C'mon, you don't need to make shit up to make EXC look like an idiot. Of course California is a major global food source. You can bet that every commodities trader in the world pays close attention to what is happening in the California ag industry. 

And California's gdp is how large? Larger than most countries. It is about the size of... Canada's. And guess how much of Canada's gdp is agriculture? About 2%. The state of California produces a dollar value roughly equivalent to the entire fucking country of Canada in agriculture products. Calling that insignificant is ridiculous.

Luxury? Like milk, beef, fruits, nuts and vegetables? All sound like a pretty important part of a balanced diet to me. Granted, cattle is Californias 5th largest product, yet it has a pretty large impact on Canada's largest product (beef). California produces over $3 billion in calves every year, many of those end up being shipped up to Canada to raise, where the Canadian beef industry produces over $4 billion in beef. You think that Canadian ranchers aren't influenced if California stops producing calves? 

The only thing I agree with, that is how the agriculture industry works. It is very common for any particular commodity to suffer a severe shortage when one of its main production areas is hampered by weather or disease. The result is that commodity becomes very expensive and people eat other things, while the high prices encourage farmers to plant more of whatever crop has a shortage. A lot of money is lost by a lot of people, but no one is going to starve to death in a modern economy because of local production issues. 

Dairy is California's second largest export. $1.3 billion worth- which makes it the 5th largest dairy exporter in the world. Behind the entire EU combined, the rest of the US combined, New Zealand and Australia. Hardly insignificant.

They are also a major producer (and exporter to Canada) of onions, celery, spinach, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, strawberries, lemon and tomatoes. Hardly "luxury" products. Those are all pretty standard ingredients.    

The vast majority of milk exported internationally from California goes to Mexico, some goes to Japan and China. The $1.3 billion is all international trade. California produces another $5 billion give or take that is consumed in the US.  The vegetables I listed I grabbed from the list of exports based on Canada being the top customer. Sure, you can grow vegetables in Canada, but there is a big difference between growing a handful in a garden and mass production. Soil and weather in Canada sucks for vegetables. You get low yields and high risks of weather problems. Which is why Canada's main production is wheat, rapeseed and beef cattle, while vegetable production is nowhere near high enough to meet local demand and in order to meet that local demand it would require several years, significant investment and repurposing a lot of currently used acreage for the task. 

So yeah, you can bet that if something drastic happened to California, that your grocery trips would get a lot more expensive. Mostly in the vegetable aisle, although if Mexicans were willing to pay enough for milk, Canadian dairy farms might get tempted to export more and raise domestic prices. Commodities are a world market and even if a producer you don't buy from disappears, it can affect your prices and local supply indirectly.

The reason wheat farmers made a shitload of money a few years ago was a shortage in Russia when their wheat production was 30% low. Global production was down 5% and it caused a huge price spike, including here in the US where we are the top exporter of wheat and had a fairly good crop that year.    

Yes of course. That's how it works with the 'rational responders'.

Don't support any rational public policy to reduce hunger and poverty such as infrastructure projects or mandatory family planning. Then when people worry about how to feed themselves and they say "God help me", they are being irrational, but not you.

I have to throw my hat into the ring with this argument because, living in the middle of the dust bowl in California, the drought is going to really affect shit.

People should give a damn about the "state of affairs" here, no pun intended.  Our Ag business and immigrant issues here are glaringly large and they both go hand in hand which creates one sticky situation politically and socially.  If the drought affected both in a significant enough way, it spells trouble job wise, import/export wise, migration wise (migrants will travel further and risk more just to work on temporary visas meaning more red tape for other states with the INS) and locally people will feel the impact almost immediately.  Of course, this isn't our first drought; we've been under the threat of facing a much more serious drought for many years now and I think it's suddenly starting to hit home being the worst one in recent history.  Now, the trick is getting our government to start taking measures to ensure this isn't going to become permanent or a runaway train where no amount of hole-plugging will keep the dam from breaking, or, in the case of Las Vegas, running dry.  Las Vegas has a finite supply of water and its speculated that the surrounding regions will run out of water by 2050 if not sooner at the consumption rate its at now.  Based on the artificiality of that area, its inevitable that the desert will reclaim the man-made shlock we've erected making everything a distant memory and a failed experiment of greed. 

