Farmers in portions of Northern California are selling their water rights.
For some farmers, they can make more money selling back their water rights than trying to save their crops in this drought-stricken state.
According to Modern Farmer, some farmers in across portions of the Sacramento Valley have been selling close to 20 percent of their farms' water back to the state at around $700 per an acre foot.
This means, that some farmers are ceasing to grow, which could be bad for the entire agricultural sector of the state.
Although Kern County's agriculture industry is hit hard by the drought, local farmers don't have the option to sell their water rights to the state. The water rights are a little different in Central California than in Northern California.
"They have older and different water rights (in Northern California) than we do here," said Beatris Sanders, executive director of the Kern County Farm Bureau.
Since farmers don't have the option to sell back their water, they have to find other means to keep their crops alive.
The Farm Bureau says they are making the switch from rotation crops, which include tomatoes and lettuce and can be switched out every season, to permanent crops, which use less water and are less difficult to manage than the rotation crops.
"... that has now become a gamble to produce these trees that won't be producing nuts at full capacity until like the seventh or 10th year. I mean, we don't even know if we will have water to support that," said Sanders.
Many farmers have had to tap into groundwater supplies, because farmers have seen a reduction in the amount of surface water given through the Central Valley Project.
"A lot of the growers have been forced to dig further into the groundwater basin. Some growers have been going 700 feet to 1,000 feet, which is very expensive for our growers to do, and the other half of it is our growers are doing that and still not finding water," said Sanders.
However, new groundwater legislation that has been recently drafted has made the Farm Bureau optimistic about the future of farming in Kern County.
"I do feel confident that the growers' interest will be met here in Kern County and that everyone will be able to manage our basin, but that is going to take a lot of work from urban, as well," said Sanders.
Source: www.bakersfieldnow.com