After years of aquifer exploitation and intensive farming practices, California has found itself running out of water. In a state bathed in sunshine for 300 days a year that makes frenzied use of water resources pumped from underground, farmers no longer have enough to survive on. To tackle the problem of soil desertification and drought, California is opening the doors of its universities and research centres across the territory, placing its bets on informing and updating farmers.

Data from the United States Drought Monitor (USDM) estimate that 99.85 per cent of California's territory is experiencing drought conditions, with 42 per cent of that at maximum levels. This is a phenomenon driven by the effects of climate change, but above all by a lack of foresight and the recklessness of drilling ever deeper to extract water using extremely costly technologies that damage the soil. For Richard Walker, professor of geography at the University of Berkeley, the problem stems from the absence of regulation on water pumping activity, which has increased by 50 per cent in recent years to serve the interests of the agri-food market.

The effects of drought and desertification are serious and contradictory. On the one hand, they have driven an economic mechanism aimed at maximising profit per acre — that is, farmers with greater access to water have replaced their existing crops with more economically advantageous ones, among them almonds, walnuts and tomatoes. On the other hand, the water consumption required to maintain high export levels and agricultural output of water-intensive crops is destroying the land, even as citizens are being made aware of the need for responsible use of resources. California, for example, produces 80 per cent of the almonds and 28 per cent of the walnuts consumed worldwide — a market that grew from 1.2 billion dollars in 2008 to 4.8 billion in 2012, doubling the surface area of almond groves at the expense of other crops.

The socioeconomic consequences of the drought are plain to see and have pushed the State of California to pass a water basin protection law and to invest part of its public funds in informing citizens about the environmental impact of farming practices and water supply.

In compliance with this law, Governor Jerry Brown has approved one billion dollars' worth of emergency measures that will fund water projects and support farming families.

The aim is to try to restore the flow of 130 out of 500 aquifers running beneath California's subsoil. To this end, over the next five years the state will implement a strategic plan for the sustainable management of agricultural crops and irrigation technologies, one that places people who work the land at its centre. Research and analysis laboratories will no longer be closed-off places remote from farmers — quite the opposite: it will be precisely the shared work between universities and farmers that changes the fortunes of California.