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This stuff is good - but it's penny wise. Agriculture is outright wasteful of water. California agriculture consumes 80% of the state's water. https://water.

• DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
  Growing food at a scale large enough to feed hundreds of millions of people, and cheaply enough to lift millions out of malnutrition, being “wasteful” is certainly a take.
  • ayemel 3y ago
    You misread (I also did). They are saying wasteful water use for agriculture is wasteful, not agriculture itself.
  • mistrial9 3y ago
    some commodity crops and some niche groups absolutely are wasteful.. excess crops turned to processed, canned food or even sugar-fuels have changed farming in the last hundred+ years. Do not even mention animal practices, since that ranges from the mildly terrible to literally hell'ish, also big water users.
  • ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    > Growing food at a scale large enough to feed hundreds of millions of people Large scale does not imply efficiency. Soviet union did many things large scale > cheaply enough to lift millions out of malnutrition Millions were lifted out of poverty. Rhey lifted themaelves out of malnoutricioun because now they can afford food.
• dreamcompiler 3y ago
  Absolutely true. Without agriculture, there would be plenty of water for residential uses. Of course without agriculture we'd all starve to death, so banning farming is no solution. But one thing we can and should do immediately is stop (effectively) exporting huge amounts of water from Arizona to Saudi Arabia for free. That's very low-hanging fruit. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizona-ground-water-crop-alfalfa/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    Somehow I am not entirely certain that we would all starve without some of the water intensive agricultural staples in US ( corn, almonds come to mind ). I do agree with SA point.
    • myshpa 3y ago
      Just 13% of corn is consumed by people. Most of it is used as animal feed.
    • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
      An interesting question. Used to be Iowa produced enough corn to feed two United States (if we were content to eat only corn). Probably overkill. Corn has commercial uses too. In fact it's largely used for that - sugar, starch, protein, roughage are used in all sorts of processes. Touch nearly anything near you right now, corn was involved in it's manufacture. Hard to say what impact cutting back on corn would have. A big one.
      • wincy 3y ago
        Are they growing corn in places that have water problems? I thought corn was largely grown in places that don’t need much irrigation, or at least isn’t having problems with its water table.
        • JoeAltmaier 3y ago
• viraptor 3y ago
  This seems to imply a choice is being made between one or the other. These are systems used in major cities. Agriculture can be handled concurrently in other places.
  • freedude 3y ago
    Yes, they have setup a false dichotomy in their arguments and have limited themselves to only two options. It is a real problem with most discussions today.
• Vvector 3y ago
  It's cheaper for Farmers to lobby the politicians than to convert to drip irrigation.
  • mistrial9 3y ago
    the way forward includes amplifying positive improvements - my understanding here in California is that many farms of varying descriptions absolutely did move to drip irrigation, and continue to do so in large numbers
• abeppu 3y ago
  ... should we pump treated graywater out of cities to be used in agriculture, so agriculture's footprint of "first use" water decreases, and then actively encourage residential use to generate more gray water? "Better go take a 30 minute shower so I can justify that almond-milk beverage I had yesterday!"
  • mc32 3y ago
    You need to ensure no noticeable amounts of pathogens remain else they’ll be present in sme of the crops which then sicken people who eat them.
    • abeppu 3y ago
      Apparently reusing waste water for agriculture already a thing, but there are standards about the average concentration of coliform bacteria per unit volume for different classes of reused water, and for multiple classes the standard matches one used for drinking water (2.2 MPN/100mL). https://www.epa.gov/waterreuse/california-treated-municipal-wastewater-agriculture https://www.epa.gov/waterreuse/california-treated-municipal-...
• jvanderbot 3y ago
  Fun story. When driving through the agricultural valley between SF and LA, you used to see giant billboards on endless oarchards saying "Stop the DEMOCRAT drought" or "Stop the POLITICIAN CAUSED drought" both with the slogan "Is growing FOOD a WASTE of WATER?" Like, did people buy that? It's not a waste, but it's also not your food, it's sold for profit. Farms in CA literally ship water out of the state in calorie form for profit. I'm glad they do, living in MN, but I hope they can sustain it.
  • CobaltFire 3y ago
    You still do. I live there and the signs are everywhere, and in completely bad faith. The corps putting the signs up (those are all corp farms) know exactly what they are doing.