Taking into account the average rainfall of California is roughly 15-50 inches a year, varying by regions of course, the only way to really come back from creating a rapidly approaching parched landscape is to start utilizing recycled water in a major way.  The amount of water that the Earth started out with since the dawn of time is the same amount of water that exists today so, the only sensible option is to harness it better and more efficiently rather than letting your sprinkler spit water on hybernating patches of grass that don't require the amount we use every year or any other carelessly used amount of water we take for granted.  It boils down to common-fucking-sense. 

I'm no longer a fan of California and, frankly, I've grown tired of this place to the point of insanity, but if I have to be confined to this asylum for the duration, I prefer to have the lava chocolate cake for dessert after group instead of the luke warm day-old green jello.

On the scale of the nations we are talking about, even a billion is drops in a bucket.

Not here.

I'd venture it has a lot more to do with locale than the season. If Ontario has a surplus, it's more profitable to send to New York than B.C. The harvest seasons in our two countries are simultaneous. Canada isn't a winter country anymore. Last year our temperatures were actually warmer throughout the winter than most of the northern states, and we were even warmer in Ontario than Texas and Florida quite a few times.

One supplier vanishing will increase prices a little, but nothing truly significant. 10-30% isn't very much.

Way to fail at reading. The greenhouse vegetables were a third statistic not limited to exports to the US and not included in those statistics, which in turn were not a reflection of Canada's actual production capacity. And if we grow enough tomatoes, carrots, and onions to send you 1.1 b worth then you're assertion that most all we have is corn & potatoes crosses into the realm of the absolutely ridiculous. We don't need any of the US, and certainly don't need California, to feed ourselves. Period.

Not in this case. I laid everything out sufficiently to quantify significant, and California simply isn't significant.

I agree, and never thought you bought into his bs.

Except California is NOT significant. Not to the world, and not to Canada. It is significant to the US and Mexico, as per your sources, but that's it. Prices will certainly rise, any loss of production must have a corresponding rise as everyone else can take the markets left open by the loss which creates shortfalls and raises prices, but we are not talking about some magic land that grows half the worlds food. We're talking about 1 state that doesn't even produce half the food in the US. Even taking my ridiculously extreme figure of a 200% rise in prices, the loss of California would impact the average Canadian by $1,000 per year. Far more likely is the higher end of your estimate of 30%, which would impact the average Canadian by $150 per year. That is statistically irrelevant.

You're using statistics from the entire US, NOT just California. It is NOT immense, it is insignificant.

And you can plant crops in much of B.C. year round, with steady or not steady rainfall depending on specific locations, with great soil and climate. Every province in Canada is a net exporter of food. California is insignificant.

Just like gas prices, which are far less mandatory than food and yet consumers haven't stopped driving. The economy is quite capable of handling a few shocks without any significant effect on the average person on Earth. Life is change, we adapt, we forget. California is not significant.

Way to fail at reading twice. I proved your assertion false. 1.1b worth of vegetables NOT grown in greenhouses and NOT including corn or potatoes are exported to the US.

By the measure that shows who depends on Californias crops, compared to the population of Earth. Or even just Canada. You could be #1 and that still wouldn't necessarily make you significant.

I never said California is irrelevant (or if I did I mis-spoke). I said it was insignificant. There's a huge difference between them.

As for third world, they are FAR more effected by their own policies than all of North America combined. California is insignificant to the third world, which in many cases could quite easily feed themselves if they'd actually work at it. Zimbabwe, as a classic example, used to grow enough food to feed themselves and their neighbours. Now they can't feed themselves. It has nothing to do with anyone overseas, it has to do with idiots in power. If Zimbabwe will be at all effected by the disappearance of California, it is actually almost completely irrelevant compared to how they've mismanaged their own agricultural industry.

Not all nations in the third world are in the same boat, but I'd be willing to bet huge amounts of money that they'd all be a lot better off if farmers from Europe and North America were given the agricultural land to develop and not hindered by local governments or populations.

As I allowed, Mexico could be in for a rough time. As could some Americans. But compared to the Earth entire, all North America is insignificant to the food industry. We simply do not produce so much that we feed everyone. Not even close. There's about 550 million people on our continent. The Earth is nearly 7 billion. We don't, combined, put food on more than half those people's plates. Any food. At all.

The biggest effect that the disappearance of California would have to the world is an opportunity to export food to the US. It would not significantly impact the diet of the average human. It wouldn't effect the diet of the average human at all.

California is insignificant.