's water reduction
An introduction to desert Gold

In 2014, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the Sustainable Ground Water Management Act (SGMA) to regulate groundwater usage throughout the State of CA.  The regulations stemming from this framework ultimately state that water users cannot pump more water from their basin’s aquifer than the annual recharge refilling it (for Borrego that baseline was initially built using a historical average with 87 years’ worth of data).  This act also delegates the planning and implementation to the local agencies.

Prior to SGMA, in  2014, the water users of the Anza Borrego aquifer set up a committee; the Borrego Water Coalition, consisting of the Water District, Recreation, Farming and involved the Department of Water Resources, to analyze our aquifer and come up with a plan to address balancing the aquifer (it was a well-known secret that we were over pumping, even before the law).

Ultimately, we created a Watermaster Board to submit our plan to the Courts and gained approval for our water usage reduction plan in 2021.  This plan created a 20-year roadmap (per the requirements of SGMA), to reduce our water usage by approximately 75%; a daunting task.  

Given the current technology available, it was clear that Seley Ranches was not going to be able to “save our way” out of this situation but needed more dramatic measures to stay in operation.  The Seley Ranch is a part of our family, not just a business, and as such, we committed early on to saving it.  

One obvious, but complex option was to farm something new.  However, switching crops for a farm requires two distinctive efforts; learning to grow and harvest the crop, as well as bringing it to market.  One of the early products we explored was olives due to its low water consumption.  The challenge for olives though is to maintain quality, the harvested olives need to be processed within 6-8 hours or the quality drops rapidly.  At the time, there were no olive oil mills located within this distance, so the idea was shelved…

Fast forward to mid-2024, and through a random set of circumstances, we were introduced to Rick Benson; a 4th generation farmer from Imperial County.  As it turns out, Rick had olive groves that he farmed and an olive oil mill located 45 minutes away, inside the Imperial County border; just outside the Anza Borrego Basin.

It was a complimentary match. We were positioned to plant the new crop, and Rick would help us learn the horticulture side. Rick had the capacity for additional olive oil processing, and we would help expand the product and label. Instead of just fallowing our groves, we made the strategic decision to transition a portion of the orchard to low water use olives (they use approximately 75% less water than Citrus; a perfect fit).  We immediately planted 30 acres of olives with more on the way, expecting to produce our own oil in approximately 5 years.

High quality, locally grown olives are growing in demand due to increased consumer interest in health benefits and home cooking. Rick’s “Desert Gold” olive oil has become a reputable, award-winning brand* (Gold, LA County Fair, 2013 [Westmorland Koroneiki varietal]) and Seley Ranches looks forward to contributing its own olives down the road! In the meantime, we supply citrus for Desert Gold infused olive oils (Lemon, Tangerine and Grapefruit infused).  As with all our family partnerships, expect high standards, trusted products and a positive experience!

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