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It makes a lot of sense for the same reason California is the most productive agricultural region in the world. The arid climate is optimal for consistently gro

It makes a lot of sense for the same reason California is the most productive agricultural region in the world. The arid climate is optimal for consistently growing crops with low risk of disease year-round. Instead of having to import winter crops from overseas we could instead grow them in Arizona, and transport them on rail across the United States vs. importing them on ships from around the world. That also would have a huge impact on greenhouse emissions, and farmland really does "Terraform" the desert and make it more livable by lowering temperatures and helping to keep down dust.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I obviously have no idea how the math works out in detail, but I'd be pretty surprised if the economics of this were feasible. That is, spend a ton of money (and energy) to terraform sizable swaths of the Arizona desert just to avoid transporting in crops from Mexico right across the boarder? I'd be skeptical that even a back-of-the-napkin estimate would consider this possible. Relevant example: there are a bunch of rice farmers near Houston that are dependent on the Colorado River for irrigation (note, this is the Colorado River in Texas that runs through downtown Austin - completely different river from the Colorado River that goes through the Hoover Dam and supplies a ton of the Western US with water). Given how we've been getting drier over the past decades, the rice farmers are now frequently cut off from water because that water is deemed more important for city dwellers upstream where the economic return on that water usage is much greater. If we can't even get enough water to these rice farmers (where it's actually relatively swampy, and note TX is a leader in renewable energy generation in the US), it seems like a silly pipe dream to talk about growing kale in the Arizona desert.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I obviously have no idea how the math works out in detail, but I'd be pretty surprised if the economics of this were feasible. That is, spend a ton of money (and energy) to terraform sizable swaths of the Arizona desert just to avoid transporting in crops from Mexico right across the boarder? I'd be skeptical that even a back-of-the-napkin estimate would consider this possible. Relevant example: there are a bunch of rice farmers near Houston that are dependent on the Colorado River for irrigation (note, this is the Colorado River in Texas that runs through downtown Austin - completely different river from the Colorado River that goes through the Hoover Dam and supplies a ton of the Western US with water). Given how we've been getting drier over the past decades, the rice farmers are now frequently cut off from water because that water is deemed more important for city dwellers upstream where the economic return on that water usage is much greater. If we can't even get enough water to these rice farmers (where it's actually relatively swampy, and note TX is a leader in renewable energy generation in the US), it seems like a silly pipe dream to talk about growing kale in the Arizona desert.