On the central California coast, cattle ranches are withering. “Roughly 75 percent of the cattle in San Luis Obispo County have been sold or taken out of state over the last four years to escape conditions in the most drought-stricken region in California,” says the Los Angeles Times. San Luis Obispo County, midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, also is home to the Hearst Castle, near San Simeon. For decades, ranching was well-suited to the county’s rolling and wooded hills. Rainfall was only a quarter of the usual 10 inches last year. Grassland is turning into bare ground.
When the rains return, it will take years to rebuild herds and re-establish forage on the hills. “We see clearly what a bust cycle looks like,” county farm adviser Mark Battany told the Times. The drought has blocked one option that some ranchers took in earlier years – planting vineyards on their land. “Alarmed by declines in the Paso Robles Groundwater Basin, the county enacted a two-year moratorium last year on new agriculture dependent on the aquifer,” says the newspaper.
“Even as many farmers cut back their planting, California’s farm economy has been surprisingly resilient,” says the Sacramento Bee. Crop revenue and farm employment were up marginally in 2014 despite steep reductions in water supplies. “Forced to make choices, they [farmers] are diverting more of their dwindling water supplies to keep high-value crops going.” Almond prices are high, so growers idle other crops so they can water their trees. “As for jobs, many of the crops that have held up the best also happen to be labor-intensive, such as strawberries, which has helped pump up employment.
“The full impact won’t be known for months but it’s obvious that many farmers are cutting back,” says the Bee. It cites an estimate by the California Farm Water Coalition that 800,000 acres of farmland, 9 percent of the state total, will lay idle this year, up from 690,000 acres last year. Some estimates of fallow land were lower for 2014, around 400,000 acres, and suggest the amount of idle land this year will be about the same as last year. “Some 27,000 acres of California grapevines have been ripped up in the past year, and another 20,000 acres of orange and lemon trees are expected to get bulldozed this year,” says the Bee. Rice plantings are expected to fall by 25 percent. While crop revenue was stable last year, production costs rose so growers saw narrower margins.
Consumers are relatively untouched so far. Food prices are stable – the USDA forecasts fruit and vegetable prices will rise by 2.5 percent this year, in line with a modest rise in food prices overall. The strong dollar and lower petroleum prices could mitigate any upward pressure on prices from California, which grows 43 percent of U.S. vegetables in dollar value. The United States imports a quarter of its fresh vegetables and a third of its frozen vegetables.
Australia, the world’s driest continent, can provide some lessons to California on water efficiency and conservation after surviving a multi-year drought of its own; daily per-capita water use is 55 gallons down under, compared to 105 gallons in California, says the Associated Press. “But Californians may find Australia’s medicine hard to swallow.” The government took an interventionist role and water is now regarded as a resource to be conserved and traded, says the AP. In contrast, water is a property right in California. Australia reformed its water entitlements, limited usage by towns, farms and industry to the amount of water available and allows license holders to buy and sell water allotments. For agriculture, a cotton farmer could sell an entitlement to an orchard grower who needs to irrigate trees.