In February 2015, federal water managers announced that they could provide no water from a key canal to farms north and south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Many farmers in the Central Valley won’t receive waterfrom California’s reservoirs for the second year in a row.

Facing low rainfall, many of California’s farmers have instead been sucking out freshwater from beneath the ground to irrigate crops such as almonds. (After all, almond farmers can’t just choose not to plant in dry spells — if they don’t water the trees, the trees die.) According to one UC Davis study last year, California’s farmers have been replacing about three-fourths of lost rainfall with groundwater.

The State Water Project, for example, uses a great deal of energy to move water more than 700 miles and nearly 2000 feet up and over the Tehachapi Mountains from Northern to Southern California.

Energy demand from groundwater use is less apparent, but the total energy required to pump groundwater from thousands of individual groundwater wells across the state — estimated at 6000 gigawatt hours — is higher than the annual energy requirements for the entire State Water Project.

Reliance on groundwater for irrigation and a growing population have lead to greater groundwater use and chronically declining groundwater elevations in many parts of the state.

As the NYT explains:

Unlike the Midwest, which concentrates (devastatingly) on corn and soybeans, more than 230 crops are grown in the valley… melons, lettuce, asparagus, cabbage, broccoli, chard, collards, prickly pears, almonds, pistachios, grapes and more tomatoes than anyone could conceive of in one place. (The valley is the largest supplier of canned tomatoes in the world too.)

That same article also mentions that 85% of the carrots consumed by Americans are grown in the valley. As Michael Snyder mentions in this article, California also produces:

99 percent of the artichokes
89 percent of cauliflower
94 percent of broccoli
95 percent of celery
90 percent of the leaf lettuce
83 percent of Romaine lettuce
83 percent of fresh spinach
90 percent of avocados
84 percent of peaches
88 percent of fresh strawberries
97 percent of fresh plums

Losing the ability to produce crops in the Central Valley means food prices will skyrocket across America: a pound of organic strawberries might cost $25, a single avocado might run you $10, and a head of organic romaine lettuce might set you back $12 or more.

Of course, you can grow your own Romaine lettuce for about 10 cents a head using the Food Rising Mini-Farm Grow Box, and you can even learn how to make your own with common tools. The more scarce food becomes, the more expensive it gets. That’s all the more reason to learn how to grow your own, because growing your own food is not only dirt cheap; it’s incredibly easy now thanks to the Food Rising system.

Food imports to skyrocket as America’s food production implodes

A loss of one-third of the ability to domestically produce fresh produce is not merely a food inflation nightmare; it’s also a food security crisis. It would require the importing of more food from places where agricultural chemicals can be readily used even if they’ve been banned in America.

It’s perfectly legal for a food grower south of the border to use a toxic chemical pesticide or herbicide that’s been banned in the United States. Because the FDA rarely tests imported foods for banned agricultural chemicals, it is extremely unlikely that such foods would be barred from importation. While California enforces relatively strict agricultural guidelines and produces relatively clean food, as its water supply collapses, we’ll all be forced to deal with more chemically contaminated foods brought in from other countries. (This is yet another reason to learn how to grow your own.)

A collapse of food production potential in California will also cause a huge crisis in the agricultural labor market. Hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers keep California’s farms humming along, but if those workers suddenly find there’s no work (because of the water supply collapse), they will either migrate to other areas where work is available or turn to the State of California for financial support. This would place an enormous additional financial burden on the state at exactly the same time its agricultural exports are plummeting.

The big trend: A wave of home food growers

No matter how it plays out in California, fresh produce is about to get a whole lot more expensive across America. Because of this, interest in home food production is set to explode. 

The economics just make sense: Even if fresh produce doubles in price at the grocery store, your cost to produce the same fresh produce at home doesn’t go up at all. If you have water, sunshine and seeds, you can grow an enormous variety of fruits, vegetables and medicines using simple, self-watering systems like the Non-Circulating Hydroponics system unveiled at www.FoodRising.org .

In fact, one of the big trends I see that’s about to explode across America is commercial hydroponic food production using LED grow lights and indoor grow environments. The economics of such operations make sense right now, and they’ll be even more profitable in the near future as conventional food production falters due to drought and weather radicalization.

Remember: Cheap water results in low-cost food. But when the cheap water runs out, the food becomes more expensive, creating opportunities for more high-cost food production systems to compete in the marketplace.