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Pistachio billionaires accused of artwashing California's water crisis
- NickC25 3y agoIt's not only the billionaires in question, it's also a huge amount of legacy farming operations, same goes for Arizona and Colorado. We're also using a ton of water to grow alfalfa in the same region, and we're not even using that at home, we're selling it to the Saudis and Chinese so they can feed their livestock. But these guys really need to get their operation taken away from them - their farms use more water than the entire city of LA does? That's wild, and means that we need regulation there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- akudha 3y agoCan’t we ban growing of these high water crops in areas where there is water shortage? One can happily live without eating pistachios their entire life, no?
- Anotheroneagain 3y agoIt's a desert tree that rots when it gets too much rain. You could hardly find a much more suitable crop.
- K0balt 3y agoPistachio is a low water crop.
- illegalsmile 3y agoCompared to what? Relative to other nuts and seeds? To other common ground crops? To fruits? I've never heard that pistachios are low water crops and I find that hard to believe. They're one of the highest blue water consumers in their class; water in rivers, lakes and aquifers [1]. Pistachios are not low water. They're drought tolerant and do well in arid climates but to fruit naturally they need a really good year of water. OR irrigation which we've done in abundance. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912420300109 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221191242...
- K0balt 3y agoThanks for informing me- I confused drought tolerance with not requiring much water for production. I’d be interested to know how their water usage would compare to staple foods like beans, rice or wheat, that would give a better sense of the relative imprudence of growing pistachios in that area.
- citrin_ru 3y agoIf there is no incentive to conserve water it would be wasted anyway. If there is an incentive farmers would choose crops which need less water.
- perihelions 3y ago- "two-person protest" Those are self-promoting filmmakers, not protestors. edit: The OP article is a submarine movie promotion, and not subtle about it. That ersatz protest was clearly staged for this article—it's "protesting" a basically empty room, and the photography credit is the author of the OP news story/film promotion.
- Anotheroneagain 3y agoPistachio is a desert tree. They must be doing something wrong, if they need that much water.
- adrian_b 3y agoI suppose that so much water is necessary when a great production is desired. It is likely that in its native desert conditions much less nuts are produced.
- Anotheroneagain 3y agoNo, that's impossible. Too much water makes it rot.
- Kbelicius 3y agoTo much water makes every plant rot. Also Pistachio trees are drought resistant but will give higher yields with more water.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoBut he's not wrong... "more water" in this case is like 16-18" of rain per year. It survives well on down towards 12". This is like "does well in Arizona unirrigated" levels.
- Kbelicius 3y agoHe is factually wrong since he claimed that it is impossible for pistachio trees to use more water to get more yields. > No, that's impossible. Too much water makes it rot.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoThey're not supplementing the 12" it needs with another 3"... even in California's droughts they're getting about that much anyway. I'm guessing another "journalist" was confusing almonds and pistachios. You wouldn't happen to be a journalist yourself, would you?
- infecto 3y agoUnrelated but reminded me of the time in SF when we had the big water conservation push and you had to ask to get a glass of water refilled and signs were printed inside of restaurants about it. I am ok changing ways and behind conserving water but it was amusing because in my head I thought surely the delta of doing this is not even measurable.
- qeternity 3y ago> I thought surely the delta of doing this is not even measurable. This is unfortunately the case for most ecological movements. Your paper straw is doing absolutely nothing, but it's easier than doing the thing that would actually reduce your emissions...so people do it and feel good.
- mihaic 3y agoI don't know a single person that feels good about paper straws. Rather, I think it's done by legislators to fake doing something, ironically making the world worse than not doing anything at all.
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoActually the original ban proposal in the EU was on single-use plastics. As in... all of them. Then the industry jumped on it, threw fudge online, lobbied it to death. In the end the actual proposal that was passed had so many exceptions it became just a ban on plastic straws, q-tips, and forks pretty much. Nestle, Coco-Cola, Unilever, P&G opened a bottle of champagne and refocused on their quarterly reports.
- saiya-jin 3y agoI'd agree with first sentence. But yeah its a low hanging fruit that's too low and its microscopic, so doesn't solve even 0.0001% of the overall problem. I think what irks most people is that its given disproportionate PR like we're almost fixing climate crisis, when we are actually still pretty much in free fall.
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- JKCalhoun 3y agoIt's bizarre to me that as a society we can be aware of these kinds of destructive, wasteful practices but we still seem to have our hands tied with regard to putting an end to them. I don't know how we explain our inaction on all manner of things like this to future generations.
- malermeister 3y ago"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism."
- gustavus 3y agoWhat happened to the Aral Sea again?
- tokai 3y agoState capitalism happened.
- churchill 3y ago[flagged]
- malermeister 3y agoPlease do tell me how you feel about regulatory capture and the ever-growing monopolization of entire industries. Is that "real capitalism"?
