It seems like we will ultimately see a decline in the amount of produce and cash crops that California can produce. This will have a lasting impact on the rest of the country both in terms of rising prices and decreased availability of everything from avocados to canned tomatoes to wine. Although the region has been blessed with fertile soil, it never really had much water to begin with. It was only through the result of billions of dollars in irrigation projects and shear force of human will that the region became as productive as it did. However, it seems that you can only divert so much water from the mountains and drain the groundwater before you reach reach your limit, particularly when that supply is dwindling. I feel bad for all of the farmers that have put their entire livelihood into those farms but at the end of the day you cannot tame Mother Nature.
Well - maybe.
I'm not really connected in any meaningful way to agriculture, but I think there's still a lot of room to go with both irrigation technology and GMO crops that are drought resistant and have reduced water needs.
One thing I did observe in the 5 years I lived there was a huge increase in the amount of drip irrigation. Until I left, I'd drive past the same orchards every day, and some of the established ones would flood irrigate them a couple times per week. Actually flooded - acres and acres of trees would get completely flooded to ankle depth or more. But every new orchard I saw planted had drip lines. (Or close to every new one ... it's not like I kept track.) Same with new vineyards, central CA grows a ridiculous number of grapes, apparently most destined to be raisins or juice. New trellis goes up one week, drip lines the next. So I think agriculture is adapting there, surely at great cost ... but drip irrigation vastly reduces the water needed.
What I still couldn't figure out was one particular field on my drive to work, which was a couple miles long. Never grew anything but some kind of grass/alfalfa/hay kind of animal fodder. There was an irrigation ditch alongside it that was always full of water. Parked next to it was some kind of (probably diesel) tractor pump thing. It ran 24h/day for days and days at a time, pumping water out of the canal into the fields. I'd go to work and it'd be running. I'd drive home, and it'd be 300 yards further down the canal, still running. I'd get called in at midnight for a case, it'd be running. I'd go home the next morning, it'd be running.
Meanwhile, my neighbor gets a ticket for wasting water pressure washing a fence.
I'm not so crazy as to deny there's a drought in California, but apparently SOME people have all the water they could possibly want, and no incentive to conserve. I suspect that, despite the drought, water shortages in CA are kind of like hunger in Africa: mostly a distribution problem.
