21 ms·

Strawberry case study: What if farmers had to pay for water?

108 points by jgwil2 3y ago

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jgwil2 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231229141143/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/climate/california-farmers-water-tax.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231229141143/https://www.nytim...
mooreds 3y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/climate/california-farmers-water-tax.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Jk0.lnMw.mQPplBJ8Hp7s&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/climate/calif...
Sirizarry 3y ago
[flagged]
- ryaneager 3y ago
  It’s only dystopian if it’s in context of people. Water shouldn’t be free for companies to profit off of but free to individuals to sustain life.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    The food grown to sustain life requires water. History also shows us that when the government runs collective farms that have no profit, people starve.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      > History also shows us that when the government runs collective farms that have no profit, people starve. Yes? I'm not sure what you're implying here. The argument isn't "farms shouldn't profit", the argument is "farms should pay for the water they're turning into profits".
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        How can life be sustained with free water? Who is going to provide it?
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Which life? If we're talking about basic necessary water for humans, that's a tiny little fraction of use and easy for cities to provide. For anything else the water doesn't need to be free or actively should not be free, depending on which use you look at. Water used to grow food goes in the second category.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      Using water hungry cash crops for luxury foods rather then more better more native crops that actually better prevent starvation, is the reality. Using a scare resource in an unsustainable way results in bad incentives and thus bad outcome for people.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  It's classic "tragedy of the commons" stuff. Having a "free" input sets up incentives for waste since that resource now exists outside the influence of market forces. So it's either putting a price on these resources or careful regulation. The latter is not very popular in today's political climate.
  - Supermancho 3y ago
    Related to Jevons Paradox
    - acover 3y ago
      > Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > careful regulation Has never worked very well. Government bureaucracies are very bad at pricing and allocating things appropriately. A case study is in the 70's the government decided gas allocations for every gas station. The result was a patchwork of gluts and shortages across the country. Reagan ended all that as his first Executive Order, and overnight the gluts and shortages vanished along with the gas lines.
    - nickpp 3y ago
      Very much rooting for Argentina's Milei to provide a similar lesson in modern times but I am afraid that he has very few allies helping him (besides his own idiosyncrasies) and the current laptop class would simply ignore it as they ignored Venezuela's lesson...
- ldoughty 3y ago
  When I lived in a rural area on septic and well, my electric bill was often under $200 in the summer, running AC fairly heavily, and taking care of ~6 dense garden beds full of veggies for ~6 months... and regularly watering 1 acre of grass to keep it from drying too much. We even had a timer to auto-water the garden and parts of the lawn... We'd even let it run overnight on a few occasions (needing to water, but coming home very late) I hardly considered water a costly resource On "city" water now in suburbs, I followed a similar pattern for grass on a 1/4 acre lot, and heavily watered the lawn one month, and I had a $300 water & sewer bill -- on top of my $100 electric bill. Water went from being something I hardly considered to something I am far more careful about 'wasting'.
  - skeletal88 3y ago
    Well.. if your grass would dry out and become yellow without watering it, then watering is a luxury. The water in deep wells will eventually run out. Why waste it on grass?
    - sparrish 3y ago
      Because my HOA says I have to maintain a green lawn or I get fined.
      - bilbo0s 3y ago
        No dog in this fight. I moved out of Scottsdale to the Great Lakes region a bit back partly because of the water issue. So I definitely get the natural inclination to not want to have to think about water. All that said, I mean, if your HOA requires this, is the problem with the city charging for water use to upkeep the infrastructure required to deliver it? Or is the issue really just that your HOA has rules that it shouldn't?
      - unshavedyak 3y ago
        Yea but the discussion is around water usage practices. Deciding we have to waste water because HOAs say so is of course silly. They need to change.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Ehhh, that's a rather cynical take on it. It's obviously about inefficient overuse by businesses. Having water for individual people free for basic personal use wouldn't be a problem.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > Having water for individual people free for basic personal use wouldn't be a problem. Operating the water system to deliver water is expensive. If you want to put out a rain barrel and collect rain, it's free.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      Doesn't help with water treatment or sewage handling though.
- notatoad 3y ago
  "paying the water bill" is a pretty normal thing for a large portion of the world. certainly for most of america. paying for water is not a dystopia. and taking a totally normal part of life and calling it "dystopian" with no further explanation is one of the laziest arguments ever.
  - josefritz 3y ago
    Paying for water when you are poor is a threat to life and livelihood that's dystopian. This is the nature of dystopia, it mostly affects the impoverished.
    - unshavedyak 3y ago
      Is it not the same for paying for food, as well? I generally agree, but water seems an arbitrary line to draw when we still have shelter and food to consider.
      - throwaway44773 3y ago
        Before humans decided to pollute a lot of the fresh water on earth or appropriate it for themselves, humans could just go to the nearest stream and get water. In that sense, it feels right that it should be easily accessible at no cost. Meanwhile, humans have usually had to expand considerable effort to build a shelter and gather or grow food. So i don’t see the line as being arbitrary.
        seanp2k2 3y ago
