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Los Angeles - As parts of the south-western US shrivel in historic drought, farmers are faced with an impossible choice: Today's crops or tomorrow's water supplies. The problem is unlikely to have any easy solutions.
In a normal year, farmer Joe del Bosque harvests truckloads of almonds, cherries, asparagus, melons, and tomatoes from his fields in Los Banos, California.
His 2 000 acres of fresh fruits, nuts and vegetables are part of California's fertile Central Valley, the most productive farming region in the world, helping make California, by far, the country's biggest agricultural producer.
But 2014 was not a normal year - it was the third year of California's worst drought in 1 200 years, according to a scientific study of tree rings published this week.
With record heat and a rainy season that delivered no rain - and no water allotments from federal authorities - Del Bosque struggled to scrape by on the little water he had saved from the year before.
"I don't have enough water," Del Bosque recalled thinking. "What do I cut out?"
He had one chance: To sacrifice some crops so that others might live, what he called his "Sophie's Choice," a reference to a 1982 Meryl Streep film in which a woman has to decide which of her children would survive the Nazi Holocaust.
Tomatoes were the first to go, a 1-million-dollar loss, he said. Then he cut back on his cantaloupes and his alfalfa. Finally, he had to rip out part of an asparagus planting, eight years in the making.
All told, more than a quarter of his land lay idle, baking in the unrelenting sun.
2015 could be worse, says Del Bosque.
"Going into next year, there's no water available," to save up, he said. If the government can't deliver water to farms, "we're dead."
Farms in other parts of the south-western US are in similar straits. Parts of Texas and Oklahoma are in their fourth year of exceptional drought. Much of the western Great Plains have suffered hot, dry weather for more than a decade. The last 14 years have been the driest in the Colorado River basin in more than a century, according to government sources.
"For the last 15 years or so, back to the late '90s, we have had a situation where drought, maybe, is the new normal," Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the US department of agriculture (USDA), told dpa.
Drought has always been part of the landscape in the western US. But scientists say it may be worsened by a changing climate that intensifies storms, reduces snowpack, and speeds evaporation from reservoirs.
On a drought-themed visit to Del Bosque's farm this summer, US President Barack Obama said it was time for a new strategy.
"Everybody, from farmers to industry to residential areas... are going to have to start rethinking how we approach water for decades to come," he said.
If 2015 doesn't end the droughts - and early weather indications suggest it won't - that rethinking starts now.
California's surface water - in rivers, lakes and reservoirs - is hotly contested between multiple groups: A growing population, agriculture, which makes up 2% of the state economy and environmental concerns that resist draining rivers and lakes to feed farms.
With surface water stretched to the limit, farmers survived 2014 largely by tapping underground water. But overuse could jeopardize reserves that farmers might need in 2015.
This summer, farmers drilled hundreds of new wells and hundreds more ran dry as groundwater levels dropped. In September, the state passed a law that will allow local governments to limit the water landowners can pump - but it won't go fully into effect until 2040.
"There is no management system at the moment," Richard Howitt, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, told dpa. "It's sort of a laissez-faire rush to the pump."
Water shortages this year caused $2.2bn in economic losses to California agriculture, Howitt calculated, as well as the loss of 17 000 seasonal jobs.
The USDA reported California farmers reduced crop plantings by 400 000 acres, 11%, in 2014. Beef prices spiked, in part due to scarcity in Texas and Oklahoma.
And while fruit and vegetable prices have stayed close to normal so far, when farmers' reserves of water and adaptability run out, Howitt said, "we will have really serious consequences" including the risk of price hikes, crop losses, and the transfer of some agricultural markets to other countries, like Peru and Mexico.
Del Bosque said, without relief from somewhere - whether the government or the skies - the risk to California agriculture, the source for half of the country's fruits and vegetables, is real.
"Does the nation want to lose that supply of food?" he asked. "This is not just a California thing. The whole nation depends on California for this."
