News headline: “California Exports Gain Momentum.” Celebration is premature. This detail tells you why: “Exports of nonmanufactured goods – chiefly agricultural produce and raw materials – in March totaled $1.93 billion, up almost 8.5 percent from about $1.78 billion in March 2013.” The story quotes a noted economist, as he explains with unintentional irony, “Our faith in the resourcefulness of California’s export economy is undiminished. Excepting for the usually laundry list of potential catastrophes, our forecast therefore remains buoyant.”
The drought is a real and present catastrophe, not potential. And without sufficient water, California’s food sector definitely won’t be buoyant much longer.
Here’s a forecast that did not make headlines. A leader of the state-federal drought team briefed the State Water Board this week on plans for 2015. The team is preparing for “1977 minus,” the executive said. This is a reference to the previous worst water year.
We’ll know more about California economic impacts later this month, when the UC Davis College of Agriculture & Environmental Sciences updates its research on drought impacts to the planet’s leading food-producing region, the San Joaquin Valley. Meanwhile, let’s work together on water governance to make the economic forecaster prescient as he said “…growers and trading companies continue to provide abundant evidence of the competitiveness of California’s economy in today’s global marketplace.”
Full story — http://bit.ly/1qe4Vgt