Like crisp romaine lettuce in your Caesar salad? The time to enjoy it is now, with farming booming in the California region where it's grown, as the state's historic drought could spell drastically reduced production and much higher prices for the lettuce in the not-too-distant future.

That's the conclusion several observers have come to about California's Salinas Valley, often called the "salad bowl of the world" for the amount of lettuce it grows; the state is reponsible for more than two-thirds of the nation's lettuce production every year.

This narrow valley -- which stretches about 130 miles along the Salinas River, from San Luis Obispo County to the Pacific Ocean near Monterey -- also produces a , broccoli, strawberries, mushrooms, spinach and celery, the San Jose Mercury News points out.

California produces more than two-thirds of the country's romaine lettuce, one of the main ingredients in a Caesar salad.

(ThinkStock)

Right now, farms across the Salinas Valley are enjoying an unprecendented boom as their neighboring Central Valley (also an agricultural behemoth) has withered in the face of the state's historic drought over the past few years, which has from the Sierra Nevada Mountains that they rely so heavily on to a trickle of its former volume.

Because the Salinas relies entirely on water from a deep groundwater basin, it's been shielded from the drought's harshest impacts, and allowed farmers there to take advantage of higher prices and plentiful demand.

"The , if you have the water under full control, because you can take advantage of predictable weather and strong prices," Richard Howitt, a professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California-Davis, told the Mercury News.

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But all isn't rosy. The valley's aquifers are in a state of "long-term overdraft" as a result of the drought, according to , "resulting in falling groundwater levels, regional seawater intrusion, and reduced groundwater storage."

That means that in addition to groundwater being depleted faster than it's being replenished -- the Salinas Valley holds about 16.4 million acre-feet of water in its aquifers, and is being overdrawn by about 17,000 to 24,000 acre-feet every year, according to prepared for Monterey County -- salty seawater also is creeping in to the valley's freshwater, which also is its sole source of drinking water.

While farmers there are experiencing few problems now, "they're standing over a ticking time bomb -- and so are the consumers who rely on them for salad greens and other fruits and veggies: that is to say, Americans," .

"The irony is that in the short run, the Central Coast farmers are better off," Howitt said in an interview with the Mercury News. "But in the long run, they've got to get their credit card under control."

MORE FROM WEATHER.COM: Why California Is In Deep Trouble

Aerial view overlooking landscaping on April 4, 2015, in Ramona, Calif. (Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images)