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How a Solar Revolution in Farming Is Depleting Groundwater
- Heliosmaster 3y agoPumping water is useful only when coupled with increases in water retention and runoff prevention. Like what is happening in some (arid) places like Northwest India: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79VUAFq2rbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79VUAFq2rbg
- Linda231 3y ago[dead]
- throwaway5959 3y agoHow is this a solar problem? The article clearly states there’s diesel pumps as well that do the same thing.
- warble 3y agoCheaper to run constantly.
- actionfromafar 3y agoIt's cheaper to extract the water than it used to be.
- ethbr1 3y agoDiesel has a consumable that must be purchased when the pump is run. With solar, there's presumably less difference between "run the pump 24/7" and "only run the pump when cost efficient." It's essentially the same argument in favor of solar power generation. Fossil fuel generation = plant-capital-cost + fuel-per-generated-unit. Solar generation = plant-capital-cost + negligible-wear-per-generated-unit.
- h0l0cube 3y agoEven still, solar has just enabled agriculture on places and on margins that it wasn't viable before. Agriculture itself is also an enabler of the problem, but not the actual problem of the moment. The real problem is how do we, on limited resources, feed a global population that is increasing in size and wealth (and attendant waste)?
- pstrateman 3y agoThe water being pumped is basically a battery. So it's much more effective than solar is on the normal grid.
- tfigueroa 3y agoExactly. The problem is the excessive water extraction, not the technology making it cheaper.
- richrichie 3y agoTechnologies have side effects - some good, some bad. This effect of solar i admit i had not thought about.
- tomrod 3y agoIt's not a direct effect of solar. It's cheaper energy with undisciplined resource abuse.
- burnished 3y agoIt is for the engineering mindset. 'If I build this, what will happen?' is a question you are taught to consider in school and some of the examples are much like this
- tomrod 3y agoI totally get where you are coming from. I still disagree though. By definition, a second order effect is not a direct effect since an intervention after the first order effect can mediate second order effects. All the engineers I've had the pleasure to work with care a lot about outcomes to a reasonable level, somewhere closer to the butterfly flapping wings and further from the monsoon it causes. The direct effect is lower cost of energy. That it gets used to then pump water continuously is a second-order effect.
- globalnode 3y ago[flagged]
- yieldcrv 3y agoits an awareness problem in both belief of doing something more environmentally friendly and cost
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- toss1 3y agoIt is not a solar problem. It is a Tragedy Of The Commons problem. Solar just happens to be an enabling technology. Other technologies that brought cheap power to those areas would have done the same thing, e.g., wind or very cheap diesel (biodiesel?) would have the exact same effect if they happened to arrive first. Putting Solar in the headline and as the culprit is a truly cheap shot. The real problem is that now that power is cheap, it is to everyone's individual advantage TODAY to pump more, but everyone's disadvantage tomorrow when the groundwater reserves run dry. Classic Commons problem, and it's screaming to the inevitable result. The only solution is some way to monitor and regulate the draw from the groundwater.
- cutemonster 3y agoI wonder what other Tragedy of the Commons enablers lie waiting, undiscovered. (AI maybe in some ways can be one?) > The only solution But is it really a problem, from everyone's perspective? Because, if water is scarce, then, those with money become even more important and wealthy -- they're the only ones who could afford really deep pumps? And now they can sell the water, for more and more money. What's not to like about that?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoFrom the article: None of this should be seen as a condemnation of solar power, says Balasubramanya. “The fundamental problem is not the solar technology itself.” Whatever the technology, “if the cost of pumping is zero, then people will pump unless some restriction is put on them.” — The article also discusses that the panels are much cheaper to run than diesel and are subsidized by agencies and governments while the diesel pumps are not. So, yes, it’s not specifically about solar but about the economics of solar.
- Jedd 3y agoIn addition to the ways described in sibling responses to this question - diesel pumps suck, solar (submersible) pumps push. In practice you can't suck more than about 8 metres (in theory it's a bit more), and while there are ways you can force a ground-based pump to get water up from a deeper depth than that .. the economics work against you. A submersible pump - DC-driven by solar typically - can sit at the bottom of your bore, and push 100 metres or more upwards. No sucking required, so they're relatively simple and efficient. (My little 75mm x 500mm submersible solar pump, for example, is pushing about 5k litres per day through 600 metres of 50mm pipe, with a vertical (head) of ~40 metres from bore water level.)
