Global Warming and Climate Change Essay

Due to the decline of the water levels in Lake mead and Colorado River, this has a huge impact on the the southwest of Arizona. This hugely impacts the agricultural industries and ranchings because they face drought, scouring heat and water shortages which decreases their farms yields and productivity. Because Arizona farmers are dependent on irrigation for vegetation, with a water crisis they would have feed shortages which would cause them to sell their farms with weaker disaster relief support.

Droughts have devastating effects all around. Most profoundly on the economy of the affected area; disrupting any balance in the supply and demand for food commodities, while pushing the cost of production up. This will translate to the market being largely imbalanced and will impact on the supply chain. Wisconsin is a large farming state, during the 2012 drought; farming practices were largely hampered causing a decline in the production of food. Consequently, farmers faced huge losses since their investment was not marched by the output. Considering this fact, the economy of Wisconsin's farming majority saw them running on a deficit. Law of reciprocity shows that if a component in the supply chain faces a deficit then other components will be forced to compensate for the loss and so the deficit will merely change hands.

Over thousands of years water has been a very valuable element in our everyday lives. Now we are being faced with a shortage of water affecting not only us, but future generations as well. The drought has become an extreme issue that has affected the United States. For example, in Texas the dry spell has had an impact in families, politics and law, religion, health care, and mass media.

With the drought targeting the agricultural community in California, many farmers are starting to research more ways on how to become drought efficient. The two common methods of farming are organic and conventional. Different farming methods have their own way on affecting the public health and the environment through herbicides and pesticides. Some of the benefits of organic technologies are higher soil organic matter and nitrogen, lower fossil energy inputs, and conservation of soil moisture and water resources (Pimentel and Hepperly 2008). Conventional farming can be more ecological by adapting some of the organic technologies. The objective of this literature review is to better understand the problems that arise from being in a drought, the water supply, and how farmers are adapting to the change in climate.

“Economists at the University of California, Davis said that agriculture, once a $44 billion annual business in California, will suffer a financial hit of $2.2 billion due to revenue losses and higher water costs” (Associated Press, 2014). Many farmers are going out of business because the production costs have increased with rising inflation, while revenue has decreased. Others have reduced their farmland plantations which decreases the crop production. Some of the affected crops include oranges, pistachios and rice. One example of how this affects the nation is the California almonds. “California [is] the source of eighty percent of the world’s almonds” (Bloomberg, 2014). This year farmers had to come up with new tactics to rescue the nut from drought “by diverting the water used for vegetables and drilling more water wells to keep the trees hydrated” (Bloomberg, 2014). Farmers are not the only group of workers affected by the drought.

The scarcity of water in California will keep getting worse, and the farmers limitations on water will too. Farmers are facing a greater threat than the federal government's limitations on their water consumption. Instead of ignoring the fact that: global warming is changing the environment around them. They should acknowledge that their land is getting significantly drier, and learn how to adapt to the land changing. In order, for them to successfully grow crops, pay their workers, and strive throughout future seasons. California farmers need to focus on what

With a diminishing snow pack and the ongoing depletion and leaching of ground water with each passing year, the drought continues to wreak havoc. According to the Los Angeles Times as of 2014 “Electronic readings estimated snowpack state was as much as 50% of normal.” Despite the continuing loss of water resources, California is the largest consumer of water in the United States. Annually, California consumes 11% of all the fresh water in United States . Agriculture alone consumes 80% of all water consumed in the state California , yet due to federal subsidies ranging in the billions, state relief plans and private wells, farmers pay less per gallon as compared to all other California consumers of water. “Farmers in imperial valley irrigation district pay $20 per acre foot, less than one tenth the cost in San Diego.”

California is going on a four-year drought, having many devastating implications that are being felt by everyone in the state. The population hit the hardest has been the farmers of California. California, being economically driven by its agricultural production, is losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every year due to the lack of water. Farmers’ use 80% of water the state produces, directly influencing their production (Mieszkowski, 2014). The country heavily relies on California for much of its produce such as tomatoes, nuts, avocados, strawberries, broccoli, grapes and various others (Cooley et al. 2015). In 2014, harvested acreage was 6.9 million acres, the lowest it has been for the past 15 years. Farmers are now being forced to use significantly less land then before, but also ditch old irrigation techniques and implement new techniques to better conserve water; maximizing production as much as possible in order to combat the drought.

Jerry Brown has already announced a mandatory 25 percent cutback of water, the first mandate of its kind in state history. Local water agencies would face fines of $10,000 per day if they didn’t follow the mandate. In the first month of the cutbacks, the urban areas cut their usage by 27.3 percent. In July, the next month, they increased that to 31.3 percent. Outside of these urban areas, farmers have faced more dramatic water cutback; but it should be noted that even with hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland left dry, California farmers have brought in record-high revenues during the drought, partly by using flood irrigation, rather than sprinklers or drip irrigation. However, switching to drip irrigation is expensive.

The farmers have faced challenges with the limited amount of water to supplement the variety of crops throughout many years, but on January 17, 2014 the Governor Jerry Brown according to an article from USGS named, “California Drought” brought to attention the issue of the drought. The limited resource of water devastated the farmers because the crops were in danger of becoming dry and useless. Since the awareness of the limited water supply the farmers had to find a way to manage the crops water usage. According to the article “How Farmers Conserve Water in a Drought”, by Elizabeth Held

Between 1930’s and 1940’s, a great drought hit the southern west Great Plains. “Dryland farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses.”(Congress). It affected farmers by destroying their crops. “Simply put, if farmers produced less, the prices of their crops and livestock would increase.”(Congress). In a way, the farmers were paid less. “In a time when many were out of work and tens of thousands were starving, this wastefulness was considered downright wrong.”(Congress). Without crops to feed people, people were starving. “Cotton, corn and wheat prices doubled in three years.”(Congress) Farmers approved this act.

The low of water affect the most important supply of agriculture in the U.S. California agriculture produce more than 90% of food to the United States. The drought causes a massive economic problem from two directions. Katie Fehrenbacher from The Guardian states that agriculture industry has lost $1.5bn and more than 17,000 seasonal job. That statistic shows that the drought causes the agriculture a huge loss of money and farmers do not have jobs anymore. As a result the prices of food will rise and the cost of water will decrease. Since 2011 when the draught begun no one take a position or talk about it as a real problem they did not start to think about a real solutions to solve the problem until now. The mandatory cut of using water is a temporary solution the water will not last for more than one year. Reduce agriculture will hit the economy of the state and cause many problems because the lack of jobs. The number of Crimes will rise in the areas that suffer mostly from draught; people cannot find food or water. Farmers digging for water underground which increase the consumption of the underground water by 40%. Also, as far they go underground the amount of salt in water increase,

Agriculture has been impoverished by the U. S. drought in 2011-12 causing enormous loss of crops and animals. This devastation has resulted in less supply and much

Indeed, if we accept the danger of global warming to be a real and present one, then the question of how to address it must be given serious consideration. Research conducted from as early as the 1950s through the present has afforded us a solid understanding of its causes. In the most basic sense, the problem lies in the burning of carbon-based fossil fuels such as carbon and oil which leads to the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2). Gases such as CO2 are referred to as greenhouse gases (GHGs) which accumulate in the atmosphere. GHGs can

U.S. Conditions like Florida and other states with a high range of hot spells are perfect