  • freedude 3y ago
    That profit pays for your infrastructure in CA. All of the trucking road taxes paves your roads, builds bridges, etc...
    • spaced-out 3y ago
      No it doesn't, agriculture makes up less than 3% of California's economy and is heavily subsidized (read - money is taken from other industries are given to farmers by the government). It's tech companies, tourism, and the entertainment industry that pay for most of the infrastructure in California.
      • freedude 3y ago
        3% of what? GDP Dollars or Employees' wages? It's certainly not 3% of the food production since Califonria produces 1/3 of the entire nations vegetables and 3/4 of the nations fruit and nuts. And yet therein lies the problem... To many Fruit and Nuts in California. The best thing for this country would be if California axed their agricultural industry because it would both force and encourage Ag development elsewhere. It would simultaneously be the worst thing for Californians and the cost of food production. But why am I arguing with you? It ultimately, brings my food production closer to home and you and your neighbors bear the cost of higher food prices.
• briffle 3y ago
  A few years ago [0], 60k homes in sacremento, the states capital, still had no water meters. Its only been 2 years since they started actually controlling the pumping of groundwater, and that fight took well over a decade. [1] [0] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article4215302.html https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article4215302.html [1] https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019483661/without-enough-water-to-go-around-farmers-in-california-are-exhausting-aquifers https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019483661/without-enough-wat...
• lawrenceyan 3y ago
  I think Israel does a really good job of maximally water efficient agriculture. There's a lot of practical techniques we could learn from them.
  • matmatmatmat 3y ago
    This is such a wasted opportunity, not just for the US, but across the Middle East. I guess Jordan is availing themselves to some degree, though, but it's also out of necessity, due to the refugees living there. My understanding is that prior to the Iranian revolution, there were Israeli experts working in Iran on drip irrigation methods. Of course, they had to get out pretty quickly.
• whazor 3y ago
  Agriculture in the current state is wasteful of water, but it doesn't have to be that way. Ban or limit fertilizer and make the farmers use real nature that can store rain water much better.
  • erikpukinskis 3y ago
    This is a place where government needs to step in for this to work. They need to pay farmers rebates for doing this stuff: storing water in the landscape, recharging aquifers, limiting fertilizer discharge (pollution), improving soil quality, limiting erosion. There’s no individual incentive to do those things, at least on a year-to-year basis which is how people make decisions. You think about this year, within the boundaries of your own property. But the benefits are largely for the region, not the individual. So, it need to be done by government, or it won’t be done at all (at scale). Of course some small individual farms will do (and are doing) it on principle because it’s the right thing to do. But we can’t rely on ethics to drive behavior at the economic level.
• gregw134 3y ago
  California grows 550k acres of rice, which is very water intensive: https://rice.ucanr.edu/About_California_Rice/ https://rice.ucanr.edu/About_California_Rice/
• hosh 3y ago
  There are a lot of patterns similar to this idea of recycling water that is usable for agriculture. The main thing with agriculture is managing ground water onsite with rainwater harvesting. By that, I specifically do not mean holding it in tanks. I’m talking about things like on-contour swales to slow down water so some of it recharges groundwater, or use of percolation ponds upland from the crop area. These work in arid climates. You have to use a different set of patterns for wet places that can receive too much water. Many of the patterns can be found in how beavers instinctually manage water.
• majormajor 3y ago
  I linked this in another subthread but I think it's worth reposting here because "penny wise" is an extreme disservice. "Blame someone else" by itself is unlikely to solve problems quickly, and there's time-proven alternatives too. Also I don't want to know how much we'd have to spend to buy out even a quarter of the farms in the Central Valley. https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-dallas-toilet-water-for-years-to-come/285-339809592 https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-d... "We re handling right now about 135-140 million gallons [of raw sewage] per day, said Bill Tatum, manager of TRA Central Regional Wastewater System." "This city needs almost a half billion gallons of water a day during the peak usage of the summer months, said Alvin Wright, spokesman for the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering Department." That's a pretty big dent in the overall demand - though, amusingly, somewhat at risk because the cities in north Texas are going to start using more of their own sewage themselves. Between things like this and capturing more storm runoff there's a ton for California cities to do to make them less dependent on other geographical areas and phenomenons beyond just "make people farm less." And especially if the climate patterns shift, closing the loop is just as important as getting rid of upstream consumers. Water's a reusable resource, why are we still in the habit of polluting it and not cleaning up after ourselves?