        For a good time, go read up about Stewart and Lynda Resnick and their impact to water in California.
        mrcrumb1 3y ago
        This is clearly not true in the desert.
- JoshGG 3y ago
  Dystopian is “water was free so the big farming business pumped the aquifer dry and exported the agricultural goods. Now people here have no water and the land is a desert”. This stuff is economics 101. The full quote is: “”Soren Bjorn, a senior executive at Driscoll’s who in January will become the chief executive, said in an interview that he “absolutely” sees the region as a model of water pricing that could be replicated in water-stressed regions from Texas to Portugal. “Water can’t be free anywhere, because you can’t run a sustainable water supply without pricing it,” he said. “That would apply to the globe." “”
  - irrational 3y ago
    Where I live it rains for the majority of the year. We could put out buckets and easily capture enough to care for our needs, but then you have to deal with making sure what we are going to ingest is clean and deal with no water pressure and hauling water around the house. It is so much easier to pay someone else to deal with it. So, water could be free some places, but…
    - atrus 3y ago
      Nothing of what you described is free though? It's going to take some sort of resources no matter what.
      - irrational 3y ago
        You mean like buckets to hold the water? Those would cost money, but would be a one time purchase.
    - ta1243 3y ago
      You don't live in Arizona
  - intrasight 3y ago
    Water is free. What we pay for is it's delivery and it's treatment. I remember learning in elementary school that you're not allowed to charge for water.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  There's a very unambiguously wide gap between water being freely available to every person for sustaining life, and water being completely free to use in quantities of trillions/quadrillions of gallons for profit.
  - KeplerBoy 3y ago
    There's not really. You need water for farming. Farming is necessary for survival and farmers sell their produce for profit. The line between small, local, "good" farmers and large "evil" corporations is all but clear cut.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      You don't need to farm water-intensive crops in deserts, especially in the modern era of extremely effective logistics. We should be growing crops where they're most suitable for, and applying something closer to normal pricing dynamics will nudge us closer to that. Agreed there's not a bright line, but we're clearly at one undesirable end of the spectrum.
      - KeplerBoy 3y ago
        I agree, but then we're back at exporting produce from wherever water is cheap and abundant. Which is a good thing and necessary, but it has to be done carefully at the industrial scale we're at.
    - unshavedyak 3y ago
      Is it? What about using limited water for crops that don’t have as much value to survival as other crops? Or wasteful locations, etc. I’m not advocating charging necessarily, but using up a limited resource with reckless abandon seems short sighted. What am I missing? Is it not a very important resource to manage?
      - seanp2k2 3y ago
        But you see, their family got the land for free through a Homestead Act a few generations ago after they drove the Natives out (and/or murdered them) and now they get subsided water and property taxes through Prop 13 and cheap labor from undocumented workers, so why not do everything else in their power to maximize profits? That is the only mission in capitalism, after all.
- j4yav 3y ago
  You can take my Mojave desert almond farm when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
  - seanp2k2 3y ago
    It was ostensibly pried from the cold, dead hands of a Native American not so many decades ago, so at least there’s precedence. A bit more about that: http://mojavedesert.net/mojave-indians/traditional-territory.html http://mojavedesert.net/mojave-indians/traditional-territory...
- inamberclad 3y ago
  Limited natural resources shouldn't be free for industrial exploitation. Unfortunately, money is the best mechanism for incorporating these concerns into a product.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Mining rights are expensive.
  - zx8080 3y ago
    Those with money can lobby for more profits. Civil population lose. That's how money works: money for more money.
- kardianos 3y ago
  So... Let me tell you about Natural Asset Companies the SEC is considering approvnig: https://www.nyse.com/introducing-natural-asset-companies https://www.nyse.com/introducing-natural-asset-companies So yes, dystopian. Not a trial run.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  What type of water are we talking about? A bucket of water from river or lake somewhere can likely be free in many places. Even ground water if you exclude building a well. It is not unreasonable to charge everyone using water when it is treated, delivered and sewage is taken care of. As long as the price paid for minimal daily use is not exploitative.
ergl 3y ago
This could be good, but as always the second-order ramifications could be troublesome (only big agricultural business would be able to afford to have crops, etc, etc). "Cadillac Desert" is a good read to see how bonkers the water system can be (and was devised to be) in the US West, because it basically tries to turn the desert into a garden. The only problem is that there's just not enough water to do that. Another good story in the New York times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-drying-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groun... (which was discussed in HN, as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306841 )
- HWR_14 3y ago
  Why would only big agricultural business be able to afford to have crops? Water use, and thus costs, should scale linearly with acreage.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Might there be edge effects? (thinking of There Will Be Blood and the famous "Drainage!" scene)
    - mcguire 3y ago
      From the article: "While corporate growers of premium products like berries, which are shipped to the shelves of major chains like Whole Foods, Safeway and Trader Joe’s, can absorb the price of Pajaro’s water, there is no way farmers of commodity crops like cotton, alfalfa and soybeans can make the economics work, said David Sanford, the agricultural commissioner of the Santa Cruz County, which includes the Pajaro Valley. "In the years since the price on water was imposed, growers of those crops either shifted to high-priced berries and lettuces, or simply left the region for cheaper pastures." The increased cost could only be handled by shifting to higher-margin crops. On the other hand, anyone growing alfalfa or soybeans in the stinking desert deserves whatever happens to them.
