Why can't we just have a 2 tier water pricing system? Tier 1 is very cheap, so that everyone can afford water to drink and wash themselves. Anything over that amount in tier 1 get's priced at something more realistic. That incentivizes industry to be economic about their water usage and private people are deterred from being wasteful.
California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
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Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#12Unfortunately for farmers, urban dwellers far outnumber them. Of course farmers need to devise more efficient ways to water their crops, but I think it's strange urban dwellers don't understand the inelasticity of water for farming. At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it means not planting x acres that year. Without water, locavores will have to become televores. Calif produces food…
What crops we grow can change drastically. Alfalfa for China is one example of using a significant portion of agricultural water use (in the solid single digits) that doesn't provide much benefit locally.
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#13Good, the gordian knot needed to be cut. 165 years of near-unrestricted use of the flowing commons needed a stop.
Now if only they would follow the 200 year old recommendation of economists and put a price on it.
EDIT: To clarify, consensus on the role of prices on economic allocation goes back to Adam Smith, but using prices specifically to regulate allocation of natural resources only really goes back to Henry George, which I guess is a bit younger than California's misuse of water. Regardless, we're still about a century behind economists in knowing exactly what to do about this problem.
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#14[deleted]
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#15Why can't we just have a 2 tier water pricing system? Tier 1 is very cheap, so that everyone can afford water to drink and wash themselves. Anything over that amount in tier 1 get's priced at something more realistic. That incentivizes industry to be economic about their water usage and private people are deterred from being wasteful.
that would require new infrastructure in _all buildings_ to have two sets of pipes.
edit: apparently i misunderstood the parent and it cost me 5 downvotes
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#16About time. Agriculture is using 80% of the water, but accounts for a mere 2% of the GDP (4% of employment)[1]. There's no reason we should be squeezing our rural and suburban centers that fuel the overwhelming majority of our economy while giving farmer's a free pass to suck the state dry of usable water which is mainly used for exported profits and not sustaining local industries. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/…
Well, so long migrant workers. Thanks for your labor, but, having low skills, and no jobs in the fields because water is cut, time to face reality!
There are lots of farm hands who'd be negatively affected. They are at the margins of society as it is.
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#17Unfortunately for farmers, urban dwellers far outnumber them. Of course farmers need to devise more efficient ways to water their crops, but I think it's strange urban dwellers don't understand the inelasticity of water for farming. At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it means not planting x acres that year. Without water, locavores will have to become televores. Calif produces food…
You simply don't understand the scale of the water we use.
> At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it means not planting x acres that year.
Urban direct water usage (ie., showers, watering lawns, flushing the toilet, etc) only accounts for 4% of the State water budget. FOUR PERCENT. [0] Cutting your shower from 15 mins to 5 is utterly meaningless compared to agricultural use.
[0] PDF warning: http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft...
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#18Unfortunately for farmers, urban dwellers far outnumber them. Of course farmers need to devise more efficient ways to water their crops, but I think it's strange urban dwellers don't understand the inelasticity of water for farming. At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it means not planting x acres that year. Without water, locavores will have to become televores. Calif produces food…
The biggest problem is many farmer's do not have an economic incentive to be more efficient. They have open drilling rights . They pay a fee pump, but it's not tied to how much they use.
Further, if there's a national interest in sustaining CA agriculture it's time for the rest of the nation to devise a plan to get CA agriculture the water it needs. The state can produce plenty of produce for local consumption while using much, much less water.
Driving away the urban centered industries would be disastrous for the state and for the nation on a much larger scale.
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#19But rather than reducing, even a little, the giant water subsidy that agriculture gets (senior members of the agribusiness establishment pay pennies on the dollar), it sounds like we're just telling some unlucky farmers they now have a cap on their usage. This is not an economically-optimal approach.
Wouldn't that simply cause increased costs to be passed to the consumer (or just accept lowered profit), as opposed to doing what is necessary, which is reducing water consumption?
It does both. There is no "as opposed to" here.
Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers
#20Unfortunately for farmers, urban dwellers far outnumber them. Of course farmers need to devise more efficient ways to water their crops, but I think it's strange urban dwellers don't understand the inelasticity of water for farming. At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it means not planting x acres that year. Without water, locavores will have to become televores. Calif produces food…
When you try to optimize your programs for performance, do you focus on the code snippet that is responsible for 4% of runtime, or the snippet responsible for 80% of runtime? Even if water demands in farming are relatively inelastic, cutting statewide water use by 25% is literally impossible without cuts to farming use, and at the end of the day the rainfall doesn't care how much water you think you need to farm.
True but the state well knew this was coming _some day_ but did not institute policies allowing farmers to slowly adapt to a new reality. That's bad leadership.