California farm revenue plummets after years of drought

Farmers in California lost more than $9 billion in revenue last year as the ongoing drought forced them to fallow fields, shut down farms and cut labor costs.

The figures, reported Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, come amid warnings that a fifth year of drought could continue to drive down agriculture earnings and ultimately hurt the state’s economy.

In the first four years of California’s historic drought, which pushed the federal and state governments to halt or slash deliveries of water to several water districts throughout the Central Valley, farmers were able to shore up their revenue using several controversial strategies.

Turning to high-yield crops like almonds, which bring in more dollars per gallon of water than many other crops, helped farmers maintain a revenue stream even as they stopped tilling fields and fired workers.

The 2015 numbers show farmers may have reached their limit, and Manuel Cunha, president of the Nisei Farmers League in Fresno, expects matters to worsen in the years to come.

Not just on the sale of a product or a crop, but in state taxes, workers spending those dollars in the communities where they live, schools collapsing because there aren’t enough students because all their families are leaving.

California, which is the leading agriculture exporter in the U.S., supplies more than half of the country’s fruits, nuts and vegetables, and dominates the dairy industry with 19 percent of milk coming from the Golden State.

The state’s dairy industry saw a drop of more than $3 billion last year, and almond sales have dropped from more than $7 billion to $5 billion.

An estimated 540,000 acres of farmland were fallowed in 2015, continuing a trend of forgoing crops in the face of dwindling water supplies.

Cunha worries about the long-term and far-reaching impact on future production and farmers’ inability to rebound from the damage the drought has wrought.