Los Banos Rotary Club History
Agricultural Power Vital To Valley's Farms

The importance of electricity to the agricultural economy of this state was brought to the attention of the local Rotary Club Tuesday noon by M. D. Wheat, manager of the P. G. & E's Los Banos-Firebaugh district.

Of the 139,000 farms in this state, Wheat said 98 ½ percent are now electrified. This is by far the highest rural electrification rating in the United States and compares with California's 42 per cent rural electrification in 1922. The largest portion of the load, of course, is required for deep well pumping. Wheat stated that in the P. G. & E system last year electric pumps provided 5,514,000 acre-feet of water for irrigation. This is approximately 113 times the storage-capacity of Bass Lake, and is more than the 4,500,000 acre-feet storage capacity of Shasta Dam.

Emphasizing the importance of the state's $2,500,000,000 agricultural income, Wheat stated that 80 per cent of all business in cities and small town in the Sacramento-San Joaquin valleys stem directly from farming. The annual income of the average California farm, he said, is $6,000, compared with a national average farm income of $4,700.

Tracing the history of the use of electricity in deep well irrigation, Wheat related that A. G. Wishon, one-time president of the San Joaquin Power Company, pioneered electric pumping in this valley. Using his own money he installed the first electric pump on a farm near Lindsay and invited the surrounding farmers to come and see it. That was in 1898. Today the P. G. & E. system alone serves approximately 82,000 farms with electricity. By 1940 the company's connected agricultural load amounted to 556,000 horsepower. On April 1 of this year it was 1,155,551 horsepower. In the Los Banos district, Wheat reported, the company has connected an additional 9,385 horsepower load since the first of the year and have orders for approximately 6,000 h. p. more which will be installed before the start of the growing season next spring.
Stressing the economy of electrical pumping, Wheat said that cost records on various crops show that irrigation costs amount to about 3 per cent of total production costs. For one Los Banos field of cantaloupes, 130 acres, electric pump costs comprised 2.75 per cent of the total cost of production. Even in the Coalinga area, where the underground water must be raised several hundred feet, irrigation power amounted to only 10.2 per cent of the total production cost of cotton.

In an effort to keep pace with this phenomenal growth in demand for agricultural power, the P. G. & E. has spent $800 million since the end of World War II in expansion of its power facilities, and plan to spend approximately $350 million more for further expansion within the next three years.

August 31, 1951

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