From the BBC:

For many years rainfall, reservoirs and irrigation canals have allowed this sunny expanse in California to produce half of America’s fruit, nuts and vegetables.

But after three extremely dry years, the farmers are turning to groundwater to keep their crops and their precious trees alive.

There’s a water-rush as drilling companies are burrowing ever deeper – and there’s no restriction on how many wells can be sunk underground…

In some parts of the Central Valley, the water level has dropped more than 20m in less than a year…

This year, for the first time, farmers in many parts of the Central Valley have received no rainwater or runoff allocation for their crops from the water district…

“If this drought situation is the new normal we are going to have to completely re-think how much food we can grow – and a lot of people depend on California for growing food,” he said.

It can be hard to separate the long-term signal from the short-term noise, but still this seems like it may be climate change finally coming to bite us. That’s what happened in Australia and it took them a decade to accept their “new normal”.

Water, energy, and food supplies (and prices) all fluctuate constantly and affect one another. Here’s NPR talking about a few of these fluctuations but ultimately coming back to, yes, drought.

Across the country, the virus killed several million piglets, adding up to a lot fewer hogs at market. So tighter supply means Lewis gets paid more per pound, per hog.

“It’s been remarkable what the price has done,” says Lewis. “The last couple of years, hog farmers dug a real deep equity hole. And so it’s really nice to have that hole start to get filled up.”

He’s referring partly to the cost of feed — a major expense here on the farm. After record high corn prices in 2012, feed has now gotten cheaper, and Lewis can raise bigger hogs.

It’s a different story with cattle, which take much longer to bring to market. When feed prices skyrocketed two years ago, many ranchers sold off more cattle than they might have otherwise.

That extra beef is long gone, and ongoing drought in the Plains states means herds aren’t growing fast enough to meet demand.

The headline suggests that higher meat prices “aren’t scaring consumers”, but later they say that “Shoppers who can may spend more to eat the same amount of meat. Others will spend just the same, but get less.” That’s how it works in this economic system of ours – those who can pay more, do, and those who can’t, do without.