An estimated 800,000-plus acres of California farmland will sit idle this year. Despite crop declines, the state’s gross farm revenue and employment actually increased slightly last year, and food prices remain steady, according to Dale Kasler and Phillip Reese, who wrote “California farm economy surprisingly resilient amid drought” for  The Sacramento Bee.

While growers need to grow, that’s easier said than done for hundreds of farmers who are caught in the middle of the drought, now in its fourth year.Christopher Ranch’s garlic bins being filled in its California fields.

The California Farm Water Coalition knows well the effects the drought is having on state farmers. The non-profit educational organization provides fact-based information on farm water issues to the public and works to help consumers, elected representatives, government officials and media make the connection between farm water and our food supply.

Brandon Souza, assistant executive director of research and technical services water use efficiency for CFWC told The Produce News about the blunt reality growers, including garlic producers, now face in California.

“Fresno, Kern, Santa Clara, Mono and San Bernardino counties, in order of production volume, produce the largest volumes of vegetables and other field crops,” said Souza. “Fresno, Kern and Santa Clara counties are affected not only by the drought, but also by long-term water supply instabilities regardless of year type due to volatility in surface water deliveries.”

These counties, he noted, receive water that passes through the bottleneck Delta region, where issues such as unchecked predation, urban pollution, habitat degradation and/or loss have affected the federally listed Delta Smelt and one of the Chinook salmon runs. San Bernardino County and Mono are both experiencing drought-related effects.

Souza said CFWC is not aware of any studies that specifically evaluate drought effects to the state’s garlic crop, but he pointed out that the leading three counties for garlic production are especially hard-hit by drought effects and are known to be idling vegetable and other field crops.

“Statewide, we expect approximately 564,000 acres to be fallowed,” he said. “Generally speaking, farmers will be idling some annual plantings to preserve water for use on higher return efforts.”

This, Souza noted, will directly impact any lower-value fresh produce crops, including vegetable and field crop plantings as grain and feed crop prices rise.

He referenced Josue Medellin-Azuara, Duncan MacEwan, Jay Lund, Richard Howitt and Daniel Sumner, who research and compile reports at the University of California-Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. They state that of an expected cut of 8.8 million acre feet of surface water from a typical year, California agriculture would use 32.9 million acre feet of the state’s 79.8 million acre feet of developed supply.

They further stated that some of this water loss will be made up through additional groundwater pumping. Year over year, estimates indicate that 2015 will see a reduction of 2.2 million acre feet of surface water. Fallowed acres in 2015 were expected to increase by 33 percent over 2014.

The California powers that be aren’t taking this news sitting down.

“Irrigation districts — public agencies providing water service to growing areas — have sought to initiate and maintain transfer programs between regions of the state, engage in banking activities and are promoting water use efficiency efforts to stretch what supply is available,” explained Souza. “Individual districts have contingency plans, but I am unaware of an overall long-term plan to remediate drought specifically.

“A holistic plan does exist that would lessen the impacts of future shortages and help enable farmers to better prepare for periods of scarcity,” he continued. “This plan is the California Water Action Plan. It incorporates a range of actions, including additional storage programs, efficiency improvements and conveyance systems.”

In the Sacramento Bee story, Kasler and Reese state that even as many farmers cut back their planting, California’s farm economy overall has been surprisingly resilient.

They reference the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s statistics that state farm employment increased by more than one percent last year. Gross farm revenue from crop production increased by 0.2 percent last year, to $33.09 billion.

The statistics don’t mean farmers and their employees are having an easy time of it. Rather, the data show how farmers are coping with the shortages of water. Forced to make choices, they’re diverting more of their dwindling water supplies to keep high-value crops going.

Souza addressed the worst-case-scenario if the drought continues into the future.

“It depends on perspective,” he said. “From my perspective, the worst case scenario is a failure to learn from this painful experience and do what can be done, both locally and at governmental levels to prepare for it in the future.”