Vox.com had an interesting story online yesterday discussing the boom and bust of agriculture in Saudi Arabia due to their overuse of groundwater. According to the story, in the 1970s, the government allowed farmers to dig as many wells as they wanted to grow crops. Agriculture boomed, and Saudi Arabia for a while became the 6th largest exporter of wheat. But now the aquifers are dangerously depleted, and, as you can imagine, it takes a long time to replenish the aquifers in this desert land. The country has announced that 2016 will be its last crop of wheat.
What does this mean for California? Like Saudi Arabia, it is withdrawing tremendous amounts of groundwater to supply their crops, which need that water to grow in the arid conditions there. Land in some areas has fallen by more than two feet due to water withdrawals. Farmers there will need to become much more careful about water withdrawals in the future or face the same problems that Saudi Arabia is now.
