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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 inse

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.

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.