Take a spin through rural California and evidence of the drought is everywhere: cracked soil, unplanted fields. Unprecedented cutbacks in deliveries of water from state and federal reservoirs have put agriculture on the defensive.
In terms of dollars and cents, however, farmers seem to be holding their own.
California growers took in more revenue in 2014 compared to the year before, although their profits declined by about 10 percent, according to new figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service and the Pacific Institute, a water policy think-tank.
A continued boom in prices for almonds, citrus and other high-value crops helped soften the impact of the drought, experts said. So did farmers’ increased reliance on groundwater pumping, which has largely made up for the substantial reductions in surface water availability.
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