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In a dry year agriculture uses as much as 50% of all water, urban use ranges between 8-13%. https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_WaterU

• twblalock 4y ago
  Agriculture is also a small portion of the state’s GDP and we could do without some of the most water-intensive crops, such as almonds. There won’t be food insecurity or famine if we cut back on almonds.
  • CitrusFruits 4y ago
    I talk with my friend who works in water law a lot about this, and he always comes to basically the same conclusion as this. Almonds and pistachios are a huge waste of water. The problem is that farmer's water rights are constitutionally protected (California constitution). You need a super majority in the California senate to do anything about it, and that's not going to happen anytime soon. IMO I think we should tax the heck out of pistachio and almonds and just make them unprofitable to sell.
    • grandinj 4y ago
      The Dems already have a super-majority in the california senate, so that problem has been solved?
      • CitrusFruits 4y ago
        From what I understand it's not a democratic vs republican thing, it's a rural vs urban. There are enough rural democrats that they wouldn't be able to pass a constitutional reform.
      • tffcccdredf 4y ago
    • throwaway09223 4y ago
      There's always the proposition system. It costs several million dollars to hire signature collectors to get a proposition on the ballot. Californians could vote on it via direct democracy. Frankly I'm astounded some of the municipal water companies or development-oriented industries haven't banded together to make this happen.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        Because the problem hasn’t gotten bad enough. Once it does something will occur.
    • Dave_Rosenthal 4y ago
      The answer is to use taxpayer money to buy the water rights from the farmers who will sell it the cheapest. The state can then use it for something they deem more valuable, perhaps urban usage.
      • rektide 4y ago
        That sounds like a workaround for a ridiculous & pathetic inquity that never should have been, that has metastasized into a societal scale suicide pact. The state forever paying people to give up an infinite right to natural resources the state didnt have may be a legal answer but it's immoral & this buying-out "solution" keeps the injustice going uncorrected. Change the constitution.
        • coryrc 4y ago
          British paid out slave owners and abolished slavery decades before the USA did and without killing 1.5 million people. Sometimes it is better to pay out an injustice.
          • rektide 4y ago
            Itself a perpetration of iniquity- the state spending vast amounts to make vastly wealthy immoral undeserving people who should never have had a thing further wealthy. Buying out unjust holders changes the form of injustice being carried, makes the illegitemacy less viscerally real & more palatable. But, imo, it's embarassing that law offers itself no options to fundamentally correct it's problematic past. It feels like a misalignment, to protect property & capital above all else, even in the most absurdly unfair & illegitemate of situations. Perhaps in places such events are politically necessary for change. But I dont think I am alone in finding that these past events & this present one reek, that it is low actions to escape the crime but still enable & make profit of the stunning injustice. To govern without ever permitting any actual rebalancing feels inadequate to build a worthy way.
          • edflsafoiewq 4y ago
            Who should get the payout, the slave owners or the slaves? Incidentally, Brazil abolished slavery without a war and without paying out anyone.
    • fmajid 4y ago
      Pistachios are a high-value crop, and other places under drought like the La Mancha region of Spain are also switching from olives and wheat to pistachios. Compare this to alfalfa, an ultra-low-value crop the Saudis are growing in California because they bought senior water rights, then shipping to Saudi to feed cows, essentially laundering water. Agricultural water is heavily subsidized in California, and the absurd system of senior and junior water rights means a senior rights owner has absolutely zero incentive to be efficient, so instead of installing efficient drip irrigation, they simply flood fields. But reforming the system would take so much litigation no California politician has dared to do it.
      • tomjakubowski 4y ago
        Couldn't a ballot initiative do the trick? Has anyone been working on that?
        • nradov 4y ago
          Yes a ballot initiative could do the trick. However it's hard to get urban voters to really appreciate the scale of the problem or what needs to be done. As long as their home water supply works and the bill isn't exorbitant then everything seems fine. Plus even with a ballot initiative to change the state Constitution, it would probably still be necessary to compensate current water rights holders at fair market value in order to seize or significantly curtail those rights. That type of eminent domain property seizure would be extraordinarily expensive, and so politicians hesitate to propose the tax increases and bond sales that would be necessary to fund it. But the current situation is unsustainable, so eventually we'll hit a true crisis where some large areas literally run out of water.
          • b112 4y ago
            You don't take away rights, I don't even understand how you can tell someone they cannot access water. That said, instead you make it illegal in... say, 5 years, to irrigate certain crops without drip feeding. You also provide grants to convert people over to it, for free. Of course, it's still very expensive to maintain all that infra, it clogs, needs to be monitored, etc, but if the whole state has to do it, at least it's comparative competition.
