California’s agriculture sector would shrink but survive a mega-drought that lasts decades, says the Los Angeles Times, based on computer simulations by university scientists. “The state would not shrivel into a giant, abandoned dust bowl. Agriculture would shrink but by no means disappear,” says the story. In the simulation, researchers examined the effects of a seven-decade drought that reduced runoff into rivers and reservoirs to half of recent levels.
Impact on agriculture, says the story: “The state’s 8 million acres of irrigated cropland could fall by as much as half, predicted Daniel Sumner, director of the University of California Agricultural Issues Center. Farmers would largely abandon relatively low-value crops such as cotton and alfalfa and use their reduced water supplies to keep growing the most profitable fruits, nuts and vegetables. They would let fields revert to scrub or dry-farm them with wheat and other crops that predominated before California’s massive federal irrigation project transformed the face of the Central Valley in the mid-20th century.”