• throw8383833jj 3y ago
  why not just allow the price of water to accurately be reflected in the prices that farmers pay for water? if they paid more for water, they'd use it more wisely and more varieties would get planted that use less water, more efficient irrgation would become financially viable. you can't expect farmers to take financial losses by saving water. however, if you make it in their financial intereset to save water, it'll automatically get done.
  • colechristensen 3y ago
    No there are some farmers that essentially need to just go out of business because their profit comes exclusively from badly priced water. There are a lot of big reforms that need to happen, but they’re big, often involving several states, international treaties, and long standing expectations. It’s not a “why don’t you just” situation but a complex system of varied interests that have to renegotiate. The core problem is that people, voters, need to understand the complexities. “Saving water is good, let’s do that” is hard enough to agree on right now… balancing the needs of many is very very difficult with a poorly informed and motivated electorate.
• murderberry 3y ago
  It's pretty complex, though. If a farmer pumps water out of the aquifer directly underneath, irrigates crops, and most of the water (minus evaporation and crop biomass) is returned to the aquifer in a matter of days... is it fair to say the farmer wasted it? Modern irrigation systems easily have an efficiency of 80-90%. Some irrigated farms in the Central Valley will be withdrawing from aqueducts, but part of the reason why the valley is dry is because we built these aqueducts, harming agricultural land for the benefit of SoCal cities, with the promise that the farmers would be able to use that water. So not sure it's fair for us to claim the moral high ground. Much of the California water crisis is manufactured too. There's no shortage of freshwater for the foreseeable future, but we're not building new dams, aqueducts, etc, essentially relying on the infrastructure built in the 1960s and before, for a population only fraction of what we have right now. Climate change plays a role, but the bulk of the pain is self-inflicted and has little to do with growing rice or watering our lawns.
  • AceJohnny2 3y ago
    > and most of the water (minus evaporation and crop biomass) is returned to the aquifer in a matter of days... Citation needed. Counter-citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence
• _yb2s 3y ago
  Yeah, but at least agriculture provides some value. About 10% of California water is consumed to water landscaping, a total waste and loss. Every part of the state has native plants that are beautiful, and perfectly suited as water-free landscaping. The most egregious examples are the desert areas that are made to look "tropical." Many of the desert cities require water waste by law- you can be fined for, e.g. not having a bright green lawn. Many of the residents don't even know they live in a desert. It seems crazy to talk about limiting water to agriculture when this is still going on.
• silverlake 3y ago
  Here's a nice chart showing water usage of the Colorado River. 55% to grow crops to feed livestock. Only 12% for residential use. There is no water crisis. Water is mispriced and, therefore, poorly allocated. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/22/climate/colorado-river-water.html?unlocked_article_code=JnlfdGdMoFC5LZbmDeoVRKbc5bs8z4jxVkiVuLCGRqP30DLwLE_MitKNLPzM1RzvqEDS02aFY8054M_eLx267iPWDxEh33S0SJgbJ3MfbZrS27CiFIlPxoqnlYZ13EEsOLq6IMpTcEfKRSYv-Azfa9BENAl9VIAyGPxgUXrLge9jfZPKHKcUwhEujZDpYWQtNIsaGx74LLBpr-aYn_hVIDeLK7PgWxrHXtUA_hNw4LetFUTlvYyU1qA1oOXvmhCki3ewm0E3Si5VUq_lQP5mWdBklcUnRrnpLhlpY0MZR6CSe9C4_Obs72gr2JC32JWH70S96FkZgHZuu7lB4lNpq_rDwAGT281NKtsUQuKV&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/22/climate/color...
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    >There is no water crisis. Water is mispriced and, therefore, poorly allocated. The reality is slightly different than this. Water has already been allocated. The current price to reallocate is high, and residential users don't want to pay to purchase more allocation from a current owners.
• s1artibartfast 3y ago
  It has been said before and it can be said again. The fundamental problem is that agricultural users own much of the water. Urban areas, faced with the choice between purchasing those rights to increase their allocation, or spending on increasing urban efficiency, have largely chosen the latter because it is cheaper.
• FreshStart 3y ago
  And it's already proven to work.. Kudos to Israel agriculture