Water shortages are liable to affect almond yields for several seasons

摘要

Water rationing that has been enforced up to the beginning of September of this year has forced some of California's top almond growers into making some tough choices of how to allocate their irrigation quotas in 2008. Choices that looks likely to result in reduced almond yields for the coming season. Surface water supplies are limited due to two continuous years of below-average rainfall with an exceptionally dry winter in California making water supplies lowest on record. The end result of this water supply crisis is that irrigation allocations are down 40 percent to less than one foot per acre per acre for the entire growing season, when not so long ago the figure was 2.4 feet per acre cube per acre. This cut of more than 1.4 feet per acre has to come from somewhere and growers are nursing their allocation up to the end of the growing season, and after that either drawing on water from an alternative resource or switching off their taps as soon as the picking season ends.