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Of the water used in California, 80% is used by agriculture. Asking people to stop watering lawns is merely a way to appease the public by suggesting that ever

Of the water used in California, 80% is used by agriculture. Asking people to stop watering lawns is merely a way to appease the public by suggesting that everyone is doing as much as they can to ease a drought, and an attempt to shift responsibility to those horrible urban businesses with broken sprinklers. /s Meanwhile, almond growers in the Central Valley and alfalfa growers in the Imperial Valley are mining aquifers to grow crops.

swarnie 4y ago
I really hope my generation can kill off the concept of a "lawn". Growing a mono-cultured weed in a desert just so that you can have a Saturday morning chore is utterly baffling to me.
- warcher 4y ago
  it will not make a lick of difference and I like my kids to have someplace to play outside.
  - wyre 4y ago
    There’s a lot of room between a grass yard and a safe yard for children to play in
- recursive 4y ago
  Killing the entire concept seems to be a solution too big for the problem. There are plenty of places where lawns require zero additional irrigation.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Most yards are just natural local grass. A relatively small number of people put in extra effort to make it a monoculture, but most just let it settle into whatever the local grass variety is, and then mow it periodically. And in the desert, most people don't have grass lawns.
r00fus 4y ago
Don't forget livestock - much bigger use than Ag. Pound per pound meat requires a LOT more clean water than crops, even almonds.
- thfuran 4y ago
  Isn't livestock largely a subset of agriculture?
  - slimsag 4y ago
    Livestock are largely fed dried grass/grain which consumes a ton of water to grow but doesn't provide much to the cattle. Cows drink 9-12 gallons/day, 30-40 gallons/day for milk cows. Probably more in dryer climates. For comparison a 20'x20' lawn uses about 120 gallons/day. One acre of alfalfa requires ~12k gallons/day and sustains 0.4 to 0.8 heads of cattle.
    - r00fus 4y ago
      I find the diagram on this article more clear [1]: pound for pound, beef uses 2x what nuts do on average. If there is an effort to reduce industrial water usage, those high-usage categories are probably where to look to cut (and less on residential water usage). [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-sustainability https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-...
      - Ekaros 4y ago
        Yeah, high-usage categories in areas without sufficient supply of water. On other hand in some areas there is sufficient amount of water available even with this usage. There really isn't one fit everywhere policy.
slimsag 4y ago
Same thing here in Arizona. Saudi Arabian hay farms here are massive, and use groundwater aquifers to grow Alfalfa which is exported back to SA to feed cattle. But yeah, it's the people not turning off the faucet while brushing their teeth that are the problem! Who do they think they are? Don't they know we're in a desert?! /s
Aaronstotle 4y ago
Water restrictions should be applied to the agriculture sector as well, if it was up to me I would put a quota on each supplier for how much water they can pull per year.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Would you pay them for their water?
  - caymanjim 4y ago
    It's not their water. It's collectively our water. And they don't pay market rates for it. Agriculture costs are incredibly complex. The true cost of food is socialized, in the form of free/cheap land and water, subsidies, tax breaks, and fixed prices. I don't want to pay the true dollar price for food any more than the next person. I recognize that there's a societal benefit in socializing/externalizing the cost of food production. That shouldn't stop us from acknowledging the true cost and trying to fix it. If we're looking to conserve water, the very first place we should be looking is agriculture. Maybe we shouldn't be growing rainforest crops in the desert. Maybe we shouldn't be draining our reservoirs and aquifers for crops that are exported. Maybe agribusinesses making record profits should feel the pain of higher water costs before we tell people they can't take a shower.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      It almost always is "their" water. California was founded in 1850 with private water rights, where individuals owned the water, like the surface land or gold and oil under their property. The fact that people now wish that the water was collectively owned by the state, does not make it so. If people want water to be collectively owned, they need to collectively purchase it and buy out the farmers. In the past, cities did just that. Like in the California water wars when LA went to the owens valley and set up shell companies pretending to be farmers and used them to purchase all the private rights, then turned the area into a barren wasteland. [1] In some instances where farmers are not using their own water, they have contracts with the state to provide X gallons at Y prices. If the state wishes to break those contracts, they need to pay for breach of contract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars#Obtaining_water_rights_1902%E2%80%931907 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars#Obtainin...
itslennysfault 4y ago
I don't disagree that blaming regular people is a distraction, but lawns?? really? Why does anyone have a lawn in the desert. Can we just not?
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  Sure, but if we are talking about "low hanging fruit" -- putting some restrictions or adjusting the costs of water use for agriculture would have a massive outsized effect on water tables. Yet we keep trying to nip at the edges on super small issues like...water for a lawn There is already some math in the thread regarding how its almost 2 magnitudes more of water use for a cow for a month over a lawn for a year
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Don't get distracted. Grass lawns aren't all that common in the desert. Yes, some people pay for the water to make it happen, but by far most do not.
markvdb 4y ago
Both agricultural and residential overconsumption need tackling. Both. Example from the article: "326,000 gallons (1.23 million liters), is enough water to supply one or two households for a year." No! That is enough for >16 households a year in this rich part of northwestern Europe [0]. In a naturally dry area, consumption should be substantially less, not 16 times more. Lowering residential water consumption to these reasonable levels gives an immediate 18.80% savings on total water consumption. That's nothing to sneeze at. Forcing responsible water use upon non-agricultural users might also encourage a critical look at agricultural water consumption. [0] https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-gezinnen https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-gezin...
- frumper 4y ago
  They might be calculating for loss in getting it from Colorado to Los Angeles. LA averages around 28k gallons a years per household.
- raphaelj 4y ago
  I'd expect water consumption to be actually higher in a dry area compared to Belgium (not 16x more though). You'd need more water to grow crops, wash your car, hydrate yourself. You might also take more frequent showers.
  - markvdb 4y ago
    One may think of it as balancing the water budget, or more realistically as somewhat managing the negative externalities of sucking the land dry in ~ four human generations.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Example from the article ... is incorrect, by at least a factor of 10.
  - markvdb 4y ago
    I wish I had misread my sources[0], but unfortunately, 500000l per year per household really is in there. From the relevant wikipedia article [1]: "Many homes in Sacramento didn't have water meters until recently. They now are gradually being installed after [...] law mandating meters statewide by 2025." In other words: we pretend to care a little, but actually, we don't. The famous French saying is more honest: "Après nous le déluge". Loosely translated: "We'll be long gone before the flooding starts.". Both very applicable and not at all... What we shall tell the children? [0] http://www.irwd.com/images/pdf/save-water/CaSingleFamilyWaterUseEfficiencyStudyJune2011.pdf http://www.irwd.com/images/pdf/save-water/CaSingleFamilyWate... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Urban/residential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Urban/resi...
s1artibartfast 4y ago
If people want the water owned by agriculture, they should put their money where the mouth is and buy it. Everything is for sale for a price.

