As California nears the end of a skimpy rainy season, “Farmers said they anticipated leaving as much as one million acres fallow, nearly twice the area that went unplanted last year,” according to the New York Times. In a story that listed new water conservation measures, the newspaper also described the impact of three years of drought: “Landscapes are parched and blighted with fields of dead or dormant orange trees.” The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California authorized $71 million to buy water from farmers in the Sacramento Valley. In some cases, farmers would get three times as much as they did in 2010. For that kind of offer, growers said it makes sense to take the money and fallow their land.
The president of the California Farm Bureau, Paul Wenger, told the Times that in 2014 at least 400,000 acres were not planted due to drought. “This year we could see easily 50 percent more,” he said. “We are probably going to be looking at well over a million acres.”