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For those unfamilar with the California scene: there is an agricultural water shortage, not a residential one. You could reduce residential usage of water in C

• bradgessler 4y ago
  It sounds easy to say “shut down agribusiness,” but then you have a food problem. I don’t know to what extent, but I can’t take “cut off ag” solutions seriously unless they can articulate the impact of the cut-off on food supplies and present alternatives for more efficient crops.
  • bsder 4y ago
    Cutting off alfalfa being exported won't hurt "food supplies" in the US one bit. Almonds, similarly, are hardly necessary for maintaining our "food supply". There are other, more staple, crops that use a lot less water but the agribusinesses choose not to grow them because they don't make as much profit. One of the perennial problems in California is that the agribusinesses don't pay anywhere close to what they should for water. This creates gigantic misincentives to suck up the water and leave somebody else holding the bag. If the water rates were higher, the agribusinesses would grow a very different mix of crops. Of course, since the agribusinesses also throw around lots of money, politicians won't touch the issue. The coastal cities finally decided that they need to build enough desalinization plants to cover their needs so they can simply ignore the ongoing Central Valley fiasco.