Conserve groundwater. Fallow farmland. Increase dust?
For a century, California’s San Joaquin Valley has been known as “the food basket of the world.” The 27,500-square mile region currently produces over $34 billion worth of food each year, a productivity made possible only by its large-scale irrigation projects and unrestrained groundwater pumping. In 2015, however, California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), making it last Western state to regulate its groundwater — and bringing the San Joaquin Valley into compliance with the law will require retiring over 500,000 acres of its farmland in the next 20 years. While SGMA’s regulations are for the greater good — achieving sustainable water use in an increasingly unpredictable climate — they are likely to have negative effects on the ground.
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