4 ms·

> 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 gr

> 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

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