5 ms·

Yeah the foreign owned part seems like the least important part.

steve76 4y ago
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
It's not really so much that the farm is foreign owned, it's that the very water intensive crop is grown so it can be shipped overseas to feed livestock for foreign populations. This is essentially "exporting water". Which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when water is essentially so mispriced that it's a really bad deal for the place that is supplying the water, especially during a mega-drought.
- Maursault 4y ago
  > it's that the very water intensive crop is grown The article is very much pot, kettle black. Agriculture is using the majority of the water and mostly for growing alfalfa to feed cows. Everything there is wrong. We don't need that many cows. If the town wants to save itself, it must start water-rationing for agriculture, and ban a lot of alfalfa growing.
  - supportlocal4h 4y ago
    Instead we need to be growing more chicken feed?
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    > If the town wants to save itself, it must start water-rationing for agriculture, and ban a lot of alfalfa growing. Or more effectively (because it is much simpler and can’t be gamed nearly as easily), price the water appropriately based on the sustainable supply. Then it will not be profitable to use at huge scale for low-value water-intensive crops. If fairly pricing the water ends up hurting local residents, that would best be dealt with by directly paying cash to every resident to make up the typical difference. (We should do the same with other resources that are scarce or have negative externalities; e.g. gasoline should have the environmental costs of carbon emissions priced into it with a very steep tax, and then every resident should be directly paid cash enough to make up the difference for a typical person’s transportation. Otherwise, people are incentivized to over-use resources that are effectively being subsidized, and the free market economy cannot perform its function.)
    - MichaelCollins 4y ago
      > price the water appropriately based on the sustainable supply. In the regions where the water problem is most relevant, pricing based on the sustainable supply isn't possible because the water supply isn't sustainable, and won't be no matter how much you charge or how little you use.
      - CaptainNegative 4y ago
        Wouldn't that be a self-correcting problem as much of the population moves away due to enormous utility costs?
        Maursault 4y ago
        The water-use by agriculture is unsustainable whether there is population or not. Compared to agriculture use of water, all other water uses are negligible. So if you eliminate the residential population and empty the cities, agriculture will still use all the water and fail. But if you eliminate the agriculture, there will be plenty of water for the cities and population. A desert has enough water to support a population. It was foolish to introduce industrialized agriculture in a desert.
        MichaelCollins 4y ago
        It would be, except that the farmers become wealthy from their unsustainable business practices and start lobbying for insane shit like piping in water from wetter regions. The problem needs to be nipped at the bud; ban farming with fossil water.
      - Maursault 4y ago
        And this sort of thing would also kill individual residents that aren't agriculture conglomerates with deep pockets. Agriculture water use must be separated from residential uses. They'll never recover enough water by squeezing residential use because 86% of the water in the West is used for crops.[1] Over 30% of all the water used is for growing crops to feed cows. I don't agree with the solution advanced in the linked video of paying farmers not to grow alfalfa. I think we should reduce the cow population by 75% (bringing meat consumption in line with the rest of the world), raise the price of beef, and tax the hell out of it. We do it for tobacco, and meat eaters put the same kind of strain on the health system, so let them pay for their entitlement. And saving water isn't the only benefit of reducing the population of cows, which would include longer life spans and much, much less contribution to Climate Change. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gN1x6sVTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gN1x6sVTc
- dehrmann 4y ago
  But to the original point, with domestic ownership, the domestic owner would grow the same crops and sell them to the same foreign buyers because they're willing to pay the prices that make it work. The only solution is limit ground water extraction. Putting this on foreign owners dodges the solution no one wants to talk about.
ericmcer 4y ago
It is more relevant when you see all the signs and ads about neighborhoods "doing their part" to help conserve water by not watering plants and taking shorter showers. If those conservations are being used to enrich a microscopic part of population who is shipping all that water overseas it raises questions about who and what we are conserving for.

It's not really so much that the farm is foreign owned, it's that the very water intensive crop is grown so it can be shipped overseas to feed livestock for foreign populations. This is essentially "exporting water". Which, in and of itself, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when water is essentially so mispriced that it's a really bad deal for the place that is supplying the water, especially during a mega-drought.

Maursault 4y ago
> it's that the very water intensive crop is grown The article is very much pot, kettle black. Agriculture is using the majority of the water and mostly for growing alfalfa to feed cows. Everything there is wrong. We don't need that many cows. If the town wants to save itself, it must start water-rationing for agriculture, and ban a lot of alfalfa growing.
- supportlocal4h 4y ago
  Instead we need to be growing more chicken feed?
- jacobolus 4y ago
  > If the town wants to save itself, it must start water-rationing for agriculture, and ban a lot of alfalfa growing. Or more effectively (because it is much simpler and can’t be gamed nearly as easily), price the water appropriately based on the sustainable supply. Then it will not be profitable to use at huge scale for low-value water-intensive crops. If fairly pricing the water ends up hurting local residents, that would best be dealt with by directly paying cash to every resident to make up the typical difference. (We should do the same with other resources that are scarce or have negative externalities; e.g. gasoline should have the environmental costs of carbon emissions priced into it with a very steep tax, and then every resident should be directly paid cash enough to make up the difference for a typical person’s transportation. Otherwise, people are incentivized to over-use resources that are effectively being subsidized, and the free market economy cannot perform its function.)
  - MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > price the water appropriately based on the sustainable supply. In the regions where the water problem is most relevant, pricing based on the sustainable supply isn't possible because the water supply isn't sustainable, and won't be no matter how much you charge or how little you use.
    - CaptainNegative 4y ago
      Wouldn't that be a self-correcting problem as much of the population moves away due to enormous utility costs?
      - Maursault 4y ago
        The water-use by agriculture is unsustainable whether there is population or not. Compared to agriculture use of water, all other water uses are negligible. So if you eliminate the residential population and empty the cities, agriculture will still use all the water and fail. But if you eliminate the agriculture, there will be plenty of water for the cities and population. A desert has enough water to support a population. It was foolish to introduce industrialized agriculture in a desert.
      - MichaelCollins 4y ago
        It would be, except that the farmers become wealthy from their unsustainable business practices and start lobbying for insane shit like piping in water from wetter regions. The problem needs to be nipped at the bud; ban farming with fossil water.
    - Maursault 4y ago
      And this sort of thing would also kill individual residents that aren't agriculture conglomerates with deep pockets. Agriculture water use must be separated from residential uses. They'll never recover enough water by squeezing residential use because 86% of the water in the West is used for crops.[1] Over 30% of all the water used is for growing crops to feed cows. I don't agree with the solution advanced in the linked video of paying farmers not to grow alfalfa. I think we should reduce the cow population by 75% (bringing meat consumption in line with the rest of the world), raise the price of beef, and tax the hell out of it. We do it for tobacco, and meat eaters put the same kind of strain on the health system, so let them pay for their entitlement. And saving water isn't the only benefit of reducing the population of cows, which would include longer life spans and much, much less contribution to Climate Change. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gN1x6sVTc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gN1x6sVTc
dehrmann 4y ago
But to the original point, with domestic ownership, the domestic owner would grow the same crops and sell them to the same foreign buyers because they're willing to pay the prices that make it work. The only solution is limit ground water extraction. Putting this on foreign owners dodges the solution no one wants to talk about.

ericmcer 4y ago

It is more relevant when you see all the signs and ads about neighborhoods "doing their part" to help conserve water by not watering plants and taking shorter showers. If those conservations are being used to enrich a microscopic part of population who is shipping all that water overseas it raises questions about who and what we are conserving for.