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if you’re a smart farmer, you’re trying to maximize your yield. Perhaps you have invested in an orchard. Drought year arrives, you do what you can to keep your
by e28eta 5y ago
if you’re a smart farmer, you’re trying to maximize your yield. Perhaps you have invested in an orchard. Drought year arrives, you do what you can to keep your trees alive (be they almond, stone fruit, orange, whatever).
As a CA resident who drives down I-5, I’ve seen crops being replaced. I’ve seen orchards that get bulldozed. I’ve seen the farmer propaganda. I’ve seen the almonds being harvested.
I can’t blame them, they’re trying to keep the land productive. They’re making guesses about the future. Once they’ve made a choice, they have a big incentive to make it work. But they’re certainly not making choices that are optimal for the community.
- Areading314 5y agoRight, a lot of nut and fruit-bearing plants take many years to start bearing fruit. You can't just replace your almonds with some other crop overnight.
- username90 5y agoWhen the choice is between their monetary investments being ruined and them using literally trillions of gallons of irreplaceable ground water year after year then I know what side I'd pick. Sometimes you make bad investments and lose money, that is life.