California Steamin': Warming Endangers Agriculture

People don't usually think of my home state of California as the country's top agricultural state, but it is. For now. Comments by fellow Californian and current Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, global warming could end agriculture in California this century.

... In a worst case, Chu said, up to 90% of the Sierra snowpack could disappear, all but eliminating a natural storage system for water vital to agriculture.

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either. ...

What's that mean financially?

The loss of California's crops would stun not only US, but world markets as well. The state exports to almost 150 countries and had exported $8 billion worth of agricultural products in 2004. In 2006 (latest figures available), that export total had grown to $9.8 billion and the state is ranked the fifth largest agricultural producer in the world (pdf), the country's only major producer of many fruit, vegetable and nut crops, with a total production of $31.4 billion in agricultural outputs.

And the losses have just begun. Consider this January, 2009 water situation report from the California Farm Bureau Federation:

... Currently water stored in reservoirs statewide stands at 35 percent of capacity. Only two other years have seen lower reservoir levels at this time of year—1977 and 1992, both extreme drought years.

... A new snow survey to be conducted Jan. 29 will help officials in their preliminary estimates of water deliveries. Last week the overall Sierra snowpack stood at only about 57 percent of average and weather forecasters don't see any storms sweeping in from the Pacific in the coming week.

... At the water delivery levels currently being discussed, experts say 2009 crop losses could easily exceed the nearly $309 million in losses suffered in 2008. ...

Acreage is going to go fallow, some farms are likely to go out of business, and there are already reports of wells going dry when farmers have tried to use groundwater for irrigation. Losses in extreme drought scenarious could exceed a billion dollars per year in revenue in the Central Valley, alone.

That's only one state, and this scenario will play out across many regions of the US and the world in the years to come. In some places, losses have already been steeper yet. So it's time to get serious about sustainability. Our energy grid needs to go renewable immediately, and we need a comprehensive, national sustainability strategy.

The future of food, and so of ourselves, depends on stabilizing the climate.

(Photo credit: MrMitch on Flickr.)