- gustavus 3y agoAnd the tankie quick with the response "It wasn't real communism!"
- dumbo-octopus 3y agoThe article is casting them in a needlessly antagonistic light. The "more water then..." claim is sourced from this (far superior) article [1], which makes clear that for one, it's saying more water than the houses in LA, not the city (residential use seems to be approx 2x commercial use), and for two this is for every farm these people own in CA, not just the pistachios. So that includes POM Pomegranate juice, Wonderful Pistachios, Cuties Clementines, and some almonds. Indeed, the owner of the second largest produce company in America might be expected to use water on the same level as the residents of the second largest city in America. That's not to say they're free from ridicule: one particularly damning tidbit in the article linked below outlines a plan by which they bought water from the state for pennies on the dollar then sold it back to the taxpayers at a massive profit. Anyone paying water bills or taxes in CA could find just cause to be upset about that. [1] https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewart-resnick-california-water/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/08/lynda-stewar...
- 542458 3y agoAt a certain point though, I’m inclined to point my finger at the state for signing terrible business deals. Like, the 1995 water deal was so staggeringly poorly negotiated by the state that I find it hard to get too mad at the farmers that took them up on their giveaway.
- yunwal 3y agoThe $48 million in political donations might have something to do with the terrible deals.
- jwestbury 3y agoLeaving my door unlocked doesn't excuse burglary. One party can make a bad deal, but that doesn't mean the other party isn't immoral for taking that deal, especially when it has substantial negative externalities.
- 542458 3y agoNo, but leaving your door open with a sign that says “Anything you want, $1” does excuse people ripping you off (which is more or less what happened here, the state traded something very valuable for something comparatively worthless). I’m not saying that the farmers here are saints or anything, but at a certain point it’s at least partially the state’s fault for not trying very hard to protect its own resources.
- K0balt 3y agoIt doesn’t seem like an outrage to me that agriculture uses more water than the cities they feed. It’s actually more accurate to think of the water used in agriculture as an externalized cost of the city. Of course food production uses more water than washing and drinking. That is the case in almost all circumstances. Now, whether we should be growing luxury crops in water constrained regions, that might be a better discussion to have, but the nature of global trade demands centralized production for the needed economy of scale. I am very much in favor of a revamp of the unnecessary movement of goods where local production could suffice, but the reality of that concept at scale is a much more constrained, regional marketplace rather than the global bazaar we currently expect and enjoy. This really seems like a self promoting drive-by on a farm that makes an effort to contribute to their communities in lasting ways, while ignoring the real issue which is overpopulation of areas that can only support sparse populations. As long as humans need to eat, it’s hard to justify the position that farm usage of water unduly impacts the needs of cities. It’s disingenuous. It’s like saying that breathing uses too much oxygen in a crowded room- maybe resident density, not breathing, is the problem.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- robjwells 3y agoOne of the people involved in the film this is related to (Pistachio Wars) is Yasha Levine, whose book about the history of the Internet, Surveillance Valley, is excellent (if controversial!). Background on the film: https://yasha.substack.com/p/pistachio-wars-the-back-story-571 https://yasha.substack.com/p/pistachio-wars-the-back-story-5... Surveillance Valley: http://yashalevine.com/surveillance-valley http://yashalevine.com/surveillance-valley
- TheCaptain4815 3y agoElon recently said on Bill Maher's show that water desolation is 'absurdly cheap' so I looked to see if that's true. https://thedeepdive.ca/is-desalination-absurdly-cheap-as-elon-musk-claimed/ https://thedeepdive.ca/is-desalination-absurdly-cheap-as-elo... Seems pretty cheap to me all things considered, and that's with a tiny fraction of a fraction of the world population using it. Imagine if even 1% of the world used this type of technology, how much better it would get. I'd imagine the regulatory delay and corruption to be more impactful in California than the technology itself.
- lacker 3y agoIt makes perfect sense that the world's largest producer of pistachios and almonds uses a lot of water. What doesn't make sense is using water to grow lower-value crops like alfalfa for cattle to eat in the California and Arizona desert. But, I'm not an agricultural expert. The point is that when we are running short of water, we should raise the price for it, and let the market decide. Right now normal people pay far more for water in California than agricultural users. Stop distorting this market, move the agricultural price of water even just a bit closer to the residential price, and the water shortage will go away as the most wasteful farms change their ways.
- foxyv 3y agoCalifornia is the worst about water. When I was a kid, some turd would be lecturing me on not flushing every time and taking shorter showers while the school turned a giant grass field into a swamp every morning. California is obsessed with watering millions of acres of grass for no apparent reason. They will water golf courses, yards around city buildings, artificial lakes, non-native tropical plants, and cemeteries for pennies. Then you get a fine for over-use because your cousin came over for a visit and used a bit extra that month.