California’s farm belt needs to tighten up, as there simply will not be enough water to sustain present irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley.
Downpours or drought, California’s farm belt will need to tighten up in the next two decades and grow fewer crops.Groundwater is dangerously depleted. Wells are drying up and the land is sinking in many places, cracking canals. Surface water supplies have been cut back because of drought, and future deliveries are uncertain due to climate change and environmental regulations.
PPIC researchers offered a glimmer of hope for the San Joaquin Valley. With government teamwork — local, state and federal — and agriculture itself, the financial blow could be lightened, they said. Compromising probably would require money — perhaps tax money — to pay farmers to fallow their land and governments to build new canals and repair old ones.“Locals need to have skin in the game. Everybody’s always happy to have someone else pay for their crops,” says Ellen Hanak, vice president and director of the PPIC Water Policy Center.
Meanwhile, farmers have been drilling deeper and faster to extract water — not necessarily even their own — before they’re restricted by law. That can come from rare mega-storms, as we had in January. But there need to be facilities for moving the rampaging water and rules that permit it.
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