You can’t get a better environmentalist or steward of the land, than a farmer. Yet this drought is unprecedented – uncharted. There are no rules or guidelines set up for this. Farmers are now dependent on wells. They don’t know whether to water only 25% of all their trees, or to water all their trees only 25% of normal amounts. If they do the latter, they will take a hit on quality.
Now, farmers are planting tomatoes at this point; but they are NOT taking crop insurance, despite general opinion. Their hedge is to sell water they are allotted and thus make more than crop insurance would yield. Thus, water becomes a commodity.
In Northern California’s Shasta Dam, stored water is allocated so that one half is for agriculture, one quarter for municipal water, and one quarter for fish.