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100% this. or 95%. When you say "grass, America's largest crop" I assume you are referring to lawns, but actually I think your last point is the crucial one: ".

100% this. or 95%. When you say "grass, America's largest crop" I assume you are referring to lawns, but actually I think your last point is the crucial one: "...municipal usage is a small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture..." California has plenty of water for it's people. If you add up ALL residential, commercial and industrial use, including all outdoor landscape watering, baseball fields, golf courses, etc - it all adds up to around 10-20% of the water used (depending on rainfall). Where does the rest (80-90%) of California's water go? Agriculture. Half the produce of which is exported to other states and countries. Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? And about half of that rice is exported, much to Asia (!!) California is rather like Saudi Arabia, with the farmers pumping out all the water and selling it in the form of agricultural produce. But take a shorter shower please! And you don't really NEED to flush that toilet.

animal_spirits 2y ago
I kind of understand this argument, but I kind of don't. Does this argument prefer that there is less food production in California? > It supplies one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts. California is the country’s biggest milk producer, producing nearly 20 percent of the nation’s milk. And of all crops grown in the U.S., 19 of them – including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes – are grown only in California. - https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/california--the-state-that-feeds-america.html https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/c...
- dylan604 2y ago
  There's a lot of crops that are grown in CA that are not native to the area, and require a lot of water to be viable in that area. Trying to grow a crop native to monsoon areas in a dry area is just unsane.
  - KoolKat23 2y ago
    And growing a human in that area? Would it not also be a drag on the area? At what point does blame the plants become blame all alien life including human? (Not referring to your comment, I feel often people tend to handwave themselves out the equation).
    - dylan604 2y ago
      A person can live in that environment on much less water than the crops. Just growing different crops would consume less water.
      - njarboe 2y ago
        There is a reason 80%(?) of the world almond crop is grown in California. It has a great climate for almonds, a lot of land, and water to support the trees. We need to trade something for our IPhones besides the promise of future dollars (debt).
      - KoolKat23 2y ago
        I don't think that's true unless they're living in extreme poverty.
    - Ntrails 2y ago
      > At what point does blame the plants become blame all alien life including human? I don't think that's what people are saying. The question is why is the cost of growing such water intensive crops in such an arid land cheap enough to make financial sense. The answer, I expect, is essentially that the costs involved in said water are subsidised in such a way as to socialise them? Would be interesting to understand.
- netsharc 2y ago
  From the survival of civilization scale, most of "almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes" are probably luxury items that we can ill afford. Sure it's a balancing act between "save the planet!" and "save the economy!". Guess who's winning so far?
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    Strange because you are naming staples that are concentrated sources of nutrition and energy that can indeed ensure survival, and components of “trail mix” for this very reason. Certainly if you wanna supplant them with other crops that support something other than European style cuisine, go for it, but if you propose to take away nuts, olives, and grapes then you may be a racist or bigot, and we’d sooner die than change in that regard. Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is that nation's ability to supply wheat products to the rest of Europe. I believe that a certain philosophical viewpoint was raised by some sci-fi authors, to the effect that wheat and other staple crops are the most intelligent sentience on Earth, because they successfully domesticated human beings, who give them all the best land, water, and doting TLC to become fruitful and multiply.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      > Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is that nation's ability to supply wheat products to the rest of Europe. This situation came with the territory. By contrast, California's agriculture is 100% dependent on massive hydroengineering projects.