- schneems 3y agoI’m very naive in this space. What percent of water extracted makes its way back into the water table and how long does it take? I assume you lose some to the plant that is harvested and some to evaporation. But how much makes it back?
- owyn 3y agoI am too but the answer is zero, and nobody knows but probably a long time. The whole Central Valley is like 30 feet lower now. A bit of rain isn't going to fix that.
- scheme271 3y agoProbably just a fraction. A lot probably evaporates and anything that the plant absorbs and incorporates just goes away when crops are harvested and shipped elsewhere.
- e40 3y agoFrom what I’ve read, it takes a very, very long time to replenish the water table. Eons.
- contravariant 3y agoI'd see what the Dutch water suppliers have to say about it, pumping up ground water and managing the water table is kind of their thing.
- cutemonster 3y agoApparently pumping up, yes, managing, less. See this comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39732506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39732506 > ... ground water shortages. Reason: farmers like irrigating their land (much of it below sea level) with ground water because it is cheap ...
- contravariant 3y agoIt should be noted however that this shortage is happening because the water suppliers are refusing to pump up more water than is sustainable. This is rather different from the free-for-all depicted in this article, and is in fact what I mean by managing the ground water.
- khaki54 3y ago[flagged]
- whatshisface 3y agoIf the groundwater runs out you'll get some de-growth all right.
- clooper 3y agoDo you work on a farm or do you just consume their output? Degrowth is obviously not the only option but if you have never worked on an industrial scale farm then you should do some more research before casting blame on people who are trying to educate you about the scale of the problem facing us. Resources necessary for intensive industrial farming are running out. Business as usual is not sustainable regardless of how upset that makes you.
- adolph 3y ago> you should do some more research before casting blame on people who are trying to educate you Clearly these would-be educators are doing a terrible job if one must “do research” before “casting blame.”
- peterleiser 3y agoAgreed. And everyone needs to be aware that this is a global problem. California has some of the best farm land in the world, but many of the years in the past decade have been brutal from water shortages. Some years have had 50% water deliveries and some have had zero, depending on the water district, water contracts, water rights, location, etc. Being told you can you use 50% of your normal water supply generally means you plant half your fields and leave the other half fallow, because most crops aren't viable if you only use half the necessary water.
- LinXitoW 3y agoWell, because more and more farms are being bought up, making farms bigger and bigger, and reducing the amount of "hard working, honest small family farms" everyone likes to imagine they get their food from. There is no reasonable difference between what "farmers" say and what Facebook says, or the Collection of sad landlords, or the conglomerate of weapons manufacturers for world peace. It's all the same lies to keep the cash cow going as long as possible to extract as much value from our planet before everything goes to shit. If people did do research, they'd find out that the main, humonguous problem is animal agriculture. Whether it's water (https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-water-alfalfa-dairy-beef-meat https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-wa...), land, energy or CO2e production, it's not anywhere close to sustainable to eat meat every meal, not even every day.
- Jedd 3y agoThe margins are doubtless so narrow that it's not feasible, but pumping during the day into a storage tank, and irrigating at night (while evaporation is relatively low) would be a way to slightly improve soil (though not aquifer) recharge. Certainly it would require less water volume, but again, the infrastructure costs for panels + submersible + storage are probably untenable in precisely the places this is needed most (and where the impacts of depleting the water table will hit the most).
- peterleiser 3y agoIf you don't irrigate during the day in hot climates some crops will die, and the yields will be terrible for most.
- Jedd 3y ago> If you don't irrigate during the day in hot climates most crops will die That is clearly not true. Most crops are fine with watering after sunset / before sunrise.
- peterleiser 3y agoFair. I just edited my comment because I combined two concepts and muddled them together. It's more common to suffer a poorer yield than total crop loss. But crops like tomatoes can die from lack of water during high heat days if the heat lasts for several days. Also, irrigating only at night (not just evening, but over night) can contribute to fungal and disease issues with some crops.
