Mega Drought in California

The climatic effects of global warming continue to affect farmers around the world, including California, which in 2021 recorded a record high temperature and due to the winds, that blow this 2022, the situation worsens due to the mega drought that continues to affect the farmers.

California's latest drought monitor has shown that 60% of the state is under extreme drought, the second-highest drought category on the scale, and the future is not bright.

Lake Mead, the largest man-made reservoir in North America, formed on the Colorado River between Nevada and Arizona, has shrunk to record lows, falling to around 30% of capacity.

The reservoir is a major source of water for Arizona, Nevada, and California, as well as part of Mexico, serving nearly 25 million people and huge agricultural areas.

A combination of drought, climate change, and increasing regional demand for water have driven the reservoir to its lowest levels since the 1930s.

The climatic effect known as La Niña hits the world again and is becoming more extreme due to global warming itself.

Wildfire potential in June is forecast to be above normal with no relief in sight.

There is a 58% chance that the La Niña pattern will continue through October, which typically brings drier conditions to the southern US where drought conditions worsen under these conditions.

“We are going to leave land without planting”: California farmers are affected by drought

The state of California is experiencing the worst western drought in the last 1,200 years, according to a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“Some farmers are already uprooting their almond orchards, some of us are not going to plant, those of us who can are going to leave land unplanted and that is going to have a big impact for the entire valley,” said Joe Del Bosque, a farmer from the Central Valley.

Since the western region of the country is experiencing one of the worst droughts in the last 1,200 years. This according to a study reported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

How do farmers prepare for this phenomenon?

"Try to see how much water we have and plant only what we can with that water and try to conserve water as much as we can, and we do that with bottle systems that are very efficient for irrigating crops," Del Bosque added.

In previous years Del Bosque planted corn and asparagus, due to the scarcity of the vital liquid, it has had to limit itself to planting only melon and almonds.

"If we can't plant the land, people's jobs are lost and that's important because people live off of us from what we can plant and if we can't plant there will be less work for them," said the farmer.

Del Bosque hopes that local leaders can provide some kind of support to guarantee the supply of irrigation water so that this year's drought does not represent a great loss.

“Agriculture is going to suffer because there is less water and so fewer crops are going to be planted and there will be fewer jobs,” says Sandoval Solís.

California is the first producer of food in the country, where most of the food that reaches the table of the Americans is produced. It is, therefore, a crucial activity for life that consumes about 80 percent of the water in the state. “Every time you are having breakfast or eating some fruit or good salads, you have to think that this comes from California, it is a source of pride,” said Sandoval Solís.

California has innovative agriculture that has been transforming itself to meet drought and other daunting challenges. "We are adapting to this type of agriculture, regenerative, sustainable with cover crops and all these agricultural practices that are friendlier to nature."

Being an extremely important activity from an economic point of view, agriculture requires the majority of the state's water resources, with California devoting around 80% of its water to agriculture. For this reason, the serious drought problems that the state has presented in recent years have affected its economy.

The drought that the state of California suffered during 2021 implied a loss of around 1,100 million dollars for the agricultural sector, according to estimates presented in a study carried out by researchers from the University of California Merced.

Said study analyzed the economic impacts caused by this drought for the regions of the Central Valley, the Russian River basin and the intermountain region of northern California.

Lately, California seems to be familiar with droughts, since the years 2020 and 2021 have been the two driest years in history, and according to Alvar Escriba Bou, researcher and co-author of the study, more and more droughts are expected, so that it will be necessary to develop tools to anticipate and minimize socioeconomic impacts.

Based on analysis, it is estimated that at least 395,000 acres (160,000 ha) of land were affected by water cuts from droughts. This has led producers to resort to groundwater as an alternative to meet the water demand of their crops; however, the overexploitation of this resource is alarming.

As if that were not enough, these problems occurred just during the application of the sustainability plans of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA, for its acronym in English), a law that is designed to avoid unfavorable consequences as a result of a management groundwater unsustainable.

Such plans were submitted in 2020 for critically overexploited basins, while for other major basins, new plans seek to be submitted this year.

To address this problem, SGMA is working to determine how California farmers can cope with drought without overdrawing groundwater.

The truth is that the impact that farmers are receiving, coupled with the record inflation rate that has been recorded in recent months and added to the effect of fuel with incredibly high prices, has forced them to reduce their jobs, that consumption rates of alcohol rise due to stress and its negative impact on an economy as hit as the one we live in today.