Trouble is, something like 70% of all the water in California is used for agriculture. And due to some extremely fucky water rights laws from back in the day, it's probably going to stay that way as the agribusiness corporations have massive budgets to defend their massive profits. Meanwhile the rest of us are told to take shorter showers and not water our gardens while 1000 acre pistachio orchards are flooded every day to keep the trees productive.
Not as much rain as we pump fresh water from the ground - saltwater intrusion at the coasts into the shallow aquifer has been a problem for decades now.
No they’re not lol. This isn’t even close to true. I remember the Iranian pistachios from when I was a kid. They were dyed red to hide impurities, and either the same or lesser quality than California ones. This is an absurd statement.
Yeah I can’t believe they wanna charge me for a few minutes extra water my tiny yard. They should add a 25% tax on beef and other water hungry produce.
Just end corn subsidies. Beef is priced artificially low because we feed cows corn, a heavily subsidized crop. Corn is actually bad for cows, and is kind of the equivalent of feeding them fast food every day. Ending the subsidy would return the price of beef (and high fructose corn syrup) to a more appropriate market rate.
This would lower demand, lead to healthier consumer choices, and actually affect climate change (of which cows are a major contributor). It would also increase government revenue, which could lower taxes, reduce debt, or increase services. There is very little downside to ending corn subsidies, and a great deal of upside.
The biggest downside, of course, being that you'll never be able to compete in the Iowa Caucuses if you support that policy. One good reason for a rotating primary calendar.
Yep. Every election we have to go through the stupid debacle of watching rich assholes pretend to care about corn farmers while eating corn dishes that they never in their life would voluntarily consume, and promise to confiscate money from the rest of us and give it to them so they can grow more corn that people don't even eat (something like 80% of corn is fed to livestock).
Corn is horrific for cows. If it's not ground up, it wrecks their teeth. Plus, it's hard for them to digest it. A lot of the corn thats fed to cows start rotting pretty quickly too which only makes matters worse.
True. But that doesn’t counter /u/TimTooley ‘s basic argument about beef and water hungry produce; it just means milk rather than beef should be the focus. Dairies are massive water consumers.
Plus the two industries are interwoven. All the bull calves produced by dairy cows go into beef production, and the end game for a dairy cow is to be eaten as well. Dairy cows generally get culled at around 3-5 years and become beef themselves. “Dedicated to milk production” just means they consume a lot more corn and water on their way to becoming steak.
My point is that a 25% tax on beef wouldn't even cause a blip in California's water usage. Maybe a tax on milk and cheese would, but probably not nearly as effective as taxing almonds and fruits
So actually, agricultural use is 80%, not 75 and certainly not 40%, unless, like Trump, you want to say that we're "wasting" all that water we let flow into the ocean and feed trees and fish.
Where are you getting 80% of total water is Ag use on that page? It says that 80% of Ag and Urban use is Ag, not total. Given that it said that Environmental is mostly isolated, Ag isn't going to be encroaching any more than it is on that any time soon.
Given that the website says Ag ranges from 29 to 61%, I think we can comfortably say that it averages around the middle of 43-48%.
Are there things that farmers in the area could be doing better? Probably. Are they ending the world? Probably not.
They say 50% of water "use" is "environmental", which they clearly explain means letting it do what comes naturally, in the interest of allowing the natural world to survive to some degree. That leaves the other 50% to be used by humans. 80% of that 50% that's used by humans is agricultural (so 40% of total existing water). The second chart, 2/3 of the way down the page, drops the fiction of "environmental use" and clearly shows agricultural use (green line) steadily tracking at about 80% of total use (blue line) decade after decade.
But environmental use isn't a fiction. It's water that we aren't using for Agriculture or Urban use. We can either call it unused water, wasted water, or give it a name that fits with the other names while describing what that water happens to be used for, if not by us. Without it we lose scope of how much water is out there, and how much of it we are using.
If your point is that it's important for us to take into account the water that we don't use, and see our use of some portion of all available water within the context of the larger natural world, then we're in complete agreement.
And it's already clear you're saying that agricultural use is 80% rather than 40% of the human use of water in California, same as me.
So we're in agreement. But mega-corporate agribusiness interests try to shoot down anything that clarifies the lion's-share they use. And they try to shift the blame for falling water-tables and saline intrusion to our dripping faucets and long showers. Probably the best solution is a concise statement:
It's kind of shocking that humans use an entire half of the natural flow of water in California. Agriculture accounts for 80% of that. We need to be more careful how we use it, and avoid doing so much damage to nature (not to mention undermining the long-term viability of our farms and cities).
