(SacBee) - The land is bare, except for a few weeds, and the ground is cracked. For the second year in a row, Dan Errotabere is fallowing one third of his ranch: 1,700 acres of California farmland that might have grown tomatoes, garlic, onions and garbanzo beans.

“I can’t do this every year,” Errotabere said, inspecting an idle field on his family’s Fresno County farm. “I’ve got to grow. I’ve got to farm.”

This is the state of California agriculture in the fourth year of record-setting drought. With deliveries of surface water through state and federal pipelines slashed by 70 percent overall, the state’s 77,000 growers are struggling to produce the diverse agricultural bounty that makes California the nation’s leading farm state. At least 800,000 acres likely will sit idle this year, or nearly 9 percent of the statewide total, according to the California Farm Water Coalition. The coalition says about 690,000 acres were taken out of production last year due to drought, although other estimates have been lower.

Even as many farmers cut back their planting, California’s farm economy overall has been surprisingly resilient. Farm employment increased by more than 1 percent last year. Gross farm revenue from crop production actually increased by two-tenths of 1 percent last year, to $33.09 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The revenue figures don’t take into account animal agriculture, such as beef and dairy production.

The statistics don’t mean farmers and their employees are having an easy time of it. Rather, the data show how farmers are coping with the shortages of water. Forced to make choices, they’re diverting more of their dwindling water supplies to keep high-value crops going. Almond prices, for example, have been sky high, and farmers such as Errotabere have idled other crops to preserve their almond orchards and reap the financial rewards. As for jobs, many of the crops that have held up the best also happen to be the most labor intensive, such as strawberries, which has helped pump up employment.

“The agricultural economy is, in a general sense, not that bad if you have a product to sell,” said Dave Kranz, spokesman for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “If you don’t, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of that.”

Without question the drought is reining in a sector of the economy that’s been a juggernaut. Between 2003 and 2013, annual agricultural output adjusted for inflation grew by 24 percent, to $46.4 billion. The full impact of the unplanted acreage won’t be known for months, but it’s obvious that many farmers are cutting back.

Some 27,000 acres of California grapevines have been ripped up in the past year, and another 20,000 acres of orange and lemon trees are expected to get bulldozed this year. Sacramento Valley’s rice crop likely will shrivel by at least 25 percent, and growers fear they’re losing access to critical export markets because they can’t meet obligations to customers.

While crop revenue grew last year, the profitability of farming was depressed. Farmers in much of the state had to pay considerably more for their water, said farm economist Vernon Crowder, a senior vice president at Rabobank.

“Sometimes aggregate numbers lose sight of the very real challenges that farmers are experiencing on a local level, the incredible difficulties some of them are experiencing in getting water,” said Mark Jansen, chief executive of Blue Diamond Growers, the giant almond cooperative based in Sacramento. Almond production is expected to decline slightly this year as water problems interfere with yields.

So far the drought hasn’t had huge impacts on consumers. California’s celebrated wine grapes will be relatively plentiful. Overall food prices haven’t risen much. Much of the drop in production has occurred with crops, such as rice, where California contributes a relatively small share of the world’s supply and doesn’t have much impact on price. The crops in which California dominates world production – almonds, strawberries, many vegetables – have seen only limited declines in output.

“Consumers mostly won’t notice at all,” UC Davis farm economist Daniel Sumner said. “Your California rolls might be a nickel more expensive because the price of rice became more expensive.”