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Which way of looking at it makes it look like a disaster? Only way I can think of is in terms of the rest of the country's dependence on it, but I'm no agricult
by ethanbond 6y ago
Which way of looking at it makes it look like a disaster? Only way I can think of is in terms of the rest of the country's dependence on it, but I'm no agriculture expert.
- fakedang 6y agoYou do realize that California's pursuit of agricultural production is largely fuelled by a massive expenditure of its water resources right?
- ethanbond 6y agoYes but is this a problem that is actually alleviated by having this farming elsewhere, or is this just farming at California scale takes an enormous amount of water? Certainly there’s some “non-ideal” water intensive farming (eg cotton in Arizona) but I don’t have a good sense for how much water expenditure is actually wasteful/where else we’d grow it.
- fakedang 6y agoIt's most certainly the latter, California isn't designed to handle as high a load for the extreme hot weather. Growing cotton in Arizona is plain madness. This year, Arizona was hotter than Saudi Arabia during summer. Honestly, I don't see how the US can dig itself out of this one. The Chinese circumvented this problem by reducing the agrarian population significantly while acquiring massive land tracts in Africa for cultivation, but the US will be bound by the farming lobby. Perhaps government incentives to shift water utilization to newer technologies, instead of effectively subsidizing agriculture, might help.