  - AngryData 2y ago
    We can afford them, it costs maybe 5% more to grow them other places. We just don't anymore because that is 5% someone can skim off the top because they don't have to pay for environmental destruction and other downstream effects.
- joshuaissac 2y ago
  Tax water for agricultural usage enough to fund desalination plants for their water use. The market participants should then adapt by switching to less water-intensive crops, or paying the tax and getting the desalination plants.
  - grantsucceeded 2y ago
    pretty sure there is no salt water in the central valley either.
  - rcpt 2y ago
    > tax water for agricultural use Yeah good luck with this one
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > Does this argument prefer that there is less food production in California? Yes. This scale of agriculture in CA is not historical, and is driven by hydro-engineering projects of huge scale throughout the American west that began in the 1940s. The Bureau of Reclamation's fever dreams were fueled by two decades near the turn of the 20th century that were some of the wettest in a thousand years, and this has led to a crazy situation that is not sustainable in the long term (perhaps not even in the medium term).
throwanem 2y ago
> California is rather like Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the key insight required to explain the 20th century. It has the force of truth: now that I see it put so simply, I struggle to understand why no one has been able to do so before.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  It is a key insight, indirectly. The power of a falsehood to sway emotions on
- stevenwoo 2y ago
  Cadillac Desert posits this about most of the American West, it was sparsely populated prior to the widespread usage of pumps for water and dam program (to generate electricity to pump reservoir water) of Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers. Those power plants and population growths might have fueled American productivity in WW2 but it also was a subsidized consolidation of farms under large corporations and rich individuals when it was meant to help smaller farmers. It's an older book with a 2017 update.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwanem 2y ago
    [flagged]
bobthepanda 2y ago
When talking about grass, they might be talking about alfalfa, which is grown in California for use as animal feed. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...
- davidw 2y ago
  I'm being a bit tongue in cheek. But we really do dump a lot of resources into lawns https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigated-crop-in-the-usa/ https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigat... That's fine if it's a place for, say, children to play, but most of them do not get used that way.
  - bobthepanda 2y ago
    Californian water agencies have offered money to convert lawns to rock or low-water gardens for a while now. The lawns get wrapped up in that residential water usage figure mentioned further up the chain, so it isn't a whole lot compared to Big Ag.
    - davidw 2y ago
      Yeah, xeriscaping helps. In terms of municipal uses though, watering is a significant chunk in the city I live in. Not much compared to ag or actual waste, but it's a number the city is happy to push down - and has been.
- fakedang 2y ago
  It gets better. Grown in California for export to China and Saudi Arabia, where they're used for cattle feed. Also fun fact, a lot of farm managers in Saudi Arabia are either Scottish or Australian.
wnc3141 2y ago
A big part of depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is due to domestic policy to include corn in just about anything - including fuel.
toast0 2y ago
> Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? That's not really accurate. Much of California is Mediterranean climate, including all of Sacramento county. Yes, there's some desert in California, but most of the agriculture happens elsewhere; but it depends on what you mean by 'almost a desert', a lot of the central valley is classified as arid and that's where a lot of the agriculture happens. A lot of people also live in (different) arid parts of California though, maybe they should move to where fresh water is easier to access :P Also, the terrain means it's relatively easy to move water from the north around the central valley, but difficult to move it from the north or central valley to the greater LA area. Elsewhere in the thread, people claim water is fungible, and it mostly is, but location is important, and moving water in Bakersfield to Los Angeles is non trivial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/File:K%C3%B6ppen_Climate_Types_California.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/F...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- labster 2y ago