shrubble 3y ago
Is California a special case, however?
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  California is the most important agricultural state in America, so really every other state is a special case. They export nearly 2x the next biggest state 24k vs 16k. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/100812/commodity_detail_by_state_cy.xlsx?v=1175.1 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/100812/commodity_...
  - jandrewrogers 3y ago
    The data you linked to doesn't support your claim. Per that document, California only exports 50% more than Iowa. Also, that document only refers to export value and not production. Most agricultural production in the US is not exported.
CrzyLngPwd 3y ago
We would increase rainwater storage.
- silon42 3y ago
  Yeah, eventually rivers would dry up.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  There are lots of well-known ways to slow down rainfall to let it seep into the ground, things like terracing and berms. California does little of that, so when it does rain, it all just washes into the ocean and it's back to drought.
  - zbrozek 3y ago
    Good news, my California town makes terracing so difficult to do that it might as well be illegal. So when it rains there's rapid runoff into a creek that makes a beeline for the ocean.
  - cryptonector 3y ago
    It's really not that hard. Well, it takes time and labor. Beavers used to be the key to water retention in the ecosystem, but we hunted them to near extinction.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      You can have some of the ones that live by me. They're quite the nuisance, and nobody wants to trap them for pelts anymore. I'm pretty sure the colony that lives by me has been exporting them (given the number of babies and new dams I've seen) but they're not likely to cross the Rockies on their own.
      - cryptonector 3y ago
        Well, yes, you do need to erect fencing around the trees you don't want them to cut down, but beavers do greatly help create better water retention in the local environment.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Also, electricity from fossil fuels consumes a lot of water. U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698
- 4death4 3y ago
  Mostly east of the Mississippi, which has no water shortage. If you don’t use the water in the East, it usually ends up as salt water in the ocean. https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/thermoelectric-power-water-use?qt-science_center_objects=0#overview https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/t...
  - thereisnospork 3y ago
    Additionally in certain circumstances it's less disruptive to use more water. E.g a nuclear power plant on a river: river water in, slightly warmer river water out w/o any or much steam generated. The more water 'used' the lower the temperature of hot water discharged, so kinder to the local ecosystem.
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  Water used for cooling a power plant either evaporates in a cooling tower or gets discharged back into the river.
  - intrasight 3y ago
    Same with water for farming of course
    - jerzmacow 3y ago
      With a healthy dose of AG chemicals!
alexpotato 3y ago
My favorite example of "wait, they do what for growing fruit??" is that they use helicopters to dry cherry trees if there is too much rain. More details here: https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/nature/outdoors/farmers-in-b-c-s-okanagan-using-helicopters-to-air-dry-wet-cherry-crop-and-save-their-harvest https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/nature/outdoors/fa...
- kvonhorn 3y ago
  In California, they hover helicopters over avocado groves in the winter to keep the fruit from freezing overnight. https://www.fairlifts.com/helicopter-services/agricultural/frost-protection/california-helicopter-frost-protection-essential-for-diverse-crops/ https://www.fairlifts.com/helicopter-services/agricultural/f...
  - switch007 3y ago
    You’re describing an Onion article but didn’t link to The Onion. I’m confused
  - xattt 3y ago
    Ontario vintners have fans installed for this purpose. Helicopter seem like a convenient business write-off so there is a plaything for the weekends. https://niagaranow.com/news.phtml/6869-vineyards-crank-up-giant-fans-forfirst-time-this-winter/ https://niagaranow.com/news.phtml/6869-vineyards-crank-up-gi...
    - snypher 3y ago
      The benefit of a helicopter is they can treat a whole area/multiple clients in a short time frame.
  - Modified3019 3y ago
    Some blueberry farms and vineyards here in Oregon use large fans to mix the higher/warmer layers of air with cooler/lower layers, or “drain” cold air away (by blowing it straight up, it apparently doesn’t come back down). This keeps cold air from pooling in certain areas, which is what is needed to cause frost damage. Here are some large mixers, which might be mistaken for small windmills. These are powered by propane (I think), which is what the tanks nearby hold. The heat produced is a bonus, even a degree can make all the difference: https://maps.app.goo.gl/d6UwmpPsYih5xkZD9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/d6UwmpPsYih5xkZD9 So while helicopters used to shake water off of crops can sound crazy, it’s literally a big mobile fan you can call in when needed to save your established perennial crop from much more expensive problems (like a disease epidemic, which now requires bacteria codes/fungicides instead of just burning some fuel. Which can make sense. We also use helicopters to harvest Christmas trees. It’s too damn wet in the fall/winter to run most wheeled equipment up and down those horrible on red clay hills, which often have artesian springs temporarily form, resulting in clay mud that can grab and hold all land vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA Agriculture is a whole lot of “sure it’s stupid, but it works and is cheaper than the alternative”
SoftTalker 3y ago
Farmers don't pay for water, it becomes part of the overhead that must be covered to make farming an economically worthwhile activity. So fruit would cost more, or it would be less available, or both.
- idiotsecant 3y ago
  That seems like it might be a good thing. If we priced it in producers would need to find more water efficient ways to make the product to be able to be a viable participant in the market. If that means growing fruit in a desert isn't viable, so be it! Don't grow fruit in the desert!
  - bshipp 3y ago
    If water was priced appropriately it would incentivize hydroponics that captures and recirculates waste water to minimize usage.
- ggm 3y ago
