5 ms·
No offense intended, and I'm not being accusatory, but: > The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that en
by thaumaturgy 11y ago
No offense intended, and I'm not being accusatory, but:
> The amount of groundwater that the farmers are pumping is absolutely insane -- agriculture in that environment doesn't make sense.
This is the sort of statement I was talking about being frustrated with earlier. Given the overall growing conditions in California, it's insane not to farm as much of it as is practical. The water problem in California is complicated and multi-faceted, and it is not entirely the responsibility of agriculture to solve it. (Which isn't to say that they can't do a lot to help, either.)
- DanBC 11y agoWater - and the lack of water - is a part of the overall growing conditions in California. We know that California has droughts and that those droughts can last many years. (50 year, 80 year droughts are not unknown). Given that it is weird to allow agricultural water use without strict controls, realistic pricing, and beeter storage.
- thaumaturgy 11y agoNot exactly. I mean, you're not really wrong, but you underestimate the severity of the current conditions. Here's one of my favorite articles on that: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-history-of-drought-repeats.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/science/californias-histor... (also: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ingram-california-drought-20140203-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ingram-california...) The trend right now is drier than anything else in the last thousand years. If this were merely another instance of the 1980's drought, we'd all be coping more or less OK. But, it's drier than that and we've added a lot of population since then and, as you point out, no additional water storage.