  GP’s statement you quoted is entirely inaccurate. The natural state of California’s Central Valley is a wetland, which is how settlers found it in the 1800s, full of swamps, fish, deer, and lakes. And then they set to the work of draining all of the swamps so they could grow things there. It’s an unnatural desertification, and if the dams and waterworks were removed, it would return to the marshland. Even now, the rice grown near Sacramento is grown in land that is periodically flooded by the river.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? Rice benefits from flooding for weed control (because it is unusually flood resistant), but doesn't consume a lot of water (the water from flooding is available for downstream use.) If you want to complain about water-intenaive crops in CA, the issue is almonds, not rice. Also, while there are parts of CA that are desert or “almost desert” (desert or semi-arid climate), the area around Sacramento is hot-summer Mediterranean.
- rcpt 2y ago
  The issue is animal agriculture, not almonds. For example cow milk uses more water in absolute terms, and more water per calorie, than almond milk.
  - Nifty3929 2y ago
    I'm not so sure. A quick Google search came up with wildly varying amounts of water to produce a gallon of almond milk, from 23 gallons of water to ~1600: https://milkyplant.com/en-us/blogs/the-latest/environmental-impact-of-diary-milk-versus-almond-milk https://milkyplant.com/en-us/blogs/the-latest/environmental-... https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-almond-milk-why-everything-you-know-about-sustainable-eating-is-probably-wrong https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-almon... These were just two of the several sources I found, at each extreme. There was similar variation for cow milk. Considering that it takes roughly 1 gallon of water to produce 1 almond, and that 23 almonds wouldn't fill even an 8oz cup, I'm guessing that the higher end of the spectrum is probably more accurate for almond milk. It also looks like almond milk has half the calories per gallon of skim milk and 1/4 that of whole milk.
    - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
      I think soy milk tastes better than almond milk
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
Nifty3929 2y ago
Some responders have challenged my assertion that Sacramento is a desert. I concede the point - it's actually classified as Mediterranean. That said, rice consumes a lot of irrigation water: "In California, there is very little to no rainfall during the rice growing season, so this is not usually considered in water budgets. On average, about 5 acre feet/acre (AF/ac) of irrigation water is applied to a rice field during the growing" https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf Also, rice is not a particularly big water consumer compared to other crops - it's just one that came to mind. You could pick from dozens of others - Almonds, pistachios, etc. California simply uses a LOT of water to produce a LOT of food, about half of it being exported.
- yimby2001 2y ago
  Are you saying California shouldn’t export food? It’s one of the best food growing environments on the planet.
  - fakedang 2y ago
    Well if you wish for California to become the next Sahelian desert, sure. California is already on track to become one adverse climate event away from turning into a complete clusterfuck.
  - mapt 2y ago
    CA's central valley is missing ~140 million acre feet of groundwater relative to historical norms, and is pumping an additional ~15 million acre feet a year. Ban that and desalinate 30 million acre feet of oceanwater at $2000 per acre-foot and you can have your cake and eat it too at a cost of 60 billion dollars a year, expand agriculture and develop a sustainable aquifer & watershed. But central valley agriculture only makes $37 billion a year.
ForOldHack 2y ago
I think he is referring to Golf Courses: "Golf courses in the US occupy roughly 2 million acres, which is larger than the state of Delaware but smaller than Connecticut." "California almond growers use between 4.7 to 5.5 million acre-feet of water annually, representing roughly 14.4% to 16.75% of the state's agricultural water consumption" WHAT THE H#$%?
- samatman 2y ago
  That water grows 77% of all almonds, worldwide. Is there some better use for roughly 15% of California's water consumption? Are you sure?