  In this model of what pay means, nobody making anything pays for anything. I know that's a reductive argument but really it mistakes the relationship of input costs, fixed costs, declared rainfall, and price in the market. In Australia water has financial value as an asset class and is bought and sold, in a futures model as well as at time of use (irrigation) I just think you're wrong on so many levels. Only primary mining can be said to not pay for anything in this model and they pay rent and royalties and other costs.
082349872349872 3y ago
Are there any commonly-used units more nonisotropic than the acre-foot? (its "unit cube" is 1 furlong x 1 chain x 1 foot)
- riversflow 3y ago
  Hmm, water related, there is the "Miner's Inch" for which the "unit cube"(block?) would be like 1" x 1" x ~2300 miles by my (fast, bad) calculations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miner%27s_inch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miner%27s_inch
- cobbal 3y ago
  Hubble's constant is typically measured in kilometers per second per megaparsec, which can be converted to Hertz.
TrackerFF 3y ago
For that matter, what if farmers had to pay a livable wage? Berry-picking is especially rife with social dumping. It is a hot topic here in Scandinavia, because every season farmer will cry “no one wants to work!”, and then comes testimonies of indentured servitude at its worth, and sweat-shops at its best. Many farmers here “import” Asian rice farmers to pick berries these days.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  Sounds great until you realize how razor-thin the margins on farming are; and that all it takes is one bad year.
  - xracy 3y ago
    It's wild to me that people see problems like this, and think to themselves "Yeah, it's okay that we overwork people for no money, but there's no other way to turn a profit for this, so this just has to be the way the world works." This is what governments are for. If the system doesn't pay people a livable wage to do the work to support our existence (food), then clearly we need to change the system to not be based on "maximizing profits". But instead you justify it by saying the margins are "razor-thin", and farmers have to take advantage of people if they want to survive. And that justifies this terrible behavior. Move who you're blaming and call them to action, instead of just accepting terrible conditions for workers. Farmers are responding to incentives, gov'ts have built subsidies for farmwork in the past, because food has to be cheap for people to live.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      I challenge you to walk up to the nearest farmer, look at their (edit for clarity: accounting) books; and not realize that what you are asking, is just as impossible as asking 3 engineers to write a competitor to Windows. I know enough about their lives to know that your armchair quarterbacking is an absurdity.
      - jiggawatts 3y ago
mcguire 3y ago
One thing to point out: this particular case was the response to a crisis. "But in the 1980s, disaster struck. Growers over pumped the coastal groundwater, allowing saltwater from the Pacific Ocean to seep in below their fields, up through the roots of the berry crop." It doesn't seem likely that a similar change would happen elsewhere without a similar crisis.
- wmf 3y ago
  There's already a crisis along the Colorado River but farmers refuse to give up their water rights.
labrador 3y ago
As a life long Californian, when people tell me California is running out of water my response that California is running out of cheap water. Calfornia farmers pay $30 to $120 for an acre foot (325,851 gallons or 1,233 cubic meters) which is ridiculously cheap and is wasted growing things like rice (California grows about 20% of the rice produced in the U.S. each year.)
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  On the private water markets, it used to be more on the order of $1000 per foot-acre for agricultural purposes in the US high desert. This clears the market so you can still make money in agriculture at these prices, you just can't be wasteful.
  - labrador 3y ago
    > $1000 per foot-acre for agricultural purposes in the US high desert I bet. There aren't many agricultural areas in California that could be considered high desert
    - hughesjj 3y ago
      Pretty much east of the Sierras only for high desert right? But yeah an increase in ag water pricing for all arid areas commensurate with their aridity would be a step in the right direction
      - labrador 3y ago
        > Pretty much east of the Sierras only for high desert right? Yes, but most of their water goes to Los Angeles so there's less agriculture than there could be (related: the movie Chinatown)
AngryData 3y ago
What would happen is people would start farming where water is essentially free from the sky again. Huge swathes of the midwest require no or very tiny amounts of irrigation for crops. But currently huge swathes of that land sit fallow and unused because people farming in the desert get essentially unlimited water on top of their near year-round growing season and can out compete them, which doesn't take much with how tiny farming profit margins are for most crops.
exabrial 3y ago
Exotic agriculture is ridiculous. We need to have seasonal diets.
rcyeh 3y ago
This story describes Pajaro, an agricultural community in California with a local water-management agency, the origins of that agency, and how other communities, facing water shortages, are looking to that model. Farmers in Pajaro will pay $500 per acre-ft (3.3e5 gal) of non-potable recycled water in 2024. By contrast, a New York City resident paid $5,000 for the same volume of potable water and attached sewer charges in 2023. Estimating irrigation requirements at 1.5 inches per week for 24 weeks, if I add 3 acre-ft of water for $1,500 to a 2014 report on the economics of strawberry production in Oregon (https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/oaeb/pdf/AEB0052.pdf https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/oaeb/pdf/A...), the costs of growing (dominated by labor for picking (60-70%), followed by land preparation and planting (20-25%)) would increase by 7%. Elsewhere, some estimates show as few as 12 weeks to grow strawberries, or that California acres have 5x the yield of Oregon acres. For strawberries (yield $25,000 per Oregon acre with plasticulture), it seems easy to absorb the $1,500 cost of water. Other crops (TIL: alfalfa, wheat, corn, soy, oat, rice: yield up to $1,000 per acre, need 2-5 acre-ft of water per acre) and other locales will have a different calculation. Ultimately, farmers in different places will face different economic landscapes considering: sun/land, air, water, labor, market access. Where land and water are expensive, only high-value (possibly high-labor) crops make sense; where land and water are cheap, lower-value (and low-labor) crops and scale may make more sense.

