The barren dirt is littered with petrified carrots, blackened and barely recognizable after four years baking in the Imperial Valley’s legendary heat. The August sun is starting to set, but it’s still 113 degrees in California’s hottest, driest county.

Ralph Strahm tried his best to make money off this ground. In addition to carrots, the soft-spoken 66-year-old grew alfalfa and Sudan grass, using Colorado River water that originated as Rocky Mountain snowpack hundreds of miles away.

But the sandy, gravelly soil refused to cooperate. The economics were no good.

So the third-generation Imperial Valley farmer decided to sell — to a solar energy developer.

“You have to be willing to accept the future,” he says.

By year’s end, a field of solar panels should cover this land, sending clean electricity to San Diego. A giant battery will help the coastal city keep the lights on after dark. None of the infrastructure will destroy pristine wildlife habitat.

And the Colorado River water that once irrigated these 400 acres? It will remain in Lake Mead, or be sent to nearby farms or other parts of the Southwest, helping the region cope with a dangerous drying trend.

If that sounds like an outcome to which nobody could object — well, welcome to the Imperial Valley.

Wedged in California’s southeastern corner, it’s one of the most important places you’ve probably never been.

To one side of Strahm’s farm is the Sonoran Desert at its most stark, where creosote-studded washes give way to glimmering sand dunes and craggy mountain peaks.

To the other side is an astonishingly productive agricultural empire. Nearly half a million acres of lush green fields sprawl into the distance, popping out lettuce, sugar beets, onions, cattle feed and more.

If you’ve ever eaten a salad in the winter, there’s a good chance some of the veggies came from here. Not many places stay warm enough year-round for this kind of bounty.

But keeping the vegetable aisle stocked comes at a cost. Imperial County farm barons use more Colorado River water than the rest of California combined.

And as the planet heats up, there’s less and less water to go around.

The heat storm that struck California just before Labor Day offered a taste of what’s coming.

Temperatures were so high that the state nearly ran out of power as tens of millions of people cranked up their air conditioners.

For 10 straight days, officials begged the public to use less electricity. Major utility companies barely avoided rolling blackouts — an increasingly common occurrence as climate change brings more extreme weather.

Strahm’s vegetable graveyard could be part of the solution.

Clean energy advocates see Imperial as an ideal place for solar farms and battery projects that can help solve the American West’s energy and water crises. The land is flat; the sunlight, abundant. The Colorado River desperately needs relief. And Imperial is one of California’s poorest counties, its agriculture-heavy economy practically crying out for diversification and higher-paying jobs.

But resistance to change runs deep, particularly among the few hundred families who own all the farmland.

Agriculture is the only way of life many of them have known, and they’re raring to defend it. Their ancestors settled here a century ago, staking an early claim to the Colorado and carving canals to carry its riches through the desert. Again and again, they’ve faced pressure to sell water to coastal cities. They’re ready to pounce on anything that smells like a water grab.

And to some of them, solar power smells like a water grab.

Similar conflicts between agriculture and renewable energy are playing out across the country, especially in droughtstressed areas. As some farmers strike deals with solar and wind developers, their neighbors treat the industry like an invading force.

Lurking beneath these battles are urgent questions with no easy answers: What is the land’s best use? Who gets to decide? And how do we balance water conservation, food production and clean power generation in an era of climate emergency?

Los Angeles Times journalists spent the first few days of the late-summer heat wave in Imperial, returning in the fall and winter to see harvesting and planting.

We visited solar farms, alfalfa fields, geothermal plants and the dying Salton Sea. We talked with landowners, workers, energy executives and elected officials.

They offered wildly diverging visions of the region’s future.

One takeaway was obvious: If the world keeps getting hotter, nobody wins.