No food for you

No water for California:

SAN FRANCISCO - Some of the nation's largest farms plan to cut back on planting this spring over concerns that federal water supplies will dry up as officials deal with the drought plaguing California.

Farmers in the Central Valley said Thursday they would forego planting thousands of acres of water-thirsty canning tomatoes and already have started slashing acreage for lettuce and melons.

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Farmers' decisions to fallow thousands of acres during last year's drought cost $260 million in crop losses statewide, as well as hundreds of jobs. In the tiny farm community of Mendota, in the heart of Westlands farming country, the unemployment rate is nearly 40 percent, city officials report.

Elissa Lynn, a senior meteorologist with the state water agency, said the forecast so far suggests conditions will not improve this spring.

"It's pretty clear we're heading into the third dry year in a row," Lynn said. "We've only gotten one-third of the rainfall we desperately need, and we're already halfway through the winter."