3 billion dollars
It was announced that the drought in the US state of California has caused at least 3 billion dollars of crop revenue loss in the last 2 years. According to a study conducted for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, water deliveries in the Central Valley region were reduced by 43 percent in 2021 and 2022. As a result, many fields could not be planted.
Jouse Medellin-Azuara of the University of California, who led the study, pointed out that the situation could worsen in the state, with farmland dependent on water from the shrinking Colorado River seeing more fallow in 2023.
About 70 percent of irrigated land in the Colorado River basin is used to grow livestock feed, and the cost of crops is rising as a result of the drought.
The Central Valley accounts for almost a quarter of all cropland in the US
A study published earlier this year by the National Journal of Climate Change found that the southwestern US has experienced the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years.