Some of the Richest Farmland in the World has a Problem: There’s No Water
In America’s fruit and nut basket, water is now the most precious crop of all.
It explains why, amid a historic drought parching much of the American West, a grower of premium sushi rice has concluded that it makes better business sense to sell the water he would have used to grow rice than to grow rice.
Or why a melon farmer has left a third of his fields fallow. Or why a large landholder farther south is thinking of planting a solar array on his fields rather than the thirsty almonds that delivered steady profit for years.
“You want to sit there and say, ‘We want to monetize the water?’ No, we don’t,” said Seth Fiack, a rice grower here in Ordbend, on the banks of the Sacramento River, who this year sowed no rice and instead sold his unused water for desperate farmers farther south. “It’s not what we prefer to do, but what we need to, have to.”
These are among the signs of a massive transformation up and down California’s Central Valley, the country’s most lucrative agricultural belt, as it confronts an exceptional drought and the consequences of years of pumping far too much water out of its aquifers.
Across the state, reservoir levels are dropping, and electric grids are at risk if hydroelectric dams don’t get enough water to produce power.
Climate change is supercharging the scarcity. Rising temperatures dry out the soil, which in turn can worsen heat waves. This week, temperatures in parts of California and the Pacific Northwest have been shattering records.
By 2040, the San Joaquin Valley is projected to lose at least 535,000 acres of agricultural production. That’s more than a tenth of the area farmed. And if the drought perseveres and no new water can be found, double that amount of land is projected to go idle, with potentially dire consequences for the nation’s food supply.
California’s $50 billion agricultural sector supplies two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of America’s vegetables — the tomatoes, pistachios, grapes, and strawberries that line grocery store shelves from coast to coast.
Glimpses of that future are evident now. Vast stretches of land are fallow because there’s no water. New calculations are being made about what crops to grow, how much, and where. Millions of dollars are being spent on replenishing the aquifer that has been depleted for so long.
“Each time we have a drought, you’re seeing a little glimpse into what will happen more frequently in our climate future,” said Morgan Levy, a professor specializing in water science and policy at the University of California, San Diego.
The following is from the New York Times, October 2021
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