108 points by jgwil2 3y ago

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jgwil2 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20231229141143/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/climate/california-farmers-water-tax.html https://web.archive.org/web/20231229141143/https://www.nytim...

mooreds 3y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/climate/california-farmers-water-tax.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Jk0.lnMw.mQPplBJ8Hp7s&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/29/climate/calif...

Sirizarry 3y ago

[flagged]

ryaneager 3y ago
It’s only dystopian if it’s in context of people. Water shouldn’t be free for companies to profit off of but free to individuals to sustain life.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  The food grown to sustain life requires water. History also shows us that when the government runs collective farms that have no profit, people starve.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > History also shows us that when the government runs collective farms that have no profit, people starve. Yes? I'm not sure what you're implying here. The argument isn't "farms shouldn't profit", the argument is "farms should pay for the water they're turning into profits".
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      How can life be sustained with free water? Who is going to provide it?
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        Which life? If we're talking about basic necessary water for humans, that's a tiny little fraction of use and easy for cities to provide. For anything else the water doesn't need to be free or actively should not be free, depending on which use you look at. Water used to grow food goes in the second category.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Using water hungry cash crops for luxury foods rather then more better more native crops that actually better prevent starvation, is the reality. Using a scare resource in an unsustainable way results in bad incentives and thus bad outcome for people.
AlexandrB 3y ago
It's classic "tragedy of the commons" stuff. Having a "free" input sets up incentives for waste since that resource now exists outside the influence of market forces. So it's either putting a price on these resources or careful regulation. The latter is not very popular in today's political climate.
- Supermancho 3y ago
  Related to Jevons Paradox
  - acover 3y ago
    > Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost of use induces increases in demand enough that resource use is increased, rather than reduced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > careful regulation Has never worked very well. Government bureaucracies are very bad at pricing and allocating things appropriately. A case study is in the 70's the government decided gas allocations for every gas station. The result was a patchwork of gluts and shortages across the country. Reagan ended all that as his first Executive Order, and overnight the gluts and shortages vanished along with the gas lines.
  - nickpp 3y ago
    Very much rooting for Argentina's Milei to provide a similar lesson in modern times but I am afraid that he has very few allies helping him (besides his own idiosyncrasies) and the current laptop class would simply ignore it as they ignored Venezuela's lesson...
ldoughty 3y ago
When I lived in a rural area on septic and well, my electric bill was often under $200 in the summer, running AC fairly heavily, and taking care of ~6 dense garden beds full of veggies for ~6 months... and regularly watering 1 acre of grass to keep it from drying too much. We even had a timer to auto-water the garden and parts of the lawn... We'd even let it run overnight on a few occasions (needing to water, but coming home very late) I hardly considered water a costly resource On "city" water now in suburbs, I followed a similar pattern for grass on a 1/4 acre lot, and heavily watered the lawn one month, and I had a $300 water & sewer bill -- on top of my $100 electric bill. Water went from being something I hardly considered to something I am far more careful about 'wasting'.
- skeletal88 3y ago
  Well.. if your grass would dry out and become yellow without watering it, then watering is a luxury. The water in deep wells will eventually run out. Why waste it on grass?
  - sparrish 3y ago
    Because my HOA says I have to maintain a green lawn or I get fined.
    - bilbo0s 3y ago
      No dog in this fight. I moved out of Scottsdale to the Great Lakes region a bit back partly because of the water issue. So I definitely get the natural inclination to not want to have to think about water. All that said, I mean, if your HOA requires this, is the problem with the city charging for water use to upkeep the infrastructure required to deliver it? Or is the issue really just that your HOA has rules that it shouldn't?
    - unshavedyak 3y ago
      Yea but the discussion is around water usage practices. Deciding we have to waste water because HOAs say so is of course silly. They need to change.
TulliusCicero 3y ago
Ehhh, that's a rather cynical take on it. It's obviously about inefficient overuse by businesses. Having water for individual people free for basic personal use wouldn't be a problem.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > Having water for individual people free for basic personal use wouldn't be a problem. Operating the water system to deliver water is expensive. If you want to put out a rain barrel and collect rain, it's free.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    Doesn't help with water treatment or sewage handling though.
notatoad 3y ago
"paying the water bill" is a pretty normal thing for a large portion of the world. certainly for most of america. paying for water is not a dystopia. and taking a totally normal part of life and calling it "dystopian" with no further explanation is one of the laziest arguments ever.
- josefritz 3y ago
  Paying for water when you are poor is a threat to life and livelihood that's dystopian. This is the nature of dystopia, it mostly affects the impoverished.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    Is it not the same for paying for food, as well? I generally agree, but water seems an arbitrary line to draw when we still have shelter and food to consider.
    - throwaway44773 3y ago
      Before humans decided to pollute a lot of the fresh water on earth or appropriate it for themselves, humans could just go to the nearest stream and get water. In that sense, it feels right that it should be easily accessible at no cost. Meanwhile, humans have usually had to expand considerable effort to build a shelter and gather or grow food. So i don’t see the line as being arbitrary.
      - seanp2k2 3y ago
        For a good time, go read up about Stewart and Lynda Resnick and their impact to water in California.
      - mrcrumb1 3y ago
        This is clearly not true in the desert.
JoshGG 3y ago
Dystopian is “water was free so the big farming business pumped the aquifer dry and exported the agricultural goods. Now people here have no water and the land is a desert”. This stuff is economics 101. The full quote is: “”Soren Bjorn, a senior executive at Driscoll’s who in January will become the chief executive, said in an interview that he “absolutely” sees the region as a model of water pricing that could be replicated in water-stressed regions from Texas to Portugal. “Water can’t be free anywhere, because you can’t run a sustainable water supply without pricing it,” he said. “That would apply to the globe." “”
- irrational 3y ago
  Where I live it rains for the majority of the year. We could put out buckets and easily capture enough to care for our needs, but then you have to deal with making sure what we are going to ingest is clean and deal with no water pressure and hauling water around the house. It is so much easier to pay someone else to deal with it. So, water could be free some places, but…
  - atrus 3y ago
    Nothing of what you described is free though? It's going to take some sort of resources no matter what.
    - irrational 3y ago
      You mean like buckets to hold the water? Those would cost money, but would be a one time purchase.
  - ta1243 3y ago
    You don't live in Arizona
- intrasight 3y ago
  Water is free. What we pay for is it's delivery and it's treatment. I remember learning in elementary school that you're not allowed to charge for water.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
There's a very unambiguously wide gap between water being freely available to every person for sustaining life, and water being completely free to use in quantities of trillions/quadrillions of gallons for profit.
- KeplerBoy 3y ago
  There's not really. You need water for farming. Farming is necessary for survival and farmers sell their produce for profit. The line between small, local, "good" farmers and large "evil" corporations is all but clear cut.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    You don't need to farm water-intensive crops in deserts, especially in the modern era of extremely effective logistics. We should be growing crops where they're most suitable for, and applying something closer to normal pricing dynamics will nudge us closer to that. Agreed there's not a bright line, but we're clearly at one undesirable end of the spectrum.
    - KeplerBoy 3y ago
      I agree, but then we're back at exporting produce from wherever water is cheap and abundant. Which is a good thing and necessary, but it has to be done carefully at the industrial scale we're at.
  - unshavedyak 3y ago
    Is it? What about using limited water for crops that don’t have as much value to survival as other crops? Or wasteful locations, etc. I’m not advocating charging necessarily, but using up a limited resource with reckless abandon seems short sighted. What am I missing? Is it not a very important resource to manage?
    - seanp2k2 3y ago
      But you see, their family got the land for free through a Homestead Act a few generations ago after they drove the Natives out (and/or murdered them) and now they get subsided water and property taxes through Prop 13 and cheap labor from undocumented workers, so why not do everything else in their power to maximize profits? That is the only mission in capitalism, after all.
j4yav 3y ago
You can take my Mojave desert almond farm when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  It was ostensibly pried from the cold, dead hands of a Native American not so many decades ago, so at least there’s precedence. A bit more about that: http://mojavedesert.net/mojave-indians/traditional-territory.html http://mojavedesert.net/mojave-indians/traditional-territory...
inamberclad 3y ago
Limited natural resources shouldn't be free for industrial exploitation. Unfortunately, money is the best mechanism for incorporating these concerns into a product.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Mining rights are expensive.
- zx8080 3y ago
  Those with money can lobby for more profits. Civil population lose. That's how money works: money for more money.
kardianos 3y ago
So... Let me tell you about Natural Asset Companies the SEC is considering approvnig: https://www.nyse.com/introducing-natural-asset-companies https://www.nyse.com/introducing-natural-asset-companies So yes, dystopian. Not a trial run.
Ekaros 3y ago
What type of water are we talking about? A bucket of water from river or lake somewhere can likely be free in many places. Even ground water if you exclude building a well. It is not unreasonable to charge everyone using water when it is treated, delivered and sewage is taken care of. As long as the price paid for minimal daily use is not exploitative.

