California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers • Hacker News Board

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#191

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 12:51 AM UTC

jkyle wrote: post #35

monochromatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a comparison that makes sense? If we doubled the water available to tech companies, that wouldn't make them any more productive.

We're literally running out of water [1]. As in no more. There are entire counties who get nothing when they turn on their faucets. Nothing. No more. Not to mention the ground is sinking. [1] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-droug...

Indeed, we're running out of water. That means that we need to know not only how to reduce overall water consumption, but also to prioritize how that water is consumed. I reckon crops (even the less important non-staple ones) are more important than green lawns right now.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#192

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 12:53 AM UTC

hauget wrote: post #52

monochromatic wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that a comparison that makes sense? If we doubled the water available to tech companies, that wouldn't make them any more productive.

Water is a scarce resource in this case. You don't exactly let the "wealthy" buy off everything they can just because. Scarce resources need to be regulated my friend.

If anything, that's an argument for cutting off non-essential (read: landscaping) water use entirely and prioritizing drinking water and agricultural irrigation (i.e. the things that actually tangibly benefit wealthy and not-wealthy people alike). We need drinking water and food. We don't need golf courses.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#193

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 12:55 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #111

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation is where scarce resources go to die. Why not find a way to produce more?

Do you seriously think the answer isn't "produce more, and stop using so much until we do"?

The "and stop using so much" part is misplaced if you're really looking to the agricultural industry, of all things, to do that stopping. We need food and drinking water. We don't need green lawns and golf courses.

Not to say that water efficiency improvements in the agricultural space wouldn't be welcome, but rather that landscaping is arguably less important than even the relatively-unimportant foods, let alone the important ones.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#194

Post by seanflyon » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 12:58 AM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #155

So I'm hearing a lot of misinformation here in these comments. I recently attended a talk [1] by the Chair of the CA water board (Felicia Marcus) and it was very illuminating. !!! WATCH THIS VIDEO LINKED AT THE END !!!. It was for MIT club of NorCal and is like 2 hours, so its far more technical/deep and BALANCED than anything you'll find on CNN/nytimes/etc. I'll try to summarize some of her points here that I think…

> CA is one of 5 Mediterranean climates in the world, and that makes it suitable to grow all kinds of stuff that doesn't grow anywhere else. 2% GDP is irrelevant because you die without food.

You can live perfectly fine without Mediterranean food and if California stopped growing water-intensive crops it would cause a shortage of those crops, not a shortage of food.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#195

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:04 AM UTC

slavik81 wrote: post #74

WillPostForFood wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP. What does watering one's lawn contribute to?

Is it? A significant proportion of that agriculture consists of luxury crops for export. Nobody's going to starve if the price of water-intensive foods like avocado and almonds increase a little. If you care about feeding the poor, give them money to buy their food. Don't wreck the environment and distort the market with supply-side meddling.

> If you care about feeding the poor, give them money to buy their food.

Yep. Let's make the poor people dependent on the rich people for basic sustenance instead of allowing food to actually be affordable. Let's also marginalize the people who are just barely not poor enough to qualify for such a thing, because "well, sorry that you're barely keeping your family above the poverty line, but you know, gotta blame the farmers for being inconvenient to the cityfolk, and you're not quite as poor as this family over here so why should we care about your problems?".

Any system that depends on the arbitrarily-defined concept of "poverty" v. "not-poverty" is a non-answer to many lower and lower-middle class households.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#196

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

jkyle wrote: post #102

WillPostForFood wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say GDP contribution to Californianis more important than supplying food to the state/country/world. I say feeding people and keeping food prices low is more important than that particular economic statistic when looking at the value of water consumption.

If this is your honest opinion, you'd be pushing for emergency triage of water allocation for agriculture. Specifically, reducing luxury crops like almonds, beef, and chicken. We could cut our water usage in 1/2 and still produce enough nutritious food for the entire nation plus some. This coming from someone who has favorite pass time of smoking brisket, ribs, and grilling steaks. It's just the facts.

> If this is your honest opinion, you'd be pushing for emergency triage of water allocation for agriculture. Specifically, reducing luxury crops like almonds, beef, and chicken.

I'd be fine with agricultural triaging, personally.

However, pinning the blame on almonds and livestock is misplaced (and, in the latter case, characterizing them as "luxury" crops seems misplaced unless you consider basic nutrients like protein a "luxury"). Instead, it would be wiser to focus on things like rice, which consumes absurd amounts of water relative to the amount of resulting food. I don't have any statistics on hand, but I reckon California's rice production alone dwarfs livestock (and possibly even almonds) in terms of water usage, and (I'd argue) would count much more easily as wasted water than livestock or nuts (since, compared livestock and nuts, rice isn't particularly nutritious).

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#197

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:11 AM UTC

iwwr wrote: post #61

WillPostForFood wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP. What does watering one's lawn contribute to?

Homeowner's Association rules or even town planning/zoning may actually prohibit someone from using arid-friendly grasses or perhaps replacements like artificial turf or pavement.

Then HOAs need to die off already, simple as that.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#198

Post by seanflyon » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:12 AM UTC

maxlybbert wrote: post #131

Domenic_S wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's very hard to make a farm water efficient. Kind of a sweeping statement. Here's an inexpensive product that reduces water usage by 90%, aimed to farmers and especially good for citrus: http://treetpee.com/ttp-u/

That makes a lot more sense for orchards (which are widespread in California) than for grapes, tomatoes, lettuce, etc. (which are also widespread in California). For the record, I've lived in several places with water shortages since I was a teenager. I believe every one placed restrictions on certain activities (no washing car at home, water lawns only on designated days, no water for ornamental ponds, etc.) instead…

> letting the price of water reflect its supply and demand.

Which would force a significant reduction in agricultural water use.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#199

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:17 AM UTC

jkyle wrote: post #67

hn9780470248775 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an inane comparison. You can't eat apps. Well, actually we can, in the same way we can "grow cars in Iowa" (to borrow an example from economist Steven Landsburg). But do we want to?

CA is a major exporter of agriculture. It can grow enough food to supply itself even with aggressive curtailing of agricultural output. If CA cities start running out of water supply, businesses will be affected. The ones that carry our GDP. If you're implying that cutting back CA Ag production would be a national harm, then the nation needs to pull it together and help CA support the industry. But in the end, this i…

It's not a bigger slice of the pie than agriculture, true, but it's a slice that's much easier to fix.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't try to fix agricultural water consumption. Just that the calls to cut off agricultural water because "oh no they use 80% of the water" seem to reflect misplaced priorities.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#200

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Jun 13, 2015, 1:21 AM UTC

jkyle wrote: post #113

mc32 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The whole system needs to be updated and optimized differently, at least optimized towards efficient water usage, relative to the crop. My objection is the vilification of farmers. I.e. Farmers use 80%! Yet we urbanites are the ones first asked to conserve! The framing is very questionable.

No vilification of farmers here. The reason it's absurd to squeeze urbanites is their a minor user of the resource. You simply can't solve the problem by reducing urban water usage. You should always look at inefficiencies in the 80% before you squeeze the 20%. And if the industry contracts a bit, it's not the end of the world or even a significant impact on the economy.

> You simply can't solve the problem by reducing urban water usage.

You simply can't solve the problem by reducing rural water usage, either.

The most feasible solution would be to build desalinization plants. California is a coastal state, and the majority of its population lives in cities located along said coast; pushing those urban centers to oceanic water will immediately free up that 20% of inland water usage, even more of which could be freed up by farms using oceanic water as well.