CA’s Central Valley Braces For Transformation: NYT

CENTRAL VALLEY, CA — California’s Central Valley has been among the nation’s most productive agricultural regions for decades.

But these days, “America's fruit and nut basket” is drying up.

Persistent droughts have raised the question whether the state’s agricultural interior, which produces a third of America’s produce, is built on a model that's sustainable in a world that's getting hotter and drier.

There are already some indications that the region’s transformation is already underway, The New York Times reported.

The massive swath of land sandwiched between the coastal mountains to the west and the Sierra Nevada to the east stretches around 450 miles from Redding in the north to Bakersfield in the south. It is in many ways an ideal agricultural environment.

It boasts abundant sunshine, temperate climate and nutrient-rich soil: all the vital ingredients for bountiful farming.

Except water.

The State Water Project, a delivery system developed in the 1950s, created a complicated network of reservoirs, aqueducts, power plants and pumping plants to fuel the state’s agriculture business.

The SWP worked by bringing water from areas where it was abundant — such as the mountains — to areas where it was not.

But as the American West became drier and hotter in recent decades, the Sierras were no longer the reliable source of snowpack runoff they once were.

That change may have profound implications for the Central Valley.

Stuart Woolf, an almond farmer in Huron in Fresno County, is considering transforming his fields into a solar farm, which would allow him to sell electricity back to the grid, the Times reported.

“Look, I’m a farmer in California. The tools we had to manage drought are getting limited,” he told the Times.

The tools could soon be even more limited.

A recent Los Angeles Times editorial suggested that what the Golden State is now experiencing is not just a drought but rather the new normal.

After a second straight dry winter, the vast majority of California is experiencing “severe” drought conditions, and a significant part of the state — including much of the Bay Area — is experiencing “exceptional drought" conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

As of June 29, 94.8 percent of California was in a severe drought; 85.4 percent of the state was in an extreme drought; and 33.2 percent of the state was in an exceptional drought, the drought-monitoring agency reported.

“Droughts are deviations from the norm,” the L.A. Times editorial team said. “What we have now is no deviation. It is the norm itself. Our climate has changed. As much water falls from the sky as before, but at different times and in different ways.”

Read more in The New York Times