    • tagami 4y ago
      We are literally exporting water when we grow these.
      • bittercynic 4y ago
        s/literally/effectively
      • tzs 4y ago
        ...in the same sense that we are literally importing water whenever anyone buys a computer (~400 gallons), a phone (~200 gallons), a polyester shirt (~3500 gallons), or a pair of jeans (~1800 gallons) not made locally. I.e., not at all. Most of the water used to make those things doesn't end up in those things. Same with almonds.
        • throwaway09223 4y ago
          Your analogy doesn't hold water, if you'll pardon the pun. The discussion is about water being consumed. Production consumes water, and when we then export the product it is reasonable to say that the function is, in essence, exporting the water, because the water is consumed during production. Saudi Arabia grows their alfalfa in California instead of locally. The only reason they've done this is to use our water instead of theirs. More water is consumed by industries which turn water into exported products, like alfalfa, than is used by all homes in the entire state put together -- including all lawns, pools, golf courses and parks put together.
          • UncleEntity 4y ago
            > The only reason they've done this is to use our water instead of theirs. I’ve spent some amount of time in Saudi Arabia and they don’t have a lot of water there for them to use. I also take issue with the term “our water” like you have some “manifest destiny” to seize someone else’s property rights because you feel you are more entitled to it than the current legal owner. They thought ahead, bought property/water rights and are using them in a way you disagree with. Fair enough, pay them more than the utility they currently derive from their usage and everyone walks away happy campers.
    • bilsbie 4y ago
      I’d imagine the trees themselves don’t even get much of the water. Could we find a way to get water directly next to the roots?
      • throwaway09223 4y ago
        Yes, we could but we don't because the farms have little incentive to invest in irrigation infrastructure when water is so cheap.
    • TulliusCicero 4y ago
      You can propose constitutional amendments in California via the initiative process, I believe.
    • chmod600 4y ago
      "You need a super majority in the California senate to do anything about it" I heard that it's worse than that: the water rights in California are structure enough like property that there might be a US constitutional challenge based on the 5th amendment's property clauses.
    • seventytwo 4y ago
      Water rights are a giant problem in the west. I suspect the few feral govt will have to step in at some point to completely re-do the system.
  • dehrmann 4y ago
    > Agriculture is also a small portion of the state’s GDP Be careful not to fall into the GDP trap. This is a place where free markets looking for efficiencies will cost you in p99 events. It's one thing when there's a toilet paper or semiconductor shortage. It's another when it's food, so it makes sense for governments to subsidize farm production, whether it's though cheap water or buying surplus product, to ensure a stable food supply.
    • gruez 4y ago
      But if the state wants to protect its food supply, surely there are better ways to do that than growing overpriced nuts?
    • aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
      LOL. Sure, FEMA will distribute rations of almond milk and pistachios when shit hits the fan!
    • PeterisP 4y ago
      We're not talking about staple crops here, there's no impact on food security - in this context "food" means agricultural products like almonds and pistachios, and if a farm gets restrictions so that they don't have enough water to farm almonds, they can start growing something less water-intensive like wheat.
    • lokar 4y ago
      I can live with almond milk going up 50%
  • baragiola 4y ago
    Degrowth is a loser mindset. Why not focus on getting more water, i.e. from the sea as done in Israel?
    • adgjlsfhk1 4y ago
      Because desalination is expensive?
    • manholio 4y ago
      Desalination is exceptionally expensive compared to just waiting to have water fall from the sky. You can do it in extremely arid climates, for example to provide water to cities, but it makes no economic sense when you already have huge amounts of free water that you waste on inefficient irrigation techniques.
      • baragiola 4y ago
        California is extremely rich. You have a water shortage. Water is important
        • manholio 4y ago
          Those three premises are still insuficient to warant desalination. "Shortage" means little, what we have is a restricted supply curve, that can still meet demand at a higher price. And if that price is insuficient to pay for desalination then it won't happen: when you build your desalination plant and try to sell water at production costs, you won't find any takers. They'll tell you yes, we have a shortage, water prices have exploded by 100%, 2 cents instead of 1 cent, but they certainly won't pay you 10c for desalination.
    • jonas21 4y ago
      California is building desalination plants, for example [1]. However, these are expensive to construct and energy-intensive. It's definitely worth the expense to ensure that people will have access to water, even in a future with intensifying droughts. But is it worth it to ensure that people's lawns have access to water? Probably not. Especially when there are plenty of landscaping options that have much lower water requirements than a lawn. A "growth mindset" generally refers to growing the amount of economic value produced - not the amount of resources consumed. Often, such growth can come as a result of technological improvements that increase efficiency. For example, more fuel-efficient aircraft allow airlines to fly more passenger-miles with reduced fuel consumption. Water conservation technologies - including some things, like xeriscaping, that you might not immediately recognize as technologies - are in the same category. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsbad_Desalination_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...
