The News Review:

- Calif farmers idle crops veggie prices may rise
- Region Waits for Water Cuts
- India’s Waterways A Toxic Stew of Pharmaceutical Chemicals Dumped …

Calif farmers idle crops veggie prices may rise
The Associated Press 
(AP) — Consumers may pay more for spring lettuce and summer melons in grocery stores across the country now that California farmers have started abandoning their fields in response to a crippling drought. California’s sweeping Central Valley grows most of the country’s fruits and vegetables in normal years but this winter thousands of acres are turning to dust as the state hurtles into the worst drought in nearly two decades. Federal officials’ recent announcement that the water supply they pump through the nation’s largest farm state would drop further was enough to move John “Dusty” Giacone to forego growing vegetables so he can save his share to drip-irrigate 1000 acres of almond trees. “Taking water from a farmer is like taking a pipe from a plumber” said Giacone a fourth-generation farmer in the tiny community of Mendota. “How do you conduct business?”The giants of California agribusiness are the biggest economic engine in the valley which produces every cantaloupe on store shelves in summer months and the bulk of the nation’s lettuce crop each spring and fall. This year officials in Fresno County predict farmers will only grow about 6000 acres of lettuce roughly half the acreage devoted to greens in 2005. That alone could cause a slight bump in consumer prices unless lettuce companies can make up for the shortage by growing in areas with an abundant water supply or the cost of cooling packaging and shipping the crop suddenly goes down experts say.
Related from Cghyjx: Farmers to get help from grain price rise

Region Waits for Water Cuts
Voice of San Diego CA 
25 2009 | San Diego water managers have long been concerned that 2009 would bring the first water-supply cuts since the early 1990s. The year has dawned and the cuts haven’t.

India’s Waterways A Toxic Stew of Pharmaceutical Chemicals Dumped …
Natural News.com AZ 
html>water supply consumed downstream). Consumers also need to realize that the drugs you swallow are also environmental pollutants. Many drugs pass right through the human body unaltered where they are flushed back into the water supply that’s consumed downstream. (Yes the toilet water from one city becomes the drinking water of the next city down the river. If you didn’t know this you have a LT to learn about the water supply and you probably won’t like what you learn.