{"id":4930,"date":"2015-04-10T14:39:37","date_gmt":"2015-04-10T18:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/?p=4930"},"modified":"2025-06-11T12:56:36","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T16:56:36","slug":"californias-drought-is-real-but-its-dusted-up-a-lot-of-hot-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/2015\/04\/10\/californias-drought-is-real-but-its-dusted-up-a-lot-of-hot-air\/","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s drought is real, but it\u2019s dusted up a lot of hot air"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"shutterstock_191075504\"<\/a>
Credit: Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finger-pointing tends to sharpen during times of crisis.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A:<\/em> California, now entering its fourth year of drought.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve followed media coverage of the drought lately \u2013 which has spiraled to new heights since Gov. Jerry Brown ordered<\/a> the state\u2019s first mandatory cuts in urban water use last week \u2013 you\u2019ve probably heard that agriculture was \u201cspared\u201d the knife.<\/p>\n

An interview with Gov. Brown on PBS Newshour<\/a> perfectly encapsulates the debate of the past week:<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, Governor, encouraging people to decrease watering their lawns seems like literally a drop in the bucket, when 80 percent of the water \u2026 is from the agriculture sector,\u201d the reporter starts out. \u201cWe know that it costs an enormous amount of water to have a single almond to eat \u2026 Is it time for us to start zeroing in on the largest customers or users of water?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While it\u2019s true that agriculture is California\u2019s biggest water user, and that some crops require more water than others, it\u2019s unfair and inaccurate to suggest, first, that agriculture was passed over, and second, that a small nut is primarily to blame for sucking the state dry. It\u2019s more complicated than that.<\/p>\n

Farmers on the front line<\/strong><\/p>\n

Until now, agriculture has borne the brunt of California\u2019s drought.<\/p>\n

Most farmers \u2013 along with two-thirds of California\u2019s population \u2013 receive water allocations from the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project, a complex, interconnected system of reservoirs, aqueducts, and pumping plants that deliver water, including melted snow from the Sierra Nevada Mountains, to all points south.<\/p>\n

\"Credit:<\/a>
Credit: Flickr user Yves Remedios<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2014, those allocations dipped to near record lows \u2013 zero in some cases \u2013 due to paltry rainfall and snowpack. The diminished supplies cost farmers<\/a> about $2.2 billion and eliminated more than 17,000 jobs. More than 500,000 acres of cropland were fallowed.<\/p>\n

Beyond the nut<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the nut. If anything has come to symbolize the drought in the past week, it\u2019s the almond, which, as you may have heard, requires a gallon of water to grow. But here\u2019s the rub. People really like almonds, and California grows two-thirds of the world\u2019s supply. Further, the state grows about half of the country\u2019s fruits and vegetables, and almonds aren\u2019t even the most water-intensive.<\/p>\n

As Grist\u2019s Nathanael Johnson<\/a> aptly observed:<\/p>\n

\u201cPointing the blame at any single crop is just too reductive. When dealing with a complex system like California\u2019s water cycle, you have to think holistically if you hope to make positive change. While the system is complex, there\u2019s something very simple driving California\u2019s water system off the rails: stupid laws.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Improve the market<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019s absolutely correct. We need to tease out the provisions that are clogging California\u2019s water system and establish incentives that will allow the market to respond to scarcity \u2013 well before aquifers are drained and our life-sustaining ecosystems begin to gasp.<\/p>\n

In the case of groundwater, for the water market to function optimally, communities will also need to get a better handle on the sustainable yield of their basins. This needs to begin now.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, agriculture will need to do more\u00a0to\u00a0increase California\u2019s resiliency to drought. Everyone<\/em> will.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time we put those pointing fingers to work on a more worthwhile task \u2013 rolling up our sleeves and getting to work on real solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finger-pointing tends to sharpen during times of crisis. Exhibit A: California, now entering its fourth year of drought. If you\u2019ve followed media coverage of the drought lately \u2013 which has spiraled to new heights since Gov. Jerry Brown ordered the state\u2019s first mandatory cuts in urban water use last week \u2013 you\u2019ve probably heard that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71922],"tags":[234,71798,200,71775,190,42756,63845,36786,413,885,84809],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-water","tag-agriculture-tag","tag-almonds","tag-california","tag-central-valley","tag-drought","tag-farmers","tag-food-production","tag-food-security","tag-sustainability","tag-water-quality","tag-water-use"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15738,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions\/15738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.edf.org\/growingreturns\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}