[pilom]

"Buy and dry" is the default outcome. Cities buy the farms nearby, use the farms' water rights and let the fields go dry. Agriculture uses 60-90% of the water in the west depending on river basin. Cities can afford MUCH higher rates per gallon for water than farmers can so the cities will eventually just buy out the farmers if nothing changes. I have no worries about Denver or Las Vegas or LA running out of water. There just might not be water intensive crops grown out west anymore.

[nerdponx]

> There just might not be water intensive crops grown out west anymore.

And then produce prices rise until even the most absurd federal subsidies can't stop people from planting things other than corn, and then produce prices are super high and meat prices are super high because corn gets more expensive too, and then we have massive food price inflation.

It's basically just a market correction, but a big one while our entire food system is reconfigured and American diets adjust.

[deanCommie]

My understanding is that the most water-intensive/hungry crops in California that consume all this water are Alfalfa and Almonds.

I feel like we can all adjust our diets to survive without alfalfa and almonds...

[la64710]

But if nature itself is not producing water year after year and we are in prolonged drought, even paying higher prices will not ensure safe clean drinking water anymore for everyone in the cities. Maybe the future will be to start buying water like gas for $6 a gallon and I dread that day.

[s1artibartfast]

There is still many orders of magnitude more water than necessary for drinking. We could get by with a fraction of a percent. If things keep getting worse, you would simply see less lawns, pools, and agriculture. Following that, we would dump less fresh water into the ocean before people start dying of thirst.