swarnie 4y ago

I really hope my generation can kill off the concept of a "lawn". Growing a mono-cultured weed in a desert just so that you can have a Saturday morning chore is utterly baffling to me.

warcher 4y ago
it will not make a lick of difference and I like my kids to have someplace to play outside.
- wyre 4y ago
  There’s a lot of room between a grass yard and a safe yard for children to play in
recursive 4y ago
Killing the entire concept seems to be a solution too big for the problem. There are plenty of places where lawns require zero additional irrigation.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Most yards are just natural local grass. A relatively small number of people put in extra effort to make it a monoculture, but most just let it settle into whatever the local grass variety is, and then mow it periodically. And in the desert, most people don't have grass lawns.

r00fus 4y ago

Don't forget livestock - much bigger use than Ag. Pound per pound meat requires a LOT more clean water than crops, even almonds.

thfuran 4y ago
Isn't livestock largely a subset of agriculture?
- slimsag 4y ago
  Livestock are largely fed dried grass/grain which consumes a ton of water to grow but doesn't provide much to the cattle. Cows drink 9-12 gallons/day, 30-40 gallons/day for milk cows. Probably more in dryer climates. For comparison a 20'x20' lawn uses about 120 gallons/day. One acre of alfalfa requires ~12k gallons/day and sustains 0.4 to 0.8 heads of cattle.
  - r00fus 4y ago
    I find the diagram on this article more clear [1]: pound for pound, beef uses 2x what nuts do on average. If there is an effort to reduce industrial water usage, those high-usage categories are probably where to look to cut (and less on residential water usage). [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-sustainability https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-...
    - Ekaros 4y ago
      Yeah, high-usage categories in areas without sufficient supply of water. On other hand in some areas there is sufficient amount of water available even with this usage. There really isn't one fit everywhere policy.

slimsag 4y ago

Same thing here in Arizona. Saudi Arabian hay farms here are massive, and use groundwater aquifers to grow Alfalfa which is exported back to SA to feed cattle. But yeah, it's the people not turning off the faucet while brushing their teeth that are the problem! Who do they think they are? Don't they know we're in a desert?! /s