  • bergenty 4y ago
    To you, but to the farmers growing it it’s everything.
  • ripper1138 4y ago
    Totally right about almonds and ‘luxury’ crops. FYI measuring agriculture in general by its GDP isn’t really useful. Stable food supply via agriculture is the foundation of the economy. It allows people to specialize in technology, medicine, etc that generate more GDP. The entire Ag industry is around 5% of GDP in the US and farms account for 0.6% of GDP. That doesn’t mean Ag in general shouldn’t get first priority for water usage.
• Someone 4y ago
  I don’t see why the argument “We aren’t the worst offenders by a long stretch” would ever imply “we shouldn’t be prosecuted” I agree they should target the other groups, but I also don’t see why they shouldn’t target people using precious water just to have a green lawn in a place where lawn grass can’t really survive without watering.
  • twblalock 4y ago
    Because the sacrifice should be shared by all water users, and homeowners are far from the primary consumers of water. When agriculture uses most of the water, and the most water in agriculture goes to luxury foods like almonds and pistachios, it’s ridiculous to be investigating homeowners while not asking farmers to reduce consumption.
    • dehrmann 4y ago
      > luxury foods like almonds and pistachios "Luxury foods" oversells them a bit. The retail price per pound is close to ground beef.
      • greedo 4y ago
        That's because their retail price doesn't reflect the externalities. Cheap subsidized water makes them much cheaper than if the farmers had to pay a fair price.
      • zeraynor 4y ago
        Sound like they would be more expensive if the farmers didn't have such advantageous water rights.
      • adw 4y ago
        Ground beef - all meat, really - is a luxury food.
      • s0rce 4y ago
        Beef also uses a ton of water, probably more than almonds.
• akira2501 4y ago
  > Some of the water used by each of these sectors returns to rivers and groundwater basins and can be used again. I'd really like to see what the percentages are _there_ for each industry mentioned.
• trimbo 4y ago
  No California water thread is complete without the Delta Smelt https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article256930082.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article256930082.html
• baragiola 4y ago
  Doesn't agriculture uses its own underground water that is usually not used for human consumption?
  • s0rce 4y ago
    mostly no, although they do use wells but aquifers are drying up leading to salt water intrusion and subsidence. Further, most underground water can be more easily treated for drinking than surface water.
• ok_dad 4y ago
  I was going to come in here and say something like this. Targeting lawns which use maybe 5% of the water is the wrong thing to target, but much like recycling or air pollution from cars, the corporate machine has attached itself to the discussion and ensured that no eyes are looking their way, away from the "little guy" who is now responsible for fixing environmental catastrophes via individual action (which won't work).
• karaterobot 4y ago
  That's how it goes: make people feel better by imposing visible but ineffective restrictions, meanwhile allow the worst offenders to continue operating as usual. So much of environmental regulation works by acts of meaningless public guilt and contrition: cf. bans on plastic shopping bags and drinking straws. Of course I mean "works" in the sense of operation, not in the sense of success, because in the meantime things get worse.
  • vippy 4y ago
    I don't know where you live, but I see many fewer plastic bags drifting like so many tumbleweeds since the imposition of plastic bag fees and taxes where I live.
    • SoftTalker 4y ago
      That's likely true, but what change has been made in the total volume of plastic waste produced in the area? Possibly/probably very little. It's an example of doing something easy and visibly noticable, but ultimately inconsequential, to create the illusion of solving a problem.
      • pclmulqdq 4y ago
        In Australia, when they did a plastic bag ban, the total volume of plastic waste actually went up. Instead of using flimsy grocery bags for their household trash, people were now using thicker dedicated trash bags. Those thin bags are some of the most re-used plastic out there.
        • lillecarl 4y ago
          Our dedicated trash bags are thinner than what used to be in the store for your groceries.
        • Chilko 4y ago
          Yep same in New Zealand, as much as I hate it we now buy dedicated bin bags for our kitchen bin and others as it works the best for our flat. In the past this was never an issue. However, urban plastic pollution has definitely decreased. We do often now have an excess of paper bags in our house as people tend to forget their reusable bags and we don't have as many uses for the paper ones. At least they can be recycled.
• tomohawk 4y ago
  Yes, we must sacrifice everything in order to save these unsustainable cities built in deserts. It doesn't matter if the agricultural users have prior claims. They should just realize that their worth is so much less than the coastal elites. How dare they stand in the way of the lifestyles of coastal elites.