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    Yes, leave it in the ground. It isn't a renewable resource on any relevant time scale. If you want almonds, grow them elsewhere, or switch to desalination.
    - samatman 2y ago
      If "grow them elsewhere" were plausible, California wouldn't be growing 77% of them.
      - RugnirViking 2y ago
        Why? Id truly be interested to know what makes Californian geography so massively advantages competitively that isn't infrastructure or economics of scale
        lesuorac 2y ago
        Also exclude cheaper water prices for almond grows then residential.
        throwup238 2y ago
        Most California lowlands like the Central Valley sit on alluvial plains where water runoff from the mountains evaporated over millions of years, depositing nutrients dissolved from rock. It’s like the Nile river delta but over time instead of flooding every year. They were also once an ocean, so there’s a very deep layer of fossilized organisms that provide nutrients too. There’s other reasons like California’s climate supporting a double growing season for many plants but the fertility is what really makes it so economically competitive. Farmers still have to use tons of NPK fertilizer like everyone else but most of the micronutrients are already in the ground so it’s a lot easier to get high yields with low risk and little micro optimization.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
The almond lobby is incredibly powerful in California, too.
AStonesThrow 2y ago
Okay, it may seem strange to rob the homeland to feed the world, but think geopolitics. Firstly, the water mostly doesn't leave california. If they're exporting dried rice and almonds and things like that, most of the irrigation water is staying right where it was used, correct? You say water is consumed, as if it goes away or vanishes? Evaporated water or underground water is also water. Secondly, you're giving jobs and supporting the local economy. Farmers purchase supplies, capital goods, they pay property taxes, and first and foremost they employ people. They employ large workforces. All that revenue they received from selling wherever they sell is stimulating local economies. Lastly, exporting food is great international relations. What country will attack you when they depend on you for food? What nation will not be grateful for receiving such basic sustenance from overseas? And if we would go to war, and if you want to shut down all this agriculture, what will we eat on the home front? If we can't import food, we'd better have infrastructure to support our own needs. Any nation [state, county, city] that produces excess food is more likely to withstand siege, blockade or attack. Liquor and soda bottlers can pivot to producing and distributing hand sanitizer or bottled water. If beer or Coke is bad for you, keep drinking it anyway, because you never know when that industry will become indispensable.
- skulk 2y ago
  I think your first paragraph misses the mark a bit. Yes, the export of almonds probably represents a tiny amount of water leaving the system. But this isn't about that, this is about water allocation. At the end of the day, if there isn't enough water being allocated for daily use ("don't flush your toilet") BUT there's enough to export so many almonds, something has gone wrong.
  - AStonesThrow 2y ago
    > something has gone wrong Wrong for you individually, perhaps, but please note that "The Good of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few", and as citizens of the Western Empire, we are called to make sacrifice in order that justice be done in the world. My personal private toilet is insignificant and inconsequential compared to the almighty almond.
vkou 2y ago
Grass is not America's largest crop, but it is by far the most wasteful. Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive. There are optimizations you can make with regards to which kind of agriculture is done where. If the only way you can grow almonds is by mining water out of an aquifer that will deplete in a decade, maybe we should go without almonds. The juice is not worth the squeeze.
- eru 2y ago
  > The juice is not worth the squeeze. Water pricing via water trading would help move these considerations of trade-offs to the private sector. > Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive. Just as a silly nitpick: you can make food without agriculture. And it's not just via wild fishing, but also by directly producing edible substances from minerals, like producing margarine from coal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter In general, you are obviously right, though.

