Climate Change, Water, and Agriculture
Implications
A Special Focus on California

Abstract
Water affects every area of life, and given the ever-decreasing water resources, due to many factors including climate change, it is important to conserve water. This has many implications, including socio-economic implications. An example of the impact is on agricultural production, and as such food production. Hence, the goal of this paper is to point out, as shown clearly in various scientific literatures that one of the most efficient ways of achieving water conservation is through addressing water conservation in agriculture. This is important since water used for agriculture purposes uses most amount of water than any other purpose worldwide. What’s more, specifically in California, agriculture uses about 80% of California’s developed water supply, according to natural resources defense Council’s publication titled “Agricultural Water Conservation and efficiency Potential in California”, 2014. As such, agriculture is heavily impacted by the availability and reliability of water resources. Thus, the focus here is going to be on ways to conserve on agricultural water in California.
Introduction
Water is life. Without water, life as we know it would not be possible. Given that fact and the ever-decreasing levels of water resources, particularly in already arid and semi-arid areas like California, its conservation is of utmost importance. What’s more, according to Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), they found, averaging the ratios of each individual country, that "for any given country" 59% of water used globally is for agriculture (FAO, 2014), and in California, in particular, according to Hanson from University of California-Davis, agricultural water use constitutes 80% of developed water supply(Hanson, 2013). Hence, one of the best ways of conserving water is more efficient water management in agriculture. In writing this paper, it is my objective then to show that one of the most efficient of ways of achieving water conservation is through addressing water conservation in agriculture. The basis of which is by encouraging and/or requiring farmers to make efficient use of water in growing their crops, what the farmers themselves refer to “more-money per drop”, as referred to in many literatures on this topic, and will be further discussed below. This works out for everybody.

Methods In doing this research, I had to use secondary data. I found my secondary data from a number of different sources; including secondary data through articles found through Chapman Library database, as well as government, non-profit sites, and the search engine Google. However, the data that I included here were mostly from journal articles that were only accessible through scientific databases. Although, I did also used data from other sources as well, including articles written in various reputable media agencies, including surveys and interviews that were conducted. The following are the literature review of some of the sources I referred to in doing my research on this topic.
Literature Review
Literature Review on the article, Improvements in crop water productivity increase water sustainability and food security—a global analysis In this paper Brauman, Siebert, and Foley, discussed that there is a close link between challenges of water sustainability and food security. They examined how resources are used for food production by examining global patterns of water productivity, defined as food produced (kcal) per unit of water (l) consumed. They noted considerable variability globally in crop water productivity, not only across different climate zones but also within the same climate zones. Interestingly and ironically (although not surprising), they found that those with least water productive systems are actually the consumers of disproportionate freshwater use (Brauman, Siebert, &