  • majormajor 4y ago
    How many of the 13 million people in, say, the greater LA area do you think the term "elite" can plausibly encompass? Edit: If LA (or SF, or SD, or Phoenix, or literally any other city) runs out of water, it's not going to be the elites who have a hard time dealing with it or moving somewhere else.
    • tomohawk 4y ago
      All the ones at the levers of power that matter. It is utterly ridiculous to build a giant city in the middle of a desert, and then to cry bully everyone else into giving up their water so that the ridiculous city can continue its unsustainable path.
      • majormajor 4y ago
        So the people in power in LA are actually spending hundreds of millions to billions on things like water capture, water recycling, etc, to get ready to have less external water in the future. And they're also instituting conservation measures, restricting watering, incentivizing replacing with drought-friendly plants and yards, incentivizing getting more efficient appliances, etc, etc. It would be a bad look to do nothing and just blame others, but that's obviously - from the linked article here alone - not what's happening. People on Hacker News are "crying bully" about agriculture, but meanwhile, there's a lot being done in internal preparation and improvement. And worst case? It's next to an ocean, so it's not like there's no source. There's red tape to all of it, of course, but if the urgency gets high enough... that tape could be cut through. Meanwhile, would you seriously argue that it's not ridiculous, and in any way sustainable, to build agriculture in the central valley? Look at the numbers above: agriculture uses far more water than the cities so less water being available is going to hit it far harder than it'll hit the cities. Los Angeles (or other cities) finding other sources of water isn't going to save central valley agriculture, so what's the obsession with the vast majority of the population who are using <15% of the water? (And if we're calling the land where Los Angeles was built a "desert" instead of a Mediteranean climate we really should do the same for the central valley, after all. Drive through that land for three quarters of the year and it's immediately obvious that maybe it's not a great idea to farm there...)
• plankers 4y ago
  agriculture provides me with food to eat. lawns do not. i would rather have food to eat than useless patches of grass.
• s0rce 4y ago
  I think the best strategy is laid out for the Colorado basin by the Southern Nevada Water authority and could be applied across the American west, see the suggestions at the end with the first being the most important https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304-2022-8-15-nevada-letter-to-interior-department https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22136304-2022-8-15-n... Create new beneficial use criteria for Lower Basin water users, eliminating wasteful and antiquated water use practices and uses of water no longer appropriate for this Basin’s limited resources.
• snickerbockers 4y ago
  Agriculture produces something useful, a lawn does not
  • s0rce 4y ago
    This is true at a fundamental level in that we need food to eat but there is a really strong argument that a huge fraction of the agricultural water use in the American west is not "useful" or at least should pay market rate. Examples include flood irrigation which could be readily converted to drip and reduce water usage or growing animal feed (particularly for export), simply stop doing these here and do it in places with more water. This is basically a straw man, no one is saying to stop growing food to save water, but we can save a lot of water without anyone starving. Beef would be more expensive and some other countries would lose cheap imported feed (alfalfa, teff, etc).
• patwater10 4y ago
  Eh there's a lot of nuance within those broad categories: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-d...
• RichardCNormos 4y ago
  • wonnage 4y ago
    weird thing to be proud of
  • CobaltFire 4y ago
    If you don't like democracy you might be in the wrong country.
  • alexnewman 4y ago
  • beej71 4y ago
    I doubt this is true, but if it is, it will only encourage urbanites to set water policy more against you.
  • killyourcar 4y ago
    [flagged]
• megablast 4y ago
  We need agriculture. We don’t need lawns and pools.
  • AlotOfReading 4y ago
    We've spent decades optimizing urban use and restricting lawns/ pools. We haven't spent decades meaningfully optimizing agricultural water usage, despite it consuming more water all other human usage categories combined. Now we're facing a shortfalls where eliminating the entirety of residential water usage might not be enough. Maybe it's time to focus the more of our efforts on other categories.
  • seventytwo 4y ago
    We don’t need all agriculture, and it’s the biggest user.
• kurupt213 4y ago
  Yeah, let’s restrict food growing when prices are already skyrocketing. I would say lawns are the lowest priority water use in the state.
• claaams 4y ago
  Can we also restrict golf courses too please?
  • jdkee 4y ago
    Why? Let them pay market rates for water.
• aatharuv 4y ago
  Agriculture is required. We gotta eat food. Having big lawns with water guzzling lawns isn't needed. Of course, we need incentives for efficient use of water by ag too.
  • seventytwo 4y ago
    Not all agriculture is required, and certainly not in naturally arid regions like southern CA.
• jdkee 4y ago
  That is why the market should be used as an efficient distribution mechanism.