Introduction

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

California’s first mandatory water restrictions ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown, in response to a four-year drought, did not affect agriculture because, Brown said, farmers had sacrificed enough.

But as irrigation, which uses as much as 80 percent of California’s surface water, has begun to dry up even the water beneath the surface of the state’s fertile valleys, what can be done to limit the agricultural use of water in California?