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Well, something like 1/3rd of all the vegetables and 2/3rds of all the fruit in the US is grown in California. Where do you propose this gets grown instead?
by einarvollset 5y ago
Well, something like 1/3rd of all the vegetables and 2/3rds of all the fruit in the US is grown in California. Where do you propose this gets grown instead?
- HarryHirsch 5y agoThere's plenty of rain-safe farmland available in the Northeast. A good amount has reverted to forest because the terrain is easier farther out west, but the rains are failing there. We'll see it reactivated.
- einarvollset 5y agoOkay great!
- dlor 5y agoThe price for the water is also several orders of magnitude different. Farms pay 100-1000x less. It's not drinkable so some difference is expected, but this is too much. Raising their price would ultimately increase food prices across the country - but that's the reality. Right now CA urban water users subsidize food prices across the nation.
- einarvollset 5y agoIf only 5% of CA water is urban use, then surely the subsidy is minimal. Also - driving the Central Valley I see no end of “Congress stole our water” signs, so clearly some change is happening. Why can’t agriculture in more rain prone areas compete?
- Spooky23 5y agoThe miracle of the desert is truly a miracle. Sunny warm California is a farmers dream, except for the lack of water.
- fersho311 5y agoAdding some facts to this, because California tends to get hot frequently. When it gets too hot, plants slow (and eventually stop) photosynthesis above 68 degrees F https://sciencing.com/effect-temperature-rate-photosynthesis-19595.html https://sciencing.com/effect-temperature-rate-photosynthesis...
- 0x0nyandesu 5y agoThe rain prone areas are too cold for much of the year.
- zdragnar 5y agoOr too hot. Lots of crops grown on california would be happy in Georgia if not for the heat.
- hasmanean 5y agoHydroponics allow you grow crops in PVC pipes with a lot less water wastage and theoretically maybe even move them around on trucks. You could grow something on a parking lot. Could be the future if climate change results in unpredictable weather and you don’t want to lose your crop to an early frost. Northern Ontario has tons of lakes, nice summers and lots of rock to anchor humongous hydroponic towers to.
- mcphage 5y ago> Hydroponics allow you grow crops in PVC pipes with a lot less water wastage and theoretically maybe even move them around on trucks. You could grow something on a parking lot. I really like hydroponics, but you never (rarely?) see it used to grow heavier, food-dense foods like potatoes, or anything that grows on a tree. It’s all leafy salad greens and strawberries. I don’t really know why that is.
- hasmanean 5y agoMaybe because they’d have to be sealed against light to grow root vegetables.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoJust a guess: probably a combination of weather/soil and cheap labor. California is always sunny, the central valley is very fertile, and the state is very friendly to illegal immigration.
- Spooky23 5y agoMy neighbor growing up had a 300 acre vegetable farm. Now defunct as the family couldn’t compete with subsidized Western and Canadian agriculture.
- edgyquant 5y agoI doubt it’s just western farms. I’m from the Midwest, my mom grew up on a farm and she ended up selling that land, pretty much 90% of family owned farms went bankrupt in favor of corporate farms that benefit from economies of scale. I actually think it’s something like 95% of farms are now owned by corporations.
- reedjosh 5y agoWhich is a complete travesty. People care about the future generations' continued use of farm land. Corporations don't.
- Spooky23 5y agoSmall farmers face a lot of hazards. At that time (early/mid 90s),the western farms were the boogeyman post-nafta. It’s sad because IMO companies will be less efficient and have lower overheads than smaller operations in the long run. As more and more consolidation happens and competitive forces make way for cartels, the overheads of $2M/year CEOs and other corporate bs will start to impact prices and supply - but of course it will be too late.
- reedjosh 5y agoSubsidies bad. Only encourages low quality monocrops that themselves are unhealthy and destroy soil health.
- pg_bot 5y agoIn other states or internationally. If someone loses their competitive advantage, there is usually someone else there to pick up the slack.
- sbierwagen 5y agoHumans managed to scrape along for ten thousand years without the ability to eat fresh fruit and vegetables at any time of the year. I think doubling the price of an apple in exchange for Los Angeles to continue to exist is an okay tradeoff.
- dboreham 5y agoYes but there weren't this many people for the last ten thousand years.
- sbierwagen 5y agoSure? According to https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10339 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10339 the US used 5.38 billion bushels of corn to produce ethanol in 2019. A bushel is 56 pounds of grain. 87,696 calories. Assume a human needs 2500 calories a day, times 365 days per year. 912,500 calories. About 10.4 bushels of corn. Feed about 517 million people just with the corn the US wastes to make a few thousand Iowa voters happy. The world is not short of food. (Although once you start talking about synthetic fertilizers needed to grow that corn...)
- na85 5y agoCalories in corn is mostly from the sugar and it doesn't contain enough essential nutrients. Calories alone is not the whole story.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoThat's an artifact of immature harvesting. Nixtamalized, mature maize is almost nutrient complete, lacking only protein, a couple amino acids, and fat. All are pretty easy to add in and eating pure corn gruel for every meal would get old pretty quickly anyway. We know that this is a perfectly viable long-term diet because maize spent thousands of years as the overwhelmingly dominant calorie source for many indigenous groups prior to European colonization.
- 5y ago
- lettergram 5y agoRepurpose some of the corn, soybean, and grass fed cattle land. I'm surrounded by hundreds of miles of corn... which is turned into ethanol. That's more than Cali produces in terms of raw weight of food.