- Jedd 3y agoSure, cucurbits and solanaceous crops and prone to humidity / water induced fungal attacks. Tomatoes are better watered at ground level (refer other thread about drippers) or even just flood irrigation. Tomatoes are actually pretty robust, if you grow them properly. The way I was taught to maximise survival / yield in hot climates is to grow as seedlings for a few weeks, until they're maybe 30cm or so tall. Dig holes ~ 25cm deep, flood / drain / flood / drain - and then take all but the upper few branches off the seedling, and plant, backfill with soil, so about 5m is above-ground. Because they have adventitious rooting you've effectively just given them a massive reservoir of water retention. This is obviously expensive at scale (though not intrinsically infeasible) but works superbly well in hostile, arid climates. I expect the next decade or two will force a lot of changes to the way food is grow in already marginal climates.
- photochemsyn 3y agoAncient subterranean water aquifers are not a sustainable resource in the long run unless a recharge program is implemented that puts as much water into the system on a yearly basis as is withdrawn. See the Ogallala Aquifer under the Midwest: https://www.kcur.org/2023-04-04/with-the-ogallala-aquifer-drying-up-kansas-ponders-limits-to-irrigation https://www.kcur.org/2023-04-04/with-the-ogallala-aquifer-dr... The power source for the pumps is sort of irrelevant to the question, it could be fossil fuels, nuclear, solar or wind and the end result of uncontrolled extraction is always going to be exhaustion of the resource.
- leros 3y agoI know some farmers in North Texas where they are pulling water out of a depleted aquifer. The water is starting to get salty so they're adjusting to salt tolerant variants of their crops. The ground is also starting to drop due to the aquifer draining. It's crazy to see
- Gibbon1 3y agoIn the Santa Clara Valley farmers pumped enough water out of the ground in the early 20th century the ground dropped a dozen feet in some areas. Bad thing too is that once an aquifer settles like that it's carrying capacity is permanently reduced. Also in southern California there is a fair amount of previously productive farm land that is salted up and useless. That'll happen to the north Texas farmers you've mentioned. If they're having to switch crops they have another ten to twenty years and it's all over. Edit: Even better Jakarta is sinking so bad because of ground water pumping that the government plans to abandon it.
- neurostimulant 3y agoIt's odd that foreign media reporting the Indonesian government plan to move the seat of government from Jakarta to Borneo as primarily motivated by the sinking of Jakarta (it affects the northern part of Jakarta, while the goverment is mostly operating in Central Jakarta), while the other more important (to the government) reasons are usually under-reported, such as to reduce the java-centric development, improving the government's efficiency by moving various government agency closer together instead of scattering everywhere over the huge megacity with traffic jams everywhere, and improving the government image because foreign diplomats will arrive in a pristine, green city instead of concrete jungle with bad air and traffic jams everywhere.
- hinkley 3y agoI did the math once and the amount of water we’ve pumped out of the aquifers worldwide and not replaced is worth more than a mm of sea level rise.
- 3y ago
- itsanaccount 3y agoViewing humanity like a single organism, this is the strategy where like a slime mold we expand to consume all resources, then most of the organism dies off while some number of spores go on to continue to the process elsewhere. If we'd like that not to happen, because we like our civilizations and like not to see them crumble, we must develop some kind of governance mechanism to prevent slime mold behavior. Seeing so many conversations about resource exhaustion/climate change/ecosystem collapse boil down to "nunht uh" is.. I can't even say tiring anymore. I'm beyond tired. At this point we're gonna find out exactly what behavior is encoded in human nature one way or another.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Voultapher 3y agoPicture a roller coaster where the carts have little steering wheels .. that do nothing. We like to imagine we are in control, but zoomed out we behave quite predictably, chasing that unsustainable growth. I feel you, and I'm not sure how to explain this to children. How honest should we be? I believe there is no version of this that ends well, we are left with outcomes to our decisions on the spectrum of awful to really awful. There is no arguing with physics.
