A third year of drought with no end in sight, household wells going dry, and suburban water shortages are turning public sentiment against farmers in the country's biggest agricultural state.
Hot and dry is daily life in California's San Joaquin Valley. Its mounting effects are increasingly bursting to the surface in the form of "greedy farmer" attitudes that have a lynch mob undertone. Permits for new farm wells have already set a record in 2014 and have become a lightning rod for public opinion.
Reader comment sections at the end of online articles about new and worsening drought effects are a window into this anger, especially lately as more of them are about personal wells going dry. Calls for boycotts of crops like walnuts and almonds are mounting.
One reader's solution to a recent article in the Modesto Bee was, "The clinical idea is to solve the issue by driving those opportunistic orchard farmers out of business."
Another said, "My opinion is that there should be no new wells drilled to convert previously dry land, or to change crops on under-irrigated land. Current wells should only be allowed to be drilled deeper for homeowners."
Even though summer has just begun, it has already been a long, hot dry one. And it will only get worse.
