SGMA Is Reshaping the San Joaquin Valley

SGMA is going to change the San Joaquin Valley.

It will change what we grow, where we farm, who can remain in agriculture, and what happens to land that has been productive for generations. Its effects will move through farmworker families, agricultural businesses, schools, local governments, and rural communities.

Groundwater sustainability is necessary. The consequences of achieving it will be enormous.

We have spent years talking about how to balance the aquifer. We now need an equally serious conversation about what will happen to the Valley above it.

The Change Will Be Visible

The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act requires local groundwater sustainability agencies to bring high- and medium-priority groundwater basins into balance. The California Department of Water Resources gives these agencies 20 years to mitigate overdraft and avoid undesirable results.

Twenty years sounds like a long time.

For a family deciding whether to plant an orchard, purchase land, drill a well, replace equipment, restructure debt, or bring the next generation into the operation, the future is already here. The decisions being made today will accumulate across thousands of parcels. Eventually, they will become visible across the landscape.

Research suggests the scale could be staggering. Estimates indicate that between 500,000 and 900,000 acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland may leave intensive irrigated production as groundwater reductions take effect.

That is difficult to picture as a single number.

It will appear one orchard, one field, and one family decision at a time.

Trees will be removed. Some fields will be fallowed. Some land will transition to lower-water crops, groundwater recharge, habitat, flood management, community buffers, or other uses.

The familiar patchwork of orchards, vineyards, dairies, row crops, irrigation systems, packing houses, and agricultural communities will change.

This is a physical reshaping of the San Joaquin Valley.

Water Decisions Become Community Decisions

Every groundwater decision eventually reaches someone’s life.

A pumping allocation affects what a landowner can grow. A fee affects the financial margin of an operation. A reporting requirement creates new administrative work. A reduction in production affects farmworkers, truck drivers, equipment dealers, repair shops, crop advisors, processors, and local businesses.

Agriculture is an interconnected regional system.

When land leaves production, the consequences travel through that system. Fewer acres can mean fewer jobs, fewer purchases from local businesses, less product moving through nearby facilities, and less economic activity circulating through rural communities. The effects can reach schools, healthcare providers, fire districts, local governments, and community organizations.

Some communities will experience these pressures gradually. Others may feel them quickly, especially in areas where agriculture provides a large share of local employment and business activity.

Groundwater planning has therefore become economic planning, land-use planning, workforce planning, and community planning.

The Valley needs to prepare accordingly.

Water Will Influence Who Can Remain

Agricultural operations are entering this transition with very different resources.

Some have surface-water supplies, multiple parcels, financial reserves, professional staff, and the ability to invest in new technology. Others have limited water options, narrow financial margins, and little capacity to absorb another cost.

These differences will influence who adapts, who sells, who consolidates, and who leaves

agriculture.

Small and family-run farms face particular challenges. University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources research describes the role small farms play in local employment, rural economies, culturally significant food production, and pathways from farm labor to farm ownership. It also identifies the disproportionate challenges these operations may experience under new groundwater requirements.

As groundwater becomes scarcer and more expensive, agricultural land may become concentrated into fewer hands.

That changes the ownership map of the Valley. It also changes who holds influence, who has access to opportunity, and whether a young farmer can still find a way into agriculture.

SGMA will shape the next generation of landowners as surely as it shapes groundwater use.

Fallowed Land Remains Part of the Valley

Land does not stop affecting a community when irrigation stops.

Fallowed acreage still requires management. The condition of that land can affect dust, weeds, pests, fire risk, neighboring properties, roads, air quality, and public health.

The question reaches beyond how many acres will be retired. We must decide what will happen to those acres afterward.

California’s Multibenefit Land Repurposing Program supports regional projects that reduce reliance on groundwater and provide water-supply, economic, habitat, climate, and community-health benefits.

That work offers a beginning.

