How The Water Crisis Is Hurting Family Farmers In California

The global water crisis has hit home in California -- and is hurting small farmers.

California’s Central Valley produces more than half of America’s produce, "Life After Water," a new award-winning interactive video from Verse, points out. But after five years of severe drought in the state, family farmers are seeing their livelihoods affected.

“Water, it makes life,” says Jesus Ramos, a farmer in California, in the video. “Water disappears, the labor disappears. My farming disappears.”

Jesus, an immigrant from Mexico, moved to the U.S. years ago to try to make a decent living. Now he owns a 140-acre farm in California where he grows oranges -- and the farm, and those who depend on it for their livelihoods, are suffering from the lack of water.

“There’s families in these little towns, and everybody depends on the work that these farms provide,” Ramos says.

Watch "Life After Water" above to see what happens to small farmers -- and fruit packers and citrus growers and families -- when they don't get the water they need to work, and to live.