ergl 3y ago

This could be good, but as always the second-order ramifications could be troublesome (only big agricultural business would be able to afford to have crops, etc, etc). "Cadillac Desert" is a good read to see how bonkers the water system can be (and was devised to be) in the US West, because it basically tries to turn the desert into a garden. The only problem is that there's just not enough water to do that. Another good story in the New York times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groundwater-drying-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/28/climate/groun... (which was discussed in HN, as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306841 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37306841 )

HWR_14 3y ago
Why would only big agricultural business be able to afford to have crops? Water use, and thus costs, should scale linearly with acreage.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Might there be edge effects? (thinking of There Will Be Blood and the famous "Drainage!" scene)
  - mcguire 3y ago
    From the article: "While corporate growers of premium products like berries, which are shipped to the shelves of major chains like Whole Foods, Safeway and Trader Joe’s, can absorb the price of Pajaro’s water, there is no way farmers of commodity crops like cotton, alfalfa and soybeans can make the economics work, said David Sanford, the agricultural commissioner of the Santa Cruz County, which includes the Pajaro Valley. "In the years since the price on water was imposed, growers of those crops either shifted to high-priced berries and lettuces, or simply left the region for cheaper pastures." The increased cost could only be handled by shifting to higher-margin crops. On the other hand, anyone growing alfalfa or soybeans in the stinking desert deserves whatever happens to them.

shrubble 3y ago

Is California a special case, however?

vineyardmike 3y ago
California is the most important agricultural state in America, so really every other state is a special case. They export nearly 2x the next biggest state 24k vs 16k. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/100812/commodity_detail_by_state_cy.xlsx?v=1175.1 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/100812/commodity_...
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  The data you linked to doesn't support your claim. Per that document, California only exports 50% more than Iowa. Also, that document only refers to export value and not production. Most agricultural production in the US is not exported.