- lettergram 3y agoI actually argue the opposite zooming out. Zooming out our trajectory is up and to the right, like a hockey stick. Almost on every level. We’ve done that with all these disasters that have always happened. Almost like we can innovate or something
- itsanaccount 3y agoTechnocrats on this site are very fond of your argument, so fond that I stored the reply I saw years back when someone else said the same thing. There is no monitoring dashboard for the planet. News articles like this are your warnings. There is no innovation to be had that fixes global aquifer levels. >>> Original Mathusianism should be distinguished from neo-Malthusianism, in that the latter does at least have some evidential basis in that it is based on measurement of resource levels and their rate of use, not just some political philosopher's wooly notion of overpopulation. The problem, as I see it, is that even if you are optimistic about the theoretical capacity of the planet to sustain human life, its practical capacity is limited by how efficiently we use the resources to hand, and the current system does not properly incentivise efficient use. More often, it's the complete opposite, because the price of resources like water and soil does not reflect their true scarcity. It's like having a large store of firewood. Enough, in theory, to heat your home through several years of harsh winters. Then you burn the whole stockpile in a great bonfire on the first cold Autumn night. That night, by every metric, you'll be warmer and cosier than you ever have been before, but you'll still have doomed yourself. * * * Reminds me of the well-known type of question in introductory calculus: Q: "A population of bacteria in a petri-dish doubles every hour, after 24 hours the petri-dish reaches 100% saturation. At what time did the petri-dish reach 50% saturation?" A: 23 hours.
- a_gnostic 3y agoHoogle cultures,and capturing runoff reduces your agricultural water needs. https://permacultureapprentice.com/permaculture-water-management/ https://permacultureapprentice.com/permaculture-water-manage...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nitwit005 3y agoI've wondered if all the solar panels being put in will mean some areas will never get electrical infrastructure. The local governments will see a region where the only industry generates its own power.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoThe problem here is people relying on unsustainable sources of water and then using that water very inefficiently. Relative to farming, cleaning solar panels is a drop in the ocean. In terms of surface area, it doesn't really compare. And of course it doesn't help that people just let the excess water drain away. They pump it up, use it and, then it drains away to rivers and eventually the ocean. Instead, they could be recycling that water and using it for irrigation. But because the water is cheap, nobody cares about it. So it's drained and lost. In the Netherlands which, depending on how you look at it, is technically mostly a swamp with really awesome drainage and pumps, we have ground water shortages. Reason: farmers like irrigating their land (much of it below sea level) with ground water because it is cheap. But they also like to keep their fields well drained so their plants don't rot in the field. So they are actively draining water from their lands while using ground water to keep them at just the right level of wetness. They use massive amounts of water and the drained water is rich in phosphates and other nutrients which is causing all sorts of issues down stream. Not sustainable. The climate in the Netherlands while changing is still quite wet. And besides, two of the largest rivers in Europe flow through the country. Mostly we have issues with water levels of those being way too high, not too low. In other words, there's plenty of water. Except in the ground. Getting rid of excess water is actually a major engineering challenge. Water companies are also tapping into the same unsustainable sources because its cheap and doesn't need a lot of filtering because it's also clean. So there are water shortages and calls for people to use less water, irrigate their lawns and gardens less, and take shorter showers all while we are dealing with getting millions of tonnes of excess water to the North Sea.
- vitiral 3y agoCleaning solar panels? Did you read the article? It's about solar pumps enabling aquifer exhaustion when used for agriculture
- miohtama 3y agoThis is exactly what happens in Spain: https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/01/spain-expected-to-declare-drought-emergency-today-with-big-fines-for-breaking-water-rules https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/02/01/spain-expected-to-... Agriculture is responsible for 80% of water use. Because water is not market priced for farmers, farmers use very inefficient surface irrigation, causing 50% of water to vaporise. Then nobody does anything and wishes the government pays them to switch to more efficient irrigation systems. Edit: Looks like government is doing exactly this - paying farmers to reduce water usage, instead of having a fair price for the water https://www.catalannews.com/drought/item/government-and-farmers-agree-special-drought-plan-with-compensation-for-losses-suffered-due-to-restrictions https://www.catalannews.com/drought/item/government-and-farm... Hopefully this leads too a real change is not just a socialist solution kicking can down the road.
- mbgerring 3y agoWhy not just tax water-hungry crops?
- j-pb 3y agoThe bigger issue is that 1/3 of crops are used as animal feed. No matter how water efficient they are, you still need 10x as much of them for the same amount of calories. It'd be much easier and have a bigger impact to just go plant-based.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago> It'd be much easier and have a bigger impact to just go plant-based. Ok but this is a non starter since myself and a huge chunk of the western population will say no thank you.
