5 ms·

This is a serious drought, but remember 80% of California's water goes to agriculture. More water is used to grow almonds than for all of residential irrigation

by declan 12y ago

This is a serious drought, but remember 80% of California's water goes to agriculture. More water is used to grow almonds than for all of residential irrigation. There are more non-farmers than farmers in the state; if the drought continues I expect the next step will be to cut back more on agricultural uses. In terms of desalination, my recollection is that it's a reasonably mature technology now, it's used in many parts of the world that are freshwater-constrained, and San Diego is building a 50M gallon/day desalination plant that will go online in a year or two. But the per-gallon price is largely determined by the price of electricity, and California is rather hostile to new power plants going in. (I don't know enough about the state's aquifers; perhaps others do.) Meanwhile in a few generations we may look back and wonder why we were flooding fields in California half a foot deep with increasingly scarce water to grow rice in an extremely dry climate. Especially when rice grows perfectly well in areas of the world that actually, you know, get rain all year round.

jqm 12y ago
Almonds are one thing... we actually need those. The sad part is, most of the agricultural water goes to alfalfa. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-pla...
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  A predominately meat diet uses about 10 times the water and energy to produce. Stop the free water subsidies to big agro businesses, and let the free market price of water affect meat prices.
  - masterleep 12y ago
    That's a fantastic idea, but it's far too practical and sensible for California. It doesn't include any feel-good meddling or opportunities for kickbacks for the powerful and connected.
- lkbm 12y ago
  > Almonds are one thing... we actually need those. Unless I'm missing something major, we "need" almonds for exactly one reason: they're tasty. That exact same "need" exists for meat. Personally, I'm quite happy eating neither, since I'm not a fan of nuts in general. I recognize some people love almonds, and I'm not running around trying to get them banned, but I definitely think, just as with meat, we need to think of these things as choices, not just plain needs.
  - jqm 12y ago
    Almonds are extremely nutritious. Ok... maybe "need" is a bit strong, we don't need any specific food item, but my point is, we do need food and that food does require water. Check out page 8 of this pdf.... http://www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/valuechainanalysis/CGGC_CACropsReport_7-4-08 http://www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/valuechainanalysis/CGGC... Nuts do use water in California. Slightly less than rice (at least in 2003, there may be some variations since). The point is... by far the biggest (and most unnecessary) user of agricultural water in California is Alfalfa. (Yes, I know there was a recent Slate article on Almonds. But the amount of water they use pales in comparison to Alfalfa.)
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  What is it we need almonds for? I like them myself from time to time, but I could live with paying 2x for them if they were scarcer. Raising meat does consume a lot of water, but of course there are many other meat-farming areas in the US so economically it's fairly easy to substitute. It certainly will be next year, as midwestern beef will be quite a bit cheaper following a bumper corn crop this year.
  - galago 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Make a point if you have one. I have better things to do than spend time wondering which of the many different possible points you were trying to make.
  - reality_czech 12y ago
    What is it we need almonds for? Macarons. On the other hand, we could always let them eat cake.
wooster 12y ago
Rice is largely (~95%) grown in the Sacramento Valley, which has plenty of water for it [0]. California produces 82% of the world's almonds [1]. California is a big ag state for crops requiring irrigation because we have a lot of water (relatively), good weather, and damned good farmers. People would do well to start thinking about California's water problems with the assumption that the farmers have thought about it a lot more than they have. [0] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2598509.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2598509.html [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-almonds-20140112-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-almonds-201...
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  Someone thinking about it more is irrelevant. Let's see evidence, plans, and simulations about how the problem can be solved rather than deferring to yet another authority.
  - wooster 12y ago
    The regional water boards in California, along with the local water districts, have ample amounts of all of the above dating back to 1967 and beyond, funded by taxpayers, with publicly available data, and in most cases involving said farmers. Feel free to look at the data and get back with your findings. In the meantime, no, "someone thinking about it more" isn't irrelevant. They've been thinking about it more, and taking action, for decades.
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      If you can't link me straight to what you're talking about, then it isn't good enough yet. If I had to attempt to verify every bullshit sounding argument that I came across, I'd never get any work done. The fact is there appears to be a serious water shortage while the 'authorities' have supposedly been taking care of it for decades. The argument that was made was that we should assume the farmers have "thought about it more than we have", with the implication that we should heed their opinion because they've been sioled away for decades, 'thinking about it'. Show me the dashboard that shows real-time estimates for total water reserves and all the charts about how long that will last us under all scenarios. I was able to find this: http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.act... But that's just an image posted on top of the state's ubiquitous CMS showing how far below average the water levels have fallen under the stewardship of the current authorities. It's not terrible, but the problem is that it provides very little context for what those water levels mean. How long is that water going to last (it seems like we want to find a way to make this 'indefinite')? How should water usage be modified to make it last longer? What are the effects going to be on food production? These are the questions that we need to know the answers to. Furthermore,this information should be accessible to everyone through a URL so that most of us who don't have time to look back through ~45 years of data to figure out what is going on, can get the current, most relevant information to form rational opinions, instead of just trusting that the 'people in charge' are on top of it.
danans 12y ago
Another aspect of this is that farmers are paid by the weight of their produce, and the much weight of many crops comes from the water content. Therefore, farmers have a strong incentive to use a lot of water to "fatten up" the produce they sell.
- Aloha 12y ago
  I don't really think you have an even basic understanding about how plants grow or work. Watering a plant in no way makes the plant magically contain more water than a properly watered plant, it just means more run off. Also, crops are often not sold by the farmer by weight, but rather by a mix of volume and average quality.
  - danans 12y ago
    The info from my post came from someone involved in water use research. I fully believe that a lot is lost to run-off also, but how do you define "properly watered". Is there a single set point per plant that is "optimal" and optimal by what measure? At the market, I have seen pretty large variance in the water content of different produce, often dependent on on the source. Also, for what type of plant is volume not correlated with weight? EDIT: The downvote of my prior post seems unwarranted. Even if it could be demonstrated that my facts were wrong, there was nothing pejorative in anything I wrote, unlike the first sentence of your reply.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
This might be a golden opportunity to switch to more drought resistant and low water consuming crops.

