Tag: drought

Water shortages are not just a concern for agriculture or the Western states. Twenty-five countries, containing a quarter of the world’s population, face extremely high water stress, according to the World Resources Institute.

The water woes of the Western states have attracted a great deal of attention, but Texas faces similar issues.

The Yuma Valley, near the border between Arizona and California, and the Imperial Valley, in the southernmost part of the state, are also key producers of fruits and vegetables.

Outsiders sometimes think that California’s Salinas Valley—which touts itself, with some justice, as the nation’s salad bowl—is part of the Central Valley, but that’s not the case.

After the water projects that divert rainfall and snowpack, the second major source of agricultural water in the West comes from underground.

The ag sector in California and Arizona relies on two main sources for its water supply, and the first is gigantic state and federal projects

It sounds familiar: California agriculture praying for rain after two decades of drought, then getting more—much, much more—than it asked for.

Of late much of the media conversation about water use has focused on California, but Texas, with its own multiyear drought, faces similar pressures.

The astonishing amounts of water dumped on California by a series of atmospheric rivers have been national news for weeks now. The state’s longstanding drought has been pronounced to be over. But just how over?

A prolonged drought in the West is making the fate of the Colorado River less certain. As a result, agriculture is at risk.