Farmers in the Central Valley are pumping out 7 *cubic kilometers* of ground water per year, or about 1,850,000,000,000 gallons/year--many times the total amount that Nestle bottles or that Californians use for showers. "To live off surface water is to live off your paycheck. To rely on groundwater is to tap into your 401(k)." (See http://billmoyers.com/content/invasion-hedge-funds-almonds/ for details.) In all, agriculture uses 80% of the water but only generates 2% of the economic activity in California.

The Central Valley has been in severe drought or worse since May 2013 (see http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA), yet California's farmers bought over 8 million young almond trees between July 2013 and July 2014--a 25% increase from the previous year, 3/4 of which were used for new plantings covering 48,000 acres, more than twice the area of Manhattan.

This reckless pursuit of profit to grow luxury crops like almonds (which alone use about 10% of California's water, and 70% of which are exported to China and other countries), in the midst of what is now an extreme drought that scientists say is likely the beginning of a 20+ year "mega-drought," is only encouraged by the governor's mandate of 25% reductions in residential water use, while giving a free pass to farmers to continue their unchecked guzzling.

This ban would protect almond orchards planted before the drought but not ones heedlessly planted after a a drought had already begun. (Unfortunately, we shouldn't just ban all sales of products planted during a drought because it would starve our dairy cows and horses, which are fed by alfalfa crops--the largest single user of California's water. To reduce that usage, we need to reduce demand for meat and dairy products by eating less of them.)