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California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

nytimes.com

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Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#211

Post by jkyle »

emp wrote: post #152
slavik81 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't forget raising animals for meat, growing food to feed animals, and growing food for export to feed animals. This accounts for more water than almonds that seem to always be the scapegoat.

Another interesting fact about almonds. They're actually the most cost effective use of water from the volume to profit ratio.

So, yes, it takes more water the produce a bushel of almonds then it does to produce a bushel of . However, that bushel of almonds earns more profit per gallon.

What does this mean? It means if you start charging farmers for water usage (rather than access) then almonds are a more attractive crop then others crops from a profit perspective.

Counter to what most believe, restricting farmer's water access or charging more for water might actually increase the shift to certain water intensive luxury crops like almonds.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#212

Post by task_queue »

seanflyon wrote: post #189
task_queue wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great for pricing most commodities, but for necessities it is disastrous.

It works pretty well for food.

No it doesn't. Subsidies, social programs and massive regulations hold up our market for food.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#213

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

eropple wrote: post #145
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously have no faith that a group of people can regulate things efficiently. It sounds hopeful of course. I have more faith in desalination or some other engineering solution.

So you are advocating the continued unsustainable use of a scarce common resource, in a way not provably necessary to the good of that commons, because we might be able to efficiently create more of that resource at an unspecified point in time. Well, I'm convinced. I'll burn my house down this winter to keep warm, too.

Well the regulations only need to be a little wrong for things to continue to be just as bad as they are now. Isn't California already teaming with ineffective regulations?

If no one waters their lawn will you be happy? Is solving the problem your goal or is this just a thrilling political device? That would really suck.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#214

Post by azinman2 »

seanflyon wrote: post #194
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.

That's a non balanced argument. Lots of stuff that grows only in such a climate is way less resource intensive than other stuff being grown that could be moved. For example cattle are far more water intense than even almonds (which are water intensive) yet have no requirement to be in CA. Rice similarly. Plus diversity of food is not only healthy, but increases quality of life.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#215

Post by BrandonMarc »

ajmurmann wrote: post #33
bdcravens wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Increased product prices would likely lead to reduced demand and in turn smaller farm output and water usage. Same is true for industry that also uses enormous amounts of water.

Reduced demand, smaller output ... sounds like some CA farms will be going out of business. Which, in a heavy drought, is probably inevitable anyway.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#216

Post by yellowapple »

sbov wrote: post #207
yellowapple wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 prot…

From my research, pound for pound rice takes less than almonds. Guess what crop California spends almost 50% of its water on? Alfalfa, which is used to feed cattle. Also, just cutting out beef can make a huge dent. It's water usage is truly wtf level, whereas chicken is closer to almond level.

> Guess what crop California spends almost 50% of its water on? Alfalfa, which is used to feed cattle.

Alfalfa isn't used for just cattle, you know.

Also, do you have a source for that number? I'm having trouble finding one from a U.S. or California government source (USGS, USDA, CDFA, etc.), but at least one article [0] pins that number at closer to 15% (and almonds at 10%).

> Also, just cutting out beef can make a huge dent. It's water usage is truly wtf level

A citation is also needed here. According to the USGS's 2010 data (which admittedly is likely outdated), livestock as a whole (beef, chicken, pork, you name it) takes up around 0.5% of California's water [1]. Whether or not this includes alfalfa is unclear, but if the previous figure is correct, I'd suggest that cattle water usage is nowhere near the "WTF" level.

That figure makes a lot of sense to me, having grown up raising angus cattle (I'm not sure whether or not dairy cattle have higher water requirements due to milk production being their emphasis). Alfalfa was certainly a big part of their feed, but grass hay and grazing were just as important to their diet. Larger commercial operations might have different methods, but I'd reckon that most ranches aren't high-scale commercial operations.

[0]: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

[1]: http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#217

Post by yellowapple »

raldi wrote: post #205
yellowapple wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California (specifically, the Central Valley, where most of California's agriculture is centered) is hardly a desert compared to pretty much everywhere surrounding it save for maybe Oregon.

