Drought, Northern San Joaquin Valley
- When
- December 1, 12:00 AM PST to December 31, 12:00 AM PST
- Where
- Northern San Joaquin Valley forecast zone
- Crop damage
- $1.5 billion
- Reported by
- Newspaper
Impacts to the region included: Reservoirs dropped to low levels (record lows in some cases), farmers limited plantings of some crops and allowed areas of land to go fallow, increased agricultural unemployment and poverty, strong conservation efforts within many communities, increased reliance on shrinking groundwater resources, a decrease in snow-related tourism activity in the Northern Sierra Nevada, and a large increase in fire danger across the Northern Sierra Nevada, Southern Cascades and Coastal Range. Large wildfires such as the King Fire required large scale and very expensive suppression efforts. |For the entire state of California, 2014 was the warmest on record, which further increased the need for water and reduced an already limited snow pack. The Sierra snow pack ended the year at only about half of normal levels.|The California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Office of Public Relations summarized 2014 California agricultural losses: Direct costs to agriculture total $1.5 billion (revenue losses of $1 billion and $0.5 billion in additional pumping costs). This net revenue loss is about 3 percent of the state’s total agricultural value. The total statewide economic cost of the 2014 drought is $2.2 billion. The loss of 17,100 seasonal and part-time jobs related to agriculture represents 3.8 percent of farm unemployment. About 428,000 acres, or 5 percent, of irrigated cropland went out of production in the Central Valley, Central Coast and Southern California due to the drought.|The UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences research suggests that northern interior California lost 4115 to 6796 agricultural jobs in 2014. Almond production dropped by 15 percent compared to the 2013. Almonds are the largest crop for the region.