SGMA may be necessary, but implementation does not land evenly. For small farms, one more fee, deadline, report, or requirement arrives on top of everything farming already costs. The 40-acre test asks whether small farms can survive the cost of farming and the cost of compliance at the same time.

This article was orignally published the the KCFB Farm Life Publication If you have opened a piece of certified mail recently and wondered what it meant, you are not alone. If you attended a state workshop and left more confused than when you arrived, you are not alone. If you have the sense that something significant is happening with your water and nobody has explained it clearly, you are not alone. Groundwater management in this basin is entering a new and critical phase.