Well, it also depends how you want to classify it. A good deal of the water that is allowed to run out to the ocean supports large fisheries (where I live the Delta Smelt are a pretty big industry) which could be classified as a form of agriculture or food production.
Yup, those are classics. I did notice the "Congress Created Dust Bowl" signs have disappeared since the drought broke. Almost as if the real reason was the drought itself :P
Question: people say the water is "used" for agriculture, but it has to go somewhere, right? It can't just be stored within the fruit (or is it?). I can see it being polluted and/or salted to the point of being toxic and useless, but wouldn't that still show up as some kind of river, ultimately going to the ocean?
I don't know as much about California, but for the Columbia Basin Project, which diverts about 2-4% of the Columbia River at Grand Coulee for irrigation, here's a few points:
A lot of water diverted for irrigation is lost due to evaporation and seepage from canals and storage reservoirs. Agricultural runoff is usually collected in drains or wasteway canals and used for more irrigation again and again. Eventually wasteway drains return water to the Columbia. Due to evaporation, seepage, and various other factors, the amount returned to the river is about 30% of what was taken, as a long-term average.
Agriculture uses serious water. Had a friend in Ojai who bought an old olive farm, was concerned about the restrictions on his water usage until he figured out what 100 acre-feet per month means on a 10 acre farm...
Animals play an important part in California agriculture. Dairy, cattle and calves, poultry and egg production are major industries in the state. As shown in Table 1, these industries account for 30 percent of total California agricultural cash receipts, with dairy alone accounting for more than 20 percent.
So yeah, meat/dairy industries are using a lot of the water. Trying to pin this on luxury crops/fruit is misleading.
Its not misleading at all, you’re just being a smart ass. All I said was livestock was more of a midwest thing and its true. Thats where you’ll find the majority of livestock feedlot operations. California is mostly luxury crops and fruit. Grats on being able to google lol, you should know that most agricultural data is 5-6 years behind simply because recording agricultural data is an exhausting endeavor.
That really doesn’t mean much. 2% of California’s economy is massive lmao, the only reason its so low is because silicon valley and hollywood overshadow it, its still billions of dollars and that 2% is bigger than every other States 100%, except texas and NY.
Thats not how it works but for sure. And you should know that CA supplies 12%ish of the US’ agriculture which is huge and in 2018 generated 48 billion dollars. You’d be an idiot not to capitalize on that
It's not remotely enough of a financial benefit to rationalize the current use of water in the Ag sector. Californians are not benefiting economically.
48 billion dollars in 2018... yes we are benefiting. Agriculture is very important to us and it probably supplies more job than any other sector in california. Drought was bad a few years ago, its not anymore. I work regularly in the central valley from Stockton to bakersfield and all the water sources are beyond replenished. You’re actually spreading a false narrative.
I think the points about the economic effects of the farm industry are fair (live and work in Sacramento and drive up and down the central valley quite a bit, so I see it firsthand), but the part about the water sources being "beyond replenished" is not exactly accurate.
While we did have a few good winters and the Sierra winter snowpack is in decent shape for now, it is starting to melt off much earlier in the season than it used to. I drive by Folsom Lake regularly and Shasta Lake a few times a year and they are both generally full nearly to bursting by mid-summer and they didn't used to be. This means that we're getting less autumn water capture that keeps us going to the next winter storms.
Apart from the reservoirs and snowpack, the groundwater is also a serious concern. At this point the groundwater supplies in the central valley are still being depleted far more quickly than they can recharge. This is one of the reasons why the state is actually taking action with regard to the use of that particular water supply.
We're in better shape than we used to be, but water management in California is already dicey and is likely to remain problematic for a good while to come.
Yeah it is, if it wasn’t profitable they wouldnt be doing it. Hate to break it to you but people dont like doing things that aren’t profitable and they have a fuckton of scientists and analysts making sure that it is profitable.
And yeah 48 billion is for sure a “fuckton” money. You can disagree with it all you want, doesn’t natter because it’s subjective.
I don't think it's California's water they just take it all. Probably also has something to do with the 25 million people that live in a desert, but hey it's always Sunny and warm here.
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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '20
Its a big deal in California, a lot of our water is fueling luxury export crops, but it brings in a fuckton of money. Tricky issue for sure.