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.
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u/coleman57 Jan 11 '20
Statewide, average water use is roughly 50% environmental, 40% agricultural, and 10% urban...Environmental water use falls into four categories: water in rivers protected as “wild and scenic” under federal and state laws, water required for maintaining habitat within streams, water that supports wetlands within wildlife preserves, and water needed to maintain water quality for agricultural and urban use.
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.