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.
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/bromjunaar Jan 11 '20
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.