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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

#51

Post by WillPostForFood »

dragonwriter wrote: post #37
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?

> The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP. The primary value to California of exporting food (which is what most California agriculture is) is the economic activity produced. (Given a global food market with largely equivalent substitute goods, one could argue that the same is true of agriculture that is used for local consumption, as well.)

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.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#52

Post by hauget »

monochromatic wrote: post #25
jkyle wrote: post #8

About 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/…

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.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#53

Post by CydeWeys »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #30
jkyle wrote: post #8

About 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/…

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

Most water used by cities isn't used for watering lawns. This is a red herring fallacy anyway because no one is proposing loosening up restrictions on lawn watering at the expense of waterin crops.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#54

Post by dirtae »

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...

Which entire counties get nothing when they turn on their faucets?

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#55

Post by baddox »

mc32 wrote: post #5

Unfortunately 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…

> 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.

Isn't that the opposite of the truth? I've seen statistics about the water efficiency of agriculture, and it seems to be that relatively modest investments can drastically increase the efficiency. Of course, when water is cheap, there's no incentive to increase efficiency.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#56

Post by Domenic_S »

nsxwolf wrote: post #44
Domenic_S wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Parent's point is simply that in the home you can drastically cut water usage without it affecting your life much, but in farming the consequences are large.

Of course they're large, because they use a lot of water. That's the whole point.

Cutting residential usage is comparatively easy because we don't actually use that much water at home. See the study I linked above if you don't believe me.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#57

Post by dragonwriter »

This is not, strictly speaking, a set of restrictions "on water use by farmers", its a restriction on some "senior" (pre-1914) water-rights holders, with more expected; many (but not all) of the rights-holders are farmers, but some are, e.g., municipal districts, like the East Contra Costa Water District, whose use has also been curtailed.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#58

Post by raldi »

mc32 wrote: post #5

Unfortunately 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…

> Without water, locavores will have to become televores.

And if the price of California-exported food goes up, televores in the other 49 states will become locavores.

The fact that California is a huge net exporter of food suggests that the latter effect will dominate the former.

Re: California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers

#60

Post by [deleted] »

ajmurmann wrote: post #11

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.

[deleted]
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