CrzyLngPwd 3y ago

We would increase rainwater storage.

silon42 3y ago
Yeah, eventually rivers would dry up.
WalterBright 3y ago
There are lots of well-known ways to slow down rainfall to let it seep into the ground, things like terracing and berms. California does little of that, so when it does rain, it all just washes into the ocean and it's back to drought.
- zbrozek 3y ago
  Good news, my California town makes terracing so difficult to do that it might as well be illegal. So when it rains there's rapid runoff into a creek that makes a beeline for the ocean.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  It's really not that hard. Well, it takes time and labor. Beavers used to be the key to water retention in the ecosystem, but we hunted them to near extinction.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    You can have some of the ones that live by me. They're quite the nuisance, and nobody wants to trap them for pelts anymore. I'm pretty sure the colony that lives by me has been exporting them (given the number of babies and new dams I've seen) but they're not likely to cross the Rockies on their own.
    - cryptonector 3y ago
      Well, yes, you do need to erect fencing around the trees you don't want them to cut down, but beavers do greatly help create better water retention in the local environment.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Also, electricity from fossil fuels consumes a lot of water. U.S. thermoelectric plants are the largest source of U.S. water withdrawals, accounting for more than 40% of total U.S. water withdrawals in 2015: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50698

4death4 3y ago
Mostly east of the Mississippi, which has no water shortage. If you don’t use the water in the East, it usually ends up as salt water in the ocean. https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/thermoelectric-power-water-use?qt-science_center_objects=0#overview https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/t...
- thereisnospork 3y ago
  Additionally in certain circumstances it's less disruptive to use more water. E.g a nuclear power plant on a river: river water in, slightly warmer river water out w/o any or much steam generated. The more water 'used' the lower the temperature of hot water discharged, so kinder to the local ecosystem.
quickthrowman 3y ago
Water used for cooling a power plant either evaporates in a cooling tower or gets discharged back into the river.
- intrasight 3y ago
  Same with water for farming of course
  - jerzmacow 3y ago
    With a healthy dose of AG chemicals!

alexpotato 3y ago

My favorite example of "wait, they do what for growing fruit??" is that they use helicopters to dry cherry trees if there is too much rain. More details here: https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/nature/outdoors/farmers-in-b-c-s-okanagan-using-helicopters-to-air-dry-wet-cherry-crop-and-save-their-harvest https://www.theweathernetwork.com/en/news/nature/outdoors/fa...

kvonhorn 3y ago
In California, they hover helicopters over avocado groves in the winter to keep the fruit from freezing overnight. https://www.fairlifts.com/helicopter-services/agricultural/frost-protection/california-helicopter-frost-protection-essential-for-diverse-crops/ https://www.fairlifts.com/helicopter-services/agricultural/f...
- switch007 3y ago
  You’re describing an Onion article but didn’t link to The Onion. I’m confused
- xattt 3y ago
  Ontario vintners have fans installed for this purpose. Helicopter seem like a convenient business write-off so there is a plaything for the weekends. https://niagaranow.com/news.phtml/6869-vineyards-crank-up-giant-fans-forfirst-time-this-winter/ https://niagaranow.com/news.phtml/6869-vineyards-crank-up-gi...
  - snypher 3y ago
    The benefit of a helicopter is they can treat a whole area/multiple clients in a short time frame.
- Modified3019 3y ago
  Some blueberry farms and vineyards here in Oregon use large fans to mix the higher/warmer layers of air with cooler/lower layers, or “drain” cold air away (by blowing it straight up, it apparently doesn’t come back down). This keeps cold air from pooling in certain areas, which is what is needed to cause frost damage. Here are some large mixers, which might be mistaken for small windmills. These are powered by propane (I think), which is what the tanks nearby hold. The heat produced is a bonus, even a degree can make all the difference: https://maps.app.goo.gl/d6UwmpPsYih5xkZD9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/d6UwmpPsYih5xkZD9 So while helicopters used to shake water off of crops can sound crazy, it’s literally a big mobile fan you can call in when needed to save your established perennial crop from much more expensive problems (like a disease epidemic, which now requires bacteria codes/fungicides instead of just burning some fuel. Which can make sense. We also use helicopters to harvest Christmas trees. It’s too damn wet in the fall/winter to run most wheeled equipment up and down those horrible on red clay hills, which often have artesian springs temporarily form, resulting in clay mud that can grab and hold all land vehicles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K_aEajzNA Agriculture is a whole lot of “sure it’s stupid, but it works and is cheaper than the alternative”

SoftTalker 3y ago

Farmers don't pay for water, it becomes part of the overhead that must be covered to make farming an economically worthwhile activity. So fruit would cost more, or it would be less available, or both.

idiotsecant 3y ago
That seems like it might be a good thing. If we priced it in producers would need to find more water efficient ways to make the product to be able to be a viable participant in the market. If that means growing fruit in a desert isn't viable, so be it! Don't grow fruit in the desert!
- bshipp 3y ago
  If water was priced appropriately it would incentivize hydroponics that captures and recirculates waste water to minimize usage.
ggm 3y ago
In this model of what pay means, nobody making anything pays for anything. I know that's a reductive argument but really it mistakes the relationship of input costs, fixed costs, declared rainfall, and price in the market. In Australia water has financial value as an asset class and is bought and sold, in a futures model as well as at time of use (irrigation) I just think you're wrong on so many levels. Only primary mining can be said to not pay for anything in this model and they pay rent and royalties and other costs.

