4 ms·
It was posted on an older thread, but there's a quote by a surveyor and geologist in the 1800s as they were defining water rights. He mentioned there is no way
by R0b0t1 5y ago
It was posted on an older thread, but there's a quote by a surveyor and geologist in the 1800s as they were defining water rights. He mentioned there is no way to sustain an agricultural population in these areas despite the aquifers.
- AlotOfReading 5y agoOld timey academics often had no idea what they were talking about. I don't know the full quote, but that's obviously untrue because indigenous peoples already lived here.
- R0b0t1 5y agoThey weren't intensively farming the area. What he (and I) meant was "sustain an agricultural population." They were divvying up water rights but it was recognizable very early on that even modest farming could deplete the aquifer faster than it regenerates. I've edited it for clarity, but this is one of those times to refer to the site guidelines. You're supposed to look for the most charitable interpretation of a comment's phrasing -- what are the odds I somehow didn't know Indians exist?
- AlotOfReading 5y agoI presumed you knew about native Americans, but that doesn't mean the geologist considered them. Anyway, it's still relevant since many populations in the Sonoran and Mojave had highly intensive traditional agriculture. I assume those are the areas that were being discussed? The lack of what we'd traditionally call intensive agriculture in places like central valley is mainly just a historical semantic distinction. They cultivated and intensively shaped their local environments to maximize food production, but they weren't herding or clearing fields so it doesn't count.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kickout 5y agoSo the US abandons agriculture production and Brazil slurps it up by chopping down Amazon rainforests? Global effects, not so simple.