Aaronstotle 4y ago

Water restrictions should be applied to the agriculture sector as well, if it was up to me I would put a quota on each supplier for how much water they can pull per year.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
Would you pay them for their water?
- caymanjim 4y ago
  It's not their water. It's collectively our water. And they don't pay market rates for it. Agriculture costs are incredibly complex. The true cost of food is socialized, in the form of free/cheap land and water, subsidies, tax breaks, and fixed prices. I don't want to pay the true dollar price for food any more than the next person. I recognize that there's a societal benefit in socializing/externalizing the cost of food production. That shouldn't stop us from acknowledging the true cost and trying to fix it. If we're looking to conserve water, the very first place we should be looking is agriculture. Maybe we shouldn't be growing rainforest crops in the desert. Maybe we shouldn't be draining our reservoirs and aquifers for crops that are exported. Maybe agribusinesses making record profits should feel the pain of higher water costs before we tell people they can't take a shower.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    It almost always is "their" water. California was founded in 1850 with private water rights, where individuals owned the water, like the surface land or gold and oil under their property. The fact that people now wish that the water was collectively owned by the state, does not make it so. If people want water to be collectively owned, they need to collectively purchase it and buy out the farmers. In the past, cities did just that. Like in the California water wars when LA went to the owens valley and set up shell companies pretending to be farmers and used them to purchase all the private rights, then turned the area into a barren wasteland. [1] In some instances where farmers are not using their own water, they have contracts with the state to provide X gallons at Y prices. If the state wishes to break those contracts, they need to pay for breach of contract. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars#Obtaining_water_rights_1902%E2%80%931907 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_water_wars#Obtainin...

itslennysfault 4y ago

I don't disagree that blaming regular people is a distraction, but lawns?? really? Why does anyone have a lawn in the desert. Can we just not?

darkwizard42 4y ago
Sure, but if we are talking about "low hanging fruit" -- putting some restrictions or adjusting the costs of water use for agriculture would have a massive outsized effect on water tables. Yet we keep trying to nip at the edges on super small issues like...water for a lawn There is already some math in the thread regarding how its almost 2 magnitudes more of water use for a cow for a month over a lawn for a year
rootusrootus 4y ago
Don't get distracted. Grass lawns aren't all that common in the desert. Yes, some people pay for the water to make it happen, but by far most do not.

markvdb 4y ago

Both agricultural and residential overconsumption need tackling. Both. Example from the article: "326,000 gallons (1.23 million liters), is enough water to supply one or two households for a year." No! That is enough for >16 households a year in this rich part of northwestern Europe [0]. In a naturally dry area, consumption should be substantially less, not 16 times more. Lowering residential water consumption to these reasonable levels gives an immediate 18.80% savings on total water consumption. That's nothing to sneeze at. Forcing responsible water use upon non-agricultural users might also encourage a critical look at agricultural water consumption. [0] https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-gezinnen https://www.vmm.be/data/gemiddeld-leidingwaterverbruik-gezin...

frumper 4y ago
They might be calculating for loss in getting it from Colorado to Los Angeles. LA averages around 28k gallons a years per household.
raphaelj 4y ago
I'd expect water consumption to be actually higher in a dry area compared to Belgium (not 16x more though). You'd need more water to grow crops, wash your car, hydrate yourself. You might also take more frequent showers.
- markvdb 4y ago
  One may think of it as balancing the water budget, or more realistically as somewhat managing the negative externalities of sucking the land dry in ~ four human generations.
rootusrootus 4y ago
> Example from the article ... is incorrect, by at least a factor of 10.
- markvdb 4y ago
  I wish I had misread my sources[0], but unfortunately, 500000l per year per household really is in there. From the relevant wikipedia article [1]: "Many homes in Sacramento didn't have water meters until recently. They now are gradually being installed after [...] law mandating meters statewide by 2025." In other words: we pretend to care a little, but actually, we don't. The famous French saying is more honest: "Après nous le déluge". Loosely translated: "We'll be long gone before the flooding starts.". Both very applicable and not at all... What we shall tell the children? [0] http://www.irwd.com/images/pdf/save-water/CaSingleFamilyWaterUseEfficiencyStudyJune2011.pdf http://www.irwd.com/images/pdf/save-water/CaSingleFamilyWate... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Urban/residential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Urban/resi...

s1artibartfast 4y ago

If people want the water owned by agriculture, they should put their money where the mouth is and buy it. Everything is for sale for a price.