- cutemonster 3y agoI've read about that, related to farmers shopping down the rain forest in Brazil (to grow beans for hamburger cows). But I don't think it applies to poor development country farmers? It's not as if the farmers in India are feeding cows and everyone feasts on hamburgers. And in Yemen, they're growing that qat drug (not meat)
- LinXitoW 3y agoThey are, more and more. They richer a country becomes, the more they demand meat and animal products, the more they overconsume resources relative to provided calories/protein. And who cares about India, when we're already screwing ourselves over well enough: https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-water-alfalfa-dairy-beef-meat https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-wa... 70% of the water used from the Colorado River (which is slowly losing water) is used for crops, and 80% of that is used for feed production. But let's stop taking so many showers, that'll fix the issue.
- cutemonster 3y ago
- nonoesp 3y ago> In theory, switching from diesel or electricity to PV pumping should eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. But in practice, farmers often use their solar pumps to supplement existing pumps, rather than replacing them. And, however it is pumped, the extra water available will also encourage farmers to adopt more intensive farming methods, using more fertilizer and machinery to grow thirstier cash crops, increasing the carbon footprint of the farm.
- vasco 3y agoWhen given the chance of reducing your footprint or improving your life, is it that surprising this is the outcome? Specially in developing countries.
- _heimdall 3y agoFarmers often don't have a choice on this. A vast majority of operations depend on debt and government subsidies just to get by, both come with strings attached related to both farming methods used and required yields. I'd propose that the more sustainable solution here is to help get out of a farmers way (both financially and regulatorily) rather than trying to encourage get another round of changes. I'm assuming the encouragement would have to come similar to the current ones, as either legal requirements or strings attached to the money. Farming is a nearly impossible business to be in today with depending entirely on debt and subsidies, at least in the US. Prices are insanely low relative to the cost and risk of raising animals and farming crops. Until that problem is fixed, farmers have little choice other than to look for expense optimizations anywhere they can (regardless of long term damage) and follow whatever rules are tied to the money they take.
- qwerty456127 3y agoWhat's the state of technology in producing fresh water from sea water? Isn't there any serious progress making it more efficient and cheap?
- pfdietz 3y agoIt's become progressively cheaper through incremental engineering improvements. The cheapest way is generally reverse osmosis, especially on water that is just brackish. But it's also generally cheaper (per unit of saved water) to just use water more efficiently. Agricultural water use can be enormously economically inefficient in the US.
- blendo 3y agoI don’t think solar powered irrigation is practical. To water 10 acres of orchard in northern California, where our water levels are “good” (wells are 100-150 ft deep), we need about a 25 hp (20 kW) well pump. That’s ~2 kW per acre. A typical irrigation cycle is on the order of 10-20 hours. So budget about 20-40 kWh/acre for a cycle, and repeat every 10 days or so (crops need to dry out between waterings else disease spreads.) In theory, a kW of solar panels charging a 20 kWh battery for 10 days should work to water 1 acre for an entire summer season, at a capital cost of a wildly uneconomic cost of perhaps $20,000 per acre. These are my wild guesstimates informed by some orchard experience, but please correct me if my numbers seem badly amiss. ps: With PG&E power, we currently pay about $400/acre, per year.
- 20after4 3y agoThere are no batteries involved with the type of solar pumps the article is talking about. They are likely 3 phase pumps powered by variable frequency inverters. The inverters are similar to the VFD¹ motor drives commonly used with industrial machines. I'm not sure where you came up with a $20,000 cost estimate but it's likely a lot less than that. Particularly if you buy the cheapest stuff direct from China, avoiding avoid the dealers/installers who are probably marking up the equipment by more than 100%. Solar panels and the associated electronics have drastically dropped in price for the past several years. It should be possible to get 200 watt panels for $50-100 (or maybe even less if you buy a lot of them) That's something like $250-$500 per kW of panels. Make it $1000/kW to cover mounting hardware and wiring. The pumps / inverters are maybe a few thousand for a fairly large system. I'd say the total should come closer to $5,000-$7,000 per acre based on the power requirements you specified. [1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-frequency_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable-frequency_drive