animal_spirits 2y ago

I kind of understand this argument, but I kind of don't. Does this argument prefer that there is less food production in California? > It supplies one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts. California is the country’s biggest milk producer, producing nearly 20 percent of the nation’s milk. And of all crops grown in the U.S., 19 of them – including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes – are grown only in California. - https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/california--the-state-that-feeds-america.html https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/c...

dylan604 2y ago
There's a lot of crops that are grown in CA that are not native to the area, and require a lot of water to be viable in that area. Trying to grow a crop native to monsoon areas in a dry area is just unsane.
- KoolKat23 2y ago
  And growing a human in that area? Would it not also be a drag on the area? At what point does blame the plants become blame all alien life including human? (Not referring to your comment, I feel often people tend to handwave themselves out the equation).
  - dylan604 2y ago
    A person can live in that environment on much less water than the crops. Just growing different crops would consume less water.
    - njarboe 2y ago
      There is a reason 80%(?) of the world almond crop is grown in California. It has a great climate for almonds, a lot of land, and water to support the trees. We need to trade something for our IPhones besides the promise of future dollars (debt).
    - KoolKat23 2y ago
      I don't think that's true unless they're living in extreme poverty.
  - Ntrails 2y ago
    > At what point does blame the plants become blame all alien life including human? I don't think that's what people are saying. The question is why is the cost of growing such water intensive crops in such an arid land cheap enough to make financial sense. The answer, I expect, is essentially that the costs involved in said water are subsidised in such a way as to socialise them? Would be interesting to understand.
netsharc 2y ago
From the survival of civilization scale, most of "almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes" are probably luxury items that we can ill afford. Sure it's a balancing act between "save the planet!" and "save the economy!". Guess who's winning so far?
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  Strange because you are naming staples that are concentrated sources of nutrition and energy that can indeed ensure survival, and components of “trail mix” for this very reason. Certainly if you wanna supplant them with other crops that support something other than European style cuisine, go for it, but if you propose to take away nuts, olives, and grapes then you may be a racist or bigot, and we’d sooner die than change in that regard. Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is that nation's ability to supply wheat products to the rest of Europe. I believe that a certain philosophical viewpoint was raised by some sci-fi authors, to the effect that wheat and other staple crops are the most intelligent sentience on Earth, because they successfully domesticated human beings, who give them all the best land, water, and doting TLC to become fruitful and multiply.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    > Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is that nation's ability to supply wheat products to the rest of Europe. This situation came with the territory. By contrast, California's agriculture is 100% dependent on massive hydroengineering projects.
- AngryData 2y ago
  We can afford them, it costs maybe 5% more to grow them other places. We just don't anymore because that is 5% someone can skim off the top because they don't have to pay for environmental destruction and other downstream effects.
joshuaissac 2y ago
Tax water for agricultural usage enough to fund desalination plants for their water use. The market participants should then adapt by switching to less water-intensive crops, or paying the tax and getting the desalination plants.
- grantsucceeded 2y ago
  pretty sure there is no salt water in the central valley either.
- rcpt 2y ago
  > tax water for agricultural use Yeah good luck with this one
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> Does this argument prefer that there is less food production in California? Yes. This scale of agriculture in CA is not historical, and is driven by hydro-engineering projects of huge scale throughout the American west that began in the 1940s. The Bureau of Reclamation's fever dreams were fueled by two decades near the turn of the 20th century that were some of the wettest in a thousand years, and this has led to a crazy situation that is not sustainable in the long term (perhaps not even in the medium term).

throwanem 2y ago

> California is rather like Saudi Arabia. Perhaps the key insight required to explain the 20th century. It has the force of truth: now that I see it put so simply, I struggle to understand why no one has been able to do so before.

WillPostForFood 2y ago
It is a key insight, indirectly. The power of a falsehood to sway emotions on
stevenwoo 2y ago
Cadillac Desert posits this about most of the American West, it was sparsely populated prior to the widespread usage of pumps for water and dam program (to generate electricity to pump reservoir water) of Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers. Those power plants and population growths might have fueled American productivity in WW2 but it also was a subsidized consolidation of farms under large corporations and rich individuals when it was meant to help smaller farmers. It's an older book with a 2017 update.
AStonesThrow 2y ago
[flagged]
- throwanem 2y ago
  [flagged]

bobthepanda 2y ago

When talking about grass, they might be talking about alfalfa, which is grown in California for use as animal feed. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...

davidw 2y ago
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek. But we really do dump a lot of resources into lawns https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigated-crop-in-the-usa/ https://legacy.geog.ucsb.edu/the-lawn-is-the-largest-irrigat... That's fine if it's a place for, say, children to play, but most of them do not get used that way.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Californian water agencies have offered money to convert lawns to rock or low-water gardens for a while now. The lawns get wrapped up in that residential water usage figure mentioned further up the chain, so it isn't a whole lot compared to Big Ag.
  - davidw 2y ago
    Yeah, xeriscaping helps. In terms of municipal uses though, watering is a significant chunk in the city I live in. Not much compared to ag or actual waste, but it's a number the city is happy to push down - and has been.
fakedang 2y ago
It gets better. Grown in California for export to China and Saudi Arabia, where they're used for cattle feed. Also fun fact, a lot of farm managers in Saudi Arabia are either Scottish or Australian.

wnc3141 2y ago

A big part of depletion of the Ogallala aquifer is due to domestic policy to include corn in just about anything - including fuel.

