Opinion: Drought requires new strategies for managing cropland
The San Joaquin Valley is California’s largest agricultural region, but it’s facing an uncertain future. A combination of persistent drought and the rollout of California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act will increase regional water scarcity in the coming decades. Water scarcity will have a major effect on land use: At least half a million acres are projected to come out of irrigated production in the San Joaquin Valley by 2040. This raises a thorny question: What happens to all this newly fallowed land?
-Written by Andrew Ayres, a research fellow of the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center; and Caitlin Peterson, associate director of the Public Policy Institute of California Water Policy Center.