Opinion Today: How to avoid pumping the Great Lakes to California

Better solutions to protect the food supply now will prevent tough choices in the future.

View in browser|nytimes.com August 5, 2024 By Eliza Barclay Climate Editor, Opinion As farmers around the United States drain the aquifers they need to grow crops faster than they can be replenished, a grim potential future is coming into view: one in which we won't be able to grow as much food as we currently do because there won't be enough water to do so. Groundwater overpumping is especially acute in breadbasket regions in the Southwest, places such as California's Central Valley, and experts have begun to debate what to do if the water runs out. Should we move water-intensive agriculture out of California to states with more abundant water resources, such as Mississippi, and build new food hubs there? Or should we move the water from the East to the Southwest? In the latest installment of Opinion's new series What to Eat on a Burning Planet, Jay Famiglietti, one of the world's leading researchers on water security, argues in a guest essay that the cheaper and likelier possibility is to move water from places such as the Great Lakes to the regions that produce the most food — unless we act now. Famiglietti most definitely doesn't want us to have to make that decision, but he's concerned we might because, as he writes, "The United States has no plan for the disruptions that will befall our food systems as critical water supplies dwindle." Yet it is entirely possible to avoid this situation. We will need a national water policy, and we will have to "transform the way that groundwater is measured, monitored and managed," he writes. That might be tough work, but as he details in the essay, it would be more than worthwhile. Read the guest essay: Alma Haser Guest Essay Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation? 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