toast0 2y ago

> Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? That's not really accurate. Much of California is Mediterranean climate, including all of Sacramento county. Yes, there's some desert in California, but most of the agriculture happens elsewhere; but it depends on what you mean by 'almost a desert', a lot of the central valley is classified as arid and that's where a lot of the agriculture happens. A lot of people also live in (different) arid parts of California though, maybe they should move to where fresh water is easier to access :P Also, the terrain means it's relatively easy to move water from the north around the central valley, but difficult to move it from the north or central valley to the greater LA area. Elsewhere in the thread, people claim water is fungible, and it mostly is, but location is important, and moving water in Bakersfield to Los Angeles is non trivial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/File:K%C3%B6ppen_Climate_Types_California.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/F...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
labster 2y ago
GP’s statement you quoted is entirely inaccurate. The natural state of California’s Central Valley is a wetland, which is how settlers found it in the 1800s, full of swamps, fish, deer, and lakes. And then they set to the work of draining all of the swamps so they could grow things there. It’s an unnatural desertification, and if the dams and waterworks were removed, it would return to the marshland. Even now, the rice grown near Sacramento is grown in land that is periodically flooded by the river.

dragonwriter 2y ago

> Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? Rice benefits from flooding for weed control (because it is unusually flood resistant), but doesn't consume a lot of water (the water from flooding is available for downstream use.) If you want to complain about water-intenaive crops in CA, the issue is almonds, not rice. Also, while there are parts of CA that are desert or “almost desert” (desert or semi-arid climate), the area around Sacramento is hot-summer Mediterranean.

rcpt 2y ago
The issue is animal agriculture, not almonds. For example cow milk uses more water in absolute terms, and more water per calorie, than almond milk.
- Nifty3929 2y ago
  I'm not so sure. A quick Google search came up with wildly varying amounts of water to produce a gallon of almond milk, from 23 gallons of water to ~1600: https://milkyplant.com/en-us/blogs/the-latest/environmental-impact-of-diary-milk-versus-almond-milk https://milkyplant.com/en-us/blogs/the-latest/environmental-... https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-almond-milk-why-everything-you-know-about-sustainable-eating-is-probably-wrong https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-almon... These were just two of the several sources I found, at each extreme. There was similar variation for cow milk. Considering that it takes roughly 1 gallon of water to produce 1 almond, and that 23 almonds wouldn't fill even an 8oz cup, I'm guessing that the higher end of the spectrum is probably more accurate for almond milk. It also looks like almond milk has half the calories per gallon of skim milk and 1/4 that of whole milk.
  - 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
    I think soy milk tastes better than almond milk
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]

Nifty3929 2y ago

Some responders have challenged my assertion that Sacramento is a desert. I concede the point - it's actually classified as Mediterranean. That said, rice consumes a lot of irrigation water: "In California, there is very little to no rainfall during the rice growing season, so this is not usually considered in water budgets. On average, about 5 acre feet/acre (AF/ac) of irrigation water is applied to a rice field during the growing" https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf Also, rice is not a particularly big water consumer compared to other crops - it's just one that came to mind. You could pick from dozens of others - Almonds, pistachios, etc. California simply uses a LOT of water to produce a LOT of food, about half of it being exported.

yimby2001 2y ago
Are you saying California shouldn’t export food? It’s one of the best food growing environments on the planet.
- fakedang 2y ago
  Well if you wish for California to become the next Sahelian desert, sure. California is already on track to become one adverse climate event away from turning into a complete clusterfuck.
- mapt 2y ago
  CA's central valley is missing ~140 million acre feet of groundwater relative to historical norms, and is pumping an additional ~15 million acre feet a year. Ban that and desalinate 30 million acre feet of oceanwater at $2000 per acre-foot and you can have your cake and eat it too at a cost of 60 billion dollars a year, expand agriculture and develop a sustainable aquifer & watershed. But central valley agriculture only makes $37 billion a year.

