Will a shrinking Colorado River shrivel the produce aisle?
… At last year’s annual meeting of the Family Farm Alliance, Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, ticked off a few of her favorite [fruits and vegetables], listing lemons from California’s Imperial Valley and cantaloupe and leafy greens from Yuma, Arizona. “We are committed to you,” Touton told the group, “to make sure you can keep doing what you want to do, which is to continue to grow food to feed this country.” … But with the ongoing drought plaguing the Colorado River, that’s going to be a complicated promise to keep. … Given that agriculture consumes as much as 79 percent of annual flows, the sector will undoubtedly need to absorb a large share of cuts as states and the Biden administration work out a plan over how to conserve water over the next 20 years.