In Parched California, Innovation, Like Water, Has Limits

nytimes.com - California’s drought has not spared A. G. Kawamura.

A former state secretary of food and agriculture, Mr. Kawamura grows vegetables and strawberries south of Los Angeles in Orange County. He was relatively lucky, losing 15 percent of one green bean crop when his well went dry last June, two and a half weeks before harvest.

Still, the fields have remained fallow since then. “If I didn’t have another farm, I would be out of business.”

Despite his worry over California’s four-year drought and its weirdly warming winter, Mr.