Farmers can make larger profits from selling their water than using it to produce crops, furthering the decline of agriculture in California
The drought in California has been going on for years, causing shortages of water in one of the biggest agricultural centers in the United States. Farmers in California have several ways to combat this, none of them being ideal. To accommodate for having less water, they can reduce the number of fields that they cultivate or destroy some of their orchards. However, this is not an option for everyone because farming is how these families make a living, creating a minimum for how much they need to produce. If the farms have the financial means to do so they can dig more wells or buy water at high prices to acquire the water that they need to function. There are regulations in place limiting how much water farmers can draw from the declining aquifer, but they are hard to enforce.
“In my area, everybody’s pumping. You can’t blame the farmers. They’re trying to make a living, they’re trying to grow food for everybody.” - Fresno County Well Driller
Some farmers have recognized that there is now a huge market in selling water. The necessity of this resource allows farmers who are selling water to drive up the prices. The selling of water was seen when Sacramento rice farmers were given water from the federal government in early 2021, they chose to sell it while there was still a decline in overall rice acreage.
In the end, farming practices that help retain water in the soil through droughts, such as cover cropping and other regenerative agriculture processes, need to be implemented. Reversing desertification is critical in order to make farming a more sustainable practice in the midst of water shortages and other climate crises.
Source
Walters, Dan. “Drought Has Big Impacts on California Agriculture.” CalMatters, 30 Nov. 2021, https://calmatters.org/commentary/2021/11/groundwater-management-drought-california-agriculture/.