ForOldHack 2y ago

I think he is referring to Golf Courses: "Golf courses in the US occupy roughly 2 million acres, which is larger than the state of Delaware but smaller than Connecticut." "California almond growers use between 4.7 to 5.5 million acre-feet of water annually, representing roughly 14.4% to 16.75% of the state's agricultural water consumption" WHAT THE H#$%?

samatman 2y ago
That water grows 77% of all almonds, worldwide. Is there some better use for roughly 15% of California's water consumption? Are you sure?
- zdragnar 2y ago
  Yes, leave it in the ground. It isn't a renewable resource on any relevant time scale. If you want almonds, grow them elsewhere, or switch to desalination.
  - samatman 2y ago
    If "grow them elsewhere" were plausible, California wouldn't be growing 77% of them.
    - RugnirViking 2y ago
      Why? Id truly be interested to know what makes Californian geography so massively advantages competitively that isn't infrastructure or economics of scale
      - lesuorac 2y ago
        Also exclude cheaper water prices for almond grows then residential.
      - throwup238 2y ago
        Most California lowlands like the Central Valley sit on alluvial plains where water runoff from the mountains evaporated over millions of years, depositing nutrients dissolved from rock. It’s like the Nile river delta but over time instead of flooding every year. They were also once an ocean, so there’s a very deep layer of fossilized organisms that provide nutrients too. There’s other reasons like California’s climate supporting a double growing season for many plants but the fertility is what really makes it so economically competitive. Farmers still have to use tons of NPK fertilizer like everyone else but most of the micronutrients are already in the ground so it’s a lot easier to get high yields with low risk and little micro optimization.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

The almond lobby is incredibly powerful in California, too.

AStonesThrow 2y ago

Okay, it may seem strange to rob the homeland to feed the world, but think geopolitics. Firstly, the water mostly doesn't leave california. If they're exporting dried rice and almonds and things like that, most of the irrigation water is staying right where it was used, correct? You say water is consumed, as if it goes away or vanishes? Evaporated water or underground water is also water. Secondly, you're giving jobs and supporting the local economy. Farmers purchase supplies, capital goods, they pay property taxes, and first and foremost they employ people. They employ large workforces. All that revenue they received from selling wherever they sell is stimulating local economies. Lastly, exporting food is great international relations. What country will attack you when they depend on you for food? What nation will not be grateful for receiving such basic sustenance from overseas? And if we would go to war, and if you want to shut down all this agriculture, what will we eat on the home front? If we can't import food, we'd better have infrastructure to support our own needs. Any nation [state, county, city] that produces excess food is more likely to withstand siege, blockade or attack. Liquor and soda bottlers can pivot to producing and distributing hand sanitizer or bottled water. If beer or Coke is bad for you, keep drinking it anyway, because you never know when that industry will become indispensable.

skulk 2y ago
I think your first paragraph misses the mark a bit. Yes, the export of almonds probably represents a tiny amount of water leaving the system. But this isn't about that, this is about water allocation. At the end of the day, if there isn't enough water being allocated for daily use ("don't flush your toilet") BUT there's enough to export so many almonds, something has gone wrong.
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  > something has gone wrong Wrong for you individually, perhaps, but please note that "The Good of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few", and as citizens of the Western Empire, we are called to make sacrifice in order that justice be done in the world. My personal private toilet is insignificant and inconsequential compared to the almighty almond.

vkou 2y ago

Grass is not America's largest crop, but it is by far the most wasteful. Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive. There are optimizations you can make with regards to which kind of agriculture is done where. If the only way you can grow almonds is by mining water out of an aquifer that will deplete in a decade, maybe we should go without almonds. The juice is not worth the squeeze.

eru 2y ago
> The juice is not worth the squeeze. Water pricing via water trading would help move these considerations of trade-offs to the private sector. > Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive. Just as a silly nitpick: you can make food without agriculture. And it's not just via wild fishing, but also by directly producing edible substances from minerals, like producing margarine from coal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter In general, you are obviously right, though.