You're right, but nonetheless, we could conserve a lot more by making those cattle ranchers, and the alfalfa farmers who supply the feed, pay market rate for water (and, likely, move their operations to another state) than if we got sidewalk spraying down to zero.

I think you're overestimating how much water cattle ranching actually uses, given USGS data on the subject [0].

Not that I disagree with you; from firsthand experience, I know full well that there's plenty of room for improvement when it comes to water use on cattle ranches. However, that firsthand experience also suggests that alfalfa isn't the only food cows eat (the family ranch I helped out on through my childhood involved a lot more grazing than even grass hay, let alone alfalfa hay, and pretty much all the pastures I remember were watered by rainfall alone), and that cows aren't the only use for alfalfa (a lot of grazing livestock - horses, goats, etc. - also eat it in large quantities, though I'm sure cattle are the dominant consumers). If alfalfa's using a disproportionate amount of water, then I'd target alfalfa specifically instead of incorrectly antagonizing the ranches buying it.

[0]: http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#218

Post by raldi »

yellowapple wrote: post #217
raldi wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, but nonetheless, we could conserve a lot more by making those cattle ranchers, and the alfalfa farmers who supply the feed, pay market rate for water (and, likely, move their operations to another state) than if we got sidewalk spraying down to zero.

I think you're overestimating how much water cattle ranching actually uses, given USGS data on the subject [0]. Not that I disagree with you; from firsthand experience, I know full well that there's plenty of room for improvement when it comes to water use on cattle ranches. However, that firsthand experience also suggests that alfalfa isn't the only food cows eat (the family ranch I helped out on through my childhoo…

I don't think anyone should be specifically antagonized. If agriculture paid market rate for water, instead of pennies on the dollar, the market would do a great job ensuring our scarce water got allocated for maximum utility.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#219

Post by seanflyon »

azinman2 wrote: post #214
seanflyon wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a non balanced argument. Lots of stuff that grows only in such a climate is way less resource intensive than other stuff being grown that could be moved. For example cattle are far more water intense than even almonds (which are water intensive) yet have no requirement to be in CA. Rice similarly. Plus diversity of food is not only healthy, but increases quality of life.

I don't think that anything you wrote here makes sense as a response to my comment. Less resource intensive crops grow here, great. If they are cost effective then we should continue to grow them, if they are not cost effective then clearly they are not "way less resource intensive". The notion that we should maintain water-intensive agriculture because "you die without food" has nothing to do with reality. There is plenty of food and we could grow far more if we wanted to.

We are talking about luxury items. If you want crops that only grow in Mediterranean areas, great, so do I. We enjoy our luxuries, but we should not subsidize the unsustainable production of luxuries, which is what we are doing by giving them water at far bellow market rates.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#220

Post by yellowapple »

raldi wrote: post #218
yellowapple wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overestimating how much water cattle ranching actually uses, given USGS data on the subject [0]. Not that I disagree with you; from firsthand experience, I know full well that there's plenty of room for improvement when it comes to water use on cattle ranches. However, that firsthand experience also suggests that alfalfa isn't the only food cows eat (the family ranch I helped out on through my childhoo…

I don't think anyone should be specifically antagonized. If agriculture paid market rate for water, instead of pennies on the dollar, the market would do a great job ensuring our scarce water got allocated for maximum utility.

The problem is that a lot of farms and ranches get their water from wells on the farms/ranches themselves. For those that have to pump in their water from elsewhere, then yeah, let's get water prices restructured. For those pumping their own water from their own property, however, we'd need some major rejiggering of property rights in order to justify charging land owners for the use of what's arguably their own property, and I'm not sure if that rejiggering would be a net good. I suppose a property depth could be enforced much in the same way that a property height is already enforced (in order to prevent landowners from restricting air traffic, for example), but that's going to have some huge backlash, I'd reckon, seeing as how much of an investment is required to build wells / water tanks, run power lines, etc. Perhaps mandatory metering of electric wells combined with water usage limits ("this is how much water we've detected to exist underneath your property; we'll charge if you use more than that, and credit if you use less than that") would be a good solution/compromise?
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