Farmers Spared in Water Restrictions

The drought in California dominated national news in recent weeks after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) issued an executive order calling for a 25% mandatory reduction in water use through February 2016. Agriculture is exempt from the order, a move Brown explained in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

He said California’s farms are “providing most of the fruits and vegetables of America,” as well as jobs for the state’s most vulnerable residents. Though agriculture accounts for only 2 percent of California’s economy, it consumes 80 percent of the state’s water, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank.

“The farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of land,” Brown told ABC’s Martha Raddatz. “They’re pulling up vines and trees. Farm workers who are on the very low end of the economic scale here are out of work. There are people in agriculture areas that are really suffering.” S