[lekanwang]

The unfortunate thing is that large stretches of California desert (and much of the Central Valley to the north) used to be lake bottoms and have incredibly rich and fertile soils. Between that and a long growing season that's nearly cloudless, you get ideal growing conditions -- rich soil, lots of sun, low moisture (i.e. low disease load), and H2A labor -- provided you can control the irrigation. Ah the problems caused by mispriced externalities...

[mateo411]

Most of the water that goes to farms in the Central Valley does not come from the Colorado river. It comes the Sierra and Owens Valley. The farm lands that would be impacted by this are in Imperial County.

[picantePepper]

Whatever trickle of water left over as it passed through imperial valley ends up in the armpit of Baja California where there is a lot of agriculture (which probably ends up in the US). I wonder how is Baja California going to react to this much needed plan for the Colorado river’s supply

[lekanwang]

Yep, you're right. Only meant to associate them in terms of why they're valued land, but yes, they're in separate riparian zones. Central valley is Sacramento/San Joaquin river delta.

[dendrite9]

I thought many of the greens we buy in the winter are grown with Colorado river water in Southern California and Arizona?