Oh, and early warning

Look for food prices to go way up for the year.

The Governator has declared a drought emergency because we're behind on rain and the mountains have been low on snow for the last 3 years. Farmers and industries have to cut way back on water usage and some have already had to leave their fields fallow or their trees untended.

So now would be a good time for you areas with lots of water to start growing more food, OK? I mean, it makes a lot more sense for you to be growing stuff rather than California, which is a perma-drought area anyway, though the CA climate tends to be a lot warmer, so we can grow some things that most of the US can't, but anyway.

I also heard a thing on the radio today about the problem with bees cross-pollinating mandarin oranges. If they have too many seeds, they're only used for juice instead of sold as Cuties and are worth about 1/10th the amount to the grower. I guess we've just gotten too lazy about hard-to-peel oranges and spitting out seeds? Anyway, the bees drift over from other orchards and cross-pollinate the trees and then the small growers go out of business and the big growers try to sue beekeepers. Nice, eh?