Some land may support groundwater recharge. Some may provide habitat or flood protection. Some may remain in agricultural production with crops requiring less water. Other parcels may need entirely new approaches based on their location, soil, infrastructure, and relationship to surrounding communities.

Every project will require planning, funding, maintenance, and local knowledge.

Land repurposing cannot become a polite phrase for walking away from agricultural acreage. The Valley needs a clear plan for the land that changes and the communities living beside it.

The Valley’s Infrastructure Is Also Human

When we talk about protecting infrastructure, we usually picture canals, roads, bridges, wells, and water systems.

The San Joaquin Valley also depends on human infrastructure.

It depends on the people who know how to farm difficult ground, manage water, repair equipment, operate processing facilities, organize crews, maintain canals, move crops, and keep rural businesses open.

It depends on relationships built across generations.

Once that knowledge and capacity disappear, rebuilding them is difficult. A closed repair shop, dismantled packing facility, lost workforce, or family farm sold after generations cannot simply be restarted when conditions improve.

The Valley’s future depends on protecting the people, skills, businesses, and relationships that will still be needed in a water-limited future.

There Is Grief in a Changing Landscape

Agricultural land carries history.

It can represent the work of parents and grandparents, years of sacrifice, lessons learned, and the hope that a child or grandchild will continue what the family built.

A field map can also be a family timeline.

When water limitations place that future at risk, people experience real loss. They may grieve trees, income, land, independence, identity, or the future they expected to pass forward.

They may experience anticipatory grief as they watch the landscape change and wait to learn what will happen to their operation.

At public meetings, that grief may appear as anger, distrust, repeated questions, silence, or withdrawal. These responses carry information about how people are experiencing SGMA.

Grief literacy helps agencies and leaders understand the human meaning beneath those responses. It supports communication that is clear, respectful, and grounded in the reality people are facing.

Technical planning alone cannot carry a transition of this magnitude.

People need time to understand what is happening, consider their options, and make decisions that may affect the rest of their lives.

State Leadership Must Match the Scale of the Change

Local groundwater sustainability agencies have been given responsibility for implementing SGMA. Many are attempting to manage enormous technical, legal, financial, and community challenges with limited staff and resources.

They need the State to remain actively engaged.

State leadership includes timely plan reviews, clear policy direction, consistent feedback, dependable funding, practical land-transition programs, economic-development support, and coordination across agencies.

The State must also recognize the cumulative effect of its decisions.

A regulation may be evaluated individually in Sacramento. Landowners and communities experience the combined weight of pumping restrictions, fees, reporting requirements, water-quality rules, land-use changes, market pressures, drought, and rising production costs.

That cumulative burden influences whether an operation survives.

The State has acknowledged the need for a proactive and supportive role. DWR’s 2026 Vision for the San Joaquin Valleyrecognizes the interconnected pressures facing agriculture, communities, and ecosystems, along with the need for difficult land repurposing.

That recognition must become sustained action.

California created the mandate. California must help manage the future that mandate is creating.

What Kind of Valley Are We Creating? SGMA In the San Joaquin Valley

Twenty years from now, the success of SGMA will be measured through groundwater levels, storage, subsidence, water quality, and the condition of the aquifer.

Its legacy will also be visible above ground.

• We will see it in the land that remains in production.

• We will see it in the crops that are grown.

• We will see it in the condition of retired agricultural land.

• We will see it in who still owns and farms the land.

• We will see it in the strength of rural businesses, schools, and communities.

• We will see it in whether younger generations can still imagine a future here.

Groundwater sustainability matters. The future of the San Joaquin Valley matters, too. Both belong in every serious conversation about SGMA implementation.

We need to look beyond the next fee, allocation, hearing, and reporting deadline.

• What will this Valley look like?

• Who will still be able to live and work here?

• What will happen to the land?

• What do we want to preserve?

• What are we prepared to create together?

Those are the questions beneath SGMA.

They may become some of the most important questions the San Joaquin Valley has ever had to answer.

See you at the table,

Julie