6 ms·

I don’t see why being a farmer is implicitly linked to waste. Sure he has farm interests in mind, but farmers will be among the first to really feel the affect

• masklinn 4y ago
  Historically farmers (and most people really) have sucked the area dry before getting worried. US farmers are certainly doing that right now, the incentives encourage it, and they're quick to lobby against changes in incentives. That's also what you get from a prisoner's dilemma, a farmer switching to conservation will increase their production prices and / or lower their yields (as they'll at least need to invest in new farming methods, probably new hardware, and will have to learn those), and they'll fall behind their neighbours to say nothing of the market as a whole.
  • zahma 4y ago
    You make a good point, but perhaps that one “their own” is at the helm can make a difference in ensuring trust so as to break the prisoner’s dilemma (see point 6 in the executive summary).
• walnutclosefarm 4y ago
  It's only because agriculture is the big user, and the most dependent on overdrawing water resources. Farmers are no different from other people, and the oft-quoted line of Upton Sinclair that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends upon his not understanding it," answers your question. Farmers who have built a livelihood on irrigation are resistant to the notion that their water use is the problem, because if they admit it, they have to drastically change, or maybe give up, their way of making a living. It's really no different from trying to convince a tech mogul that social media is harmful to children and adolescents. They can't see it, because they won't see it, or they won't see it, because the can't see it, since seeing it invalidates their business model.
  • scarmig 4y ago
    I'd extend a bit more sympathy to farmers. When they purchased the land, they were also purchasing bundled water rights; land without the related water rights would have been a fraction of the price. And the property, inheritance, etc taxes they pay on the value of the land are assessed at a price that includes those rights. And all of a sudden when those rights become much more valuable, people want to take it from them? It's a bitter pill to swallow, particularly when the farmer (not without reason) sees it as an attack on their way of life.
    • rootusrootus 4y ago
      > I'd extend a bit more sympathy to farmers. Yes, but I'd temper my sympathy with the knowledge that small farmers have mostly been pushed out by extremely large corporations. I have considerably less sympathy for them.
      • scarmig 4y ago
        Farm economic class by sales values (USD annual) | number 1k-10k 11000 10k-100k 5100 100k-250k 900 250k-500k 520 500k-1M 310 >1M 270 Total 18100 Source: https://ag.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Utah-Agricultural-Statistics-and-Annual-Summary.pdf https://ag.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/2019-Utah-Agr... (see page 27 of the PDF/page 25 of the document)
        • rootusrootus 4y ago
          What I'm getting from that is chart is... yes, farming is completely dominated by large companies. Something close to 90% of farms by number comprise as much as (but probably less than) 25% of the economic output. This is making a wild (but I would guess conservative) assumption of what ">1M" translates to. If I'm reading that wrong, I would appreciate the correction.
          • scarmig 4y ago
• suresk 4y ago
  > but farmers will be among the first to really feel the affects of a dying lake ecosystem. How is this so in the case of the Great Salt Lake?