There was a very interesting article in the LA Times today about how the drought, combined with efforts to protect endangered small fish, has impacted farming in the San Joaquin Valley. Farmers are letting fields go fallow (reverting back to the desert status that the valley was before homesteaders and eventually farmers brought water into the area) and thus farmworkers are out of work. Unemployment in the area is above the California average by 3.9%, but in some towns the unemployment figure is 39%.
A few months back, there was a similar article in National Geographic about Australia's farming community (also located in a former desert and dependent on water from other areas) and its collapse after seven years of drought on that continent.
It strikes me that there are a couple of fundamental issues that will need to be addressed in this time of global climate change (or, if you are one of the few who don't believe the preponderance of scientific opinion, during times of drought).
1. Is it the best practice to irrigate former deserts in order to grow our food?
2. Are there ways of conserving water from non-agricultural uses in cities that demand water (and in Australia's case, trump agricultural water rights) that can help tide farmers over while we are working on #1?
The more I read about these types of issues, the more I realize that we need systemic approaches to problems that we've previously seen as easily addressed through human intervention. In the case of California, we brought water to the desert, not realizing how that would impact the deltas during drought years; where seawater replaces fresh and kills fertile areas of our wetland ecosystem.
No suggestions for solutions from me...I'm far too new to this. But it does get me thinking that sometimes our initial solutions cause more problems than the original issue did.
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