California’s Central Valley reaches about 400 miles, from Bakersfield in the south to Redding in the north, encompassing a stretch of land roughly the size of Tennessee. The region is also home to some of the most fertile and productive soils in the world.

Over millennia, sedimentation from the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east has been deposited into the valley below through annual snow melt and run-off, delivering rich silt into what is now an expansive and elaborate system of farms and burgeoning towns. From the sky high above on a clear day, the view below is one of beautiful earthen hues; an organic patchwork quilt of land and streams, farms and reservoirs, and threaded by aqueducts and roads.

Agricultural production is big business in this part of the world, and understandably so, California is the world’s fifth largest exporter of agricultural goods. One need only take a quick stroll to their local grocery store to find proof; about half of all fruits, vegetables and nuts stocked on shelves across the US are coming from the Golden State.

But California is also a thirsty state, and one that is in the third year of an extreme drought that has placed increasing stress on a complicated myriad of water rights, laws, and an aging and outdated network of storage and distribution infrastructure. Reservoirs are low throughout the state, particularly in the fertile Central Valley, and there is growing concern and frustrations mounting over the inability of lawmakers in Sacramento to work out a deal to more effectively manage and maintain the state’s freshwater resources.

Chronic water stress is the likely outcome. The costs, in economic and environmental terms, could be devastating if the state is unable to find creative ways to both conserve and distribute the precious albeit dwindling resource. Even without drought, 75% of rainfall in the state falls north of the capital, Sacramento, while 75% of the demand lies to the south. Some climate models predict California may lose upwards of 40% of its annual Sierra Nevada snow pack by 2050, an important source of natural storage, due to regional climate change impacts. In other words, in an already dire situation, the worst may be yet to come.

There is plenty of talk regarding the 21^st century’s “looming water wars,” and it often presents a scary vision, a world that is both flooded and thirsty. However, in the hype we lose sight of the realities that many water stressed regions actually face. The conflicts that some say will embroil entire nations are far less likely to erupt like geysers and spill across borders with tidal force than they are to emerge at the basin level. More level heads are needed in this debate.

Water conflicts are frequently realized at very local levels, and sometimes in rather indirect and obtuse ways. It is the farmer and the urban dweller, the stream and the aqueduct, the levee and the wetland, the fishery and the harvest, the inevitable flood and the track housing. It is your food prices and your taxes, your energy bill and your health, your overpriced and under-screened bottled water. It is your morning shower.

Which brings us back to the view from above. California’s agricultural water needs are increasingly at odds with its growing population, expanding urban areas, and the development projects that accompany them.

A drive down Interstate 5 reveals such tension, as broken farms and failing crops thirst toward what have become dry irrigation canals and empty field reservoirs against the backdrop of pale straw colored hills and dust cyclones. The Sacramento-San Joaguin River Delta that feeds into the San Francisco Bay, the largest estuary on the west coast that supplies millions of Californians with water for agricultural and domestic uses, has been neglected and mismanaged. It’s aging system of levees puts the entire region at risk.

There is no easy answer, which is why it will be important to take note of what happens next in California’s efforts at water reform. Both people and agriculture are competing with the hydrological demands of a dynamic physical environment, an elaborate system of watersheds that enabled its very existence to begin with. It’s a delicate balance.