082349872349872 3y ago

Are there any commonly-used units more nonisotropic than the acre-foot? (its "unit cube" is 1 furlong x 1 chain x 1 foot)

riversflow 3y ago
Hmm, water related, there is the "Miner's Inch" for which the "unit cube"(block?) would be like 1" x 1" x ~2300 miles by my (fast, bad) calculations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miner%27s_inch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miner%27s_inch
cobbal 3y ago
Hubble's constant is typically measured in kilometers per second per megaparsec, which can be converted to Hertz.

TrackerFF 3y ago

For that matter, what if farmers had to pay a livable wage? Berry-picking is especially rife with social dumping. It is a hot topic here in Scandinavia, because every season farmer will cry “no one wants to work!”, and then comes testimonies of indentured servitude at its worth, and sweat-shops at its best. Many farmers here “import” Asian rice farmers to pick berries these days.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
Sounds great until you realize how razor-thin the margins on farming are; and that all it takes is one bad year.
- xracy 3y ago
  It's wild to me that people see problems like this, and think to themselves "Yeah, it's okay that we overwork people for no money, but there's no other way to turn a profit for this, so this just has to be the way the world works." This is what governments are for. If the system doesn't pay people a livable wage to do the work to support our existence (food), then clearly we need to change the system to not be based on "maximizing profits". But instead you justify it by saying the margins are "razor-thin", and farmers have to take advantage of people if they want to survive. And that justifies this terrible behavior. Move who you're blaming and call them to action, instead of just accepting terrible conditions for workers. Farmers are responding to incentives, gov'ts have built subsidies for farmwork in the past, because food has to be cheap for people to live.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    I challenge you to walk up to the nearest farmer, look at their (edit for clarity: accounting) books; and not realize that what you are asking, is just as impossible as asking 3 engineers to write a competitor to Windows. I know enough about their lives to know that your armchair quarterbacking is an absurdity.
    - jiggawatts 3y ago

mcguire 3y ago

One thing to point out: this particular case was the response to a crisis. "But in the 1980s, disaster struck. Growers over pumped the coastal groundwater, allowing saltwater from the Pacific Ocean to seep in below their fields, up through the roots of the berry crop." It doesn't seem likely that a similar change would happen elsewhere without a similar crisis.

wmf 3y ago
There's already a crisis along the Colorado River but farmers refuse to give up their water rights.

labrador 3y ago

As a life long Californian, when people tell me California is running out of water my response that California is running out of cheap water. Calfornia farmers pay $30 to $120 for an acre foot (325,851 gallons or 1,233 cubic meters) which is ridiculously cheap and is wasted growing things like rice (California grows about 20% of the rice produced in the U.S. each year.)

jandrewrogers 3y ago
On the private water markets, it used to be more on the order of $1000 per foot-acre for agricultural purposes in the US high desert. This clears the market so you can still make money in agriculture at these prices, you just can't be wasteful.
- labrador 3y ago
  > $1000 per foot-acre for agricultural purposes in the US high desert I bet. There aren't many agricultural areas in California that could be considered high desert
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    Pretty much east of the Sierras only for high desert right? But yeah an increase in ag water pricing for all arid areas commensurate with their aridity would be a step in the right direction
    - labrador 3y ago
      > Pretty much east of the Sierras only for high desert right? Yes, but most of their water goes to Los Angeles so there's less agriculture than there could be (related: the movie Chinatown)

AngryData 3y ago

What would happen is people would start farming where water is essentially free from the sky again. Huge swathes of the midwest require no or very tiny amounts of irrigation for crops. But currently huge swathes of that land sit fallow and unused because people farming in the desert get essentially unlimited water on top of their near year-round growing season and can out compete them, which doesn't take much with how tiny farming profit margins are for most crops.

exabrial 3y ago

Exotic agriculture is ridiculous. We need to have seasonal diets.

rcyeh 3y ago

This story describes Pajaro, an agricultural community in California with a local water-management agency, the origins of that agency, and how other communities, facing water shortages, are looking to that model. Farmers in Pajaro will pay $500 per acre-ft (3.3e5 gal) of non-potable recycled water in 2024. By contrast, a New York City resident paid $5,000 for the same volume of potable water and attached sewer charges in 2023. Estimating irrigation requirements at 1.5 inches per week for 24 weeks, if I add 3 acre-ft of water for $1,500 to a 2014 report on the economics of strawberry production in Oregon (https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/oaeb/pdf/AEB0052.pdf https://agsci.oregonstate.edu/sites/agscid7/files/oaeb/pdf/A...), the costs of growing (dominated by labor for picking (60-70%), followed by land preparation and planting (20-25%)) would increase by 7%. Elsewhere, some estimates show as few as 12 weeks to grow strawberries, or that California acres have 5x the yield of Oregon acres. For strawberries (yield $25,000 per Oregon acre with plasticulture), it seems easy to absorb the $1,500 cost of water. Other crops (TIL: alfalfa, wheat, corn, soy, oat, rice: yield up to $1,000 per acre, need 2-5 acre-ft of water per acre) and other locales will have a different calculation. Ultimately, farmers in different places will face different economic landscapes considering: sun/land, air, water, labor, market access. Where land and water are expensive, only high-value (possibly high-labor) crops make sense; where land and water are cheap, lower-value (and low-labor) crops and scale may make more sense.