Hereford cattle roam the dirt-brown fields of Nathan Carver’s ranch which his family has owned for five generations on the outskirts of Delano, in California’s Central Valley, on February 3, 2014. At this time of the year normally, the fields would be covered in lush green grass, but the western US states’s worst drought in decades has reduced the land to a parched moonscape, leaving the 55-year-old father-of-four praying for rain. While Carver remembers tales his grandparents told of the Dust Bowl years in the 1930’s, this is as bad as he has ever seen it in his lifetime, he said. AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. Brown (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

A field of dead almond trees is seen in Coalinga in the Central Valley, California, United States May 6, 2015. Almonds, a major component of farming in California, use up some 10 percent of the state’s water reserves according to some estimates. California ranks as the top farm state by annual value of agricultural products, most of which are produced in the Central Valley, the vast, fertile region stretching 450 miles (720 km) north-sound from Redding to Bakersfield. California water regulators on Tuesday adopted the state’s first rules for mandatory cutbacks in urban water use as the region’s catastrophic drought enters its fourth year. Urban users will be hardest hit, even though they account for only 20 percent of state water consumption, while the state’s massive agricultural sector, which the Public Policy Institute of California says uses 80 percent of human-related consumption, has been exempted. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson – RTX1BWM5