California is cursed with an amazingly efficient agricultural industry and just went through a freak 100 year wet period that set people's expectations for norm

California is cursed with an amazingly efficient agricultural industry and just went through a freak 100 year wet period that set people's expectations for normal rainfall and agricultural planning. The combination of long, sunny growing periods, and the illusion of reliable abundant water created an ideal growing climate. Much like Silicon Valley, this is a productive ecosystem that arose in which farmers who are aware of best practices and have access to appropriate supplier, financing, and skilled/unskilled labor pools. It's really amazing how much more productive California is compared to agriculture east of the Mississippi. This accounts for why so much agriculture is here even though it really shouldn't be, due to the water situation. California is a semi-arid climate that has had -- looking at tree ring data -- up to 200 year-long droughts, and should be used to raise reasonable-sized populations of free range grass fed cattle and sheep, rather than water intensive food crops. The latter should be limited to small plots of land that are regularly rotated. The previous 100 years in California - when the agricultural industry developed - were unusually wet, and this has set the baseline expectations, but that is most likely an outlier, and we should be prepared for a few hundred years of drought. "“We continue to run California as if the longest drought we are ever going to encounter is about seven years,” said Scott Stine, a professor of geography and environmental studies at Cal State East Bay. “We’re living in a dream world.”"[1] [...] "Stine, who has spent decades studying tree stumps in Mono Lake, Tenaya Lake, the Walker River and other parts of the Sierra Nevada, said that the past century has been among the wettest of the last 7,000 years." [1] * * * [1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-pa... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/369546a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/369546a0