by declan 12y ago

jqm 12y ago

Almonds are one thing... we actually need those. The sad part is, most of the agricultural water goes to alfalfa. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-pla...

mark_l_watson 12y ago
A predominately meat diet uses about 10 times the water and energy to produce. Stop the free water subsidies to big agro businesses, and let the free market price of water affect meat prices.
- masterleep 12y ago
  That's a fantastic idea, but it's far too practical and sensible for California. It doesn't include any feel-good meddling or opportunities for kickbacks for the powerful and connected.
lkbm 12y ago
> Almonds are one thing... we actually need those. Unless I'm missing something major, we "need" almonds for exactly one reason: they're tasty. That exact same "need" exists for meat. Personally, I'm quite happy eating neither, since I'm not a fan of nuts in general. I recognize some people love almonds, and I'm not running around trying to get them banned, but I definitely think, just as with meat, we need to think of these things as choices, not just plain needs.
- jqm 12y ago
  Almonds are extremely nutritious. Ok... maybe "need" is a bit strong, we don't need any specific food item, but my point is, we do need food and that food does require water. Check out page 8 of this pdf.... http://www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/valuechainanalysis/CGGC_CACropsReport_7-4-08 http://www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/valuechainanalysis/CGGC... Nuts do use water in California. Slightly less than rice (at least in 2003, there may be some variations since). The point is... by far the biggest (and most unnecessary) user of agricultural water in California is Alfalfa. (Yes, I know there was a recent Slate article on Almonds. But the amount of water they use pales in comparison to Alfalfa.)
anigbrowl 12y ago
What is it we need almonds for? I like them myself from time to time, but I could live with paying 2x for them if they were scarcer. Raising meat does consume a lot of water, but of course there are many other meat-farming areas in the US so economically it's fairly easy to substitute. It certainly will be next year, as midwestern beef will be quite a bit cheaper following a bumper corn crop this year.
- galago 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Make a point if you have one. I have better things to do than spend time wondering which of the many different possible points you were trying to make.
- reality_czech 12y ago
  What is it we need almonds for? Macarons. On the other hand, we could always let them eat cake.

wooster 12y ago

Rice is largely (~95%) grown in the Sacramento Valley, which has plenty of water for it [0]. California produces 82% of the world's almonds [1]. California is a big ag state for crops requiring irrigation because we have a lot of water (relatively), good weather, and damned good farmers. People would do well to start thinking about California's water problems with the assumption that the farmers have thought about it a lot more than they have. [0] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2598509.html http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article2598509.html [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-almonds-20140112-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-almonds-201...

jsprogrammer 12y ago
Someone thinking about it more is irrelevant. Let's see evidence, plans, and simulations about how the problem can be solved rather than deferring to yet another authority.
- wooster 12y ago
  The regional water boards in California, along with the local water districts, have ample amounts of all of the above dating back to 1967 and beyond, funded by taxpayers, with publicly available data, and in most cases involving said farmers. Feel free to look at the data and get back with your findings. In the meantime, no, "someone thinking about it more" isn't irrelevant. They've been thinking about it more, and taking action, for decades.
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    If you can't link me straight to what you're talking about, then it isn't good enough yet. If I had to attempt to verify every bullshit sounding argument that I came across, I'd never get any work done. The fact is there appears to be a serious water shortage while the 'authorities' have supposedly been taking care of it for decades. The argument that was made was that we should assume the farmers have "thought about it more than we have", with the implication that we should heed their opinion because they've been sioled away for decades, 'thinking about it'. Show me the dashboard that shows real-time estimates for total water reserves and all the charts about how long that will last us under all scenarios. I was able to find this: http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.action http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/getResGraphsMain.act... But that's just an image posted on top of the state's ubiquitous CMS showing how far below average the water levels have fallen under the stewardship of the current authorities. It's not terrible, but the problem is that it provides very little context for what those water levels mean. How long is that water going to last (it seems like we want to find a way to make this 'indefinite')? How should water usage be modified to make it last longer? What are the effects going to be on food production? These are the questions that we need to know the answers to. Furthermore,this information should be accessible to everyone through a URL so that most of us who don't have time to look back through ~45 years of data to figure out what is going on, can get the current, most relevant information to form rational opinions, instead of just trusting that the 'people in charge' are on top of it.

danans 12y ago

Another aspect of this is that farmers are paid by the weight of their produce, and the much weight of many crops comes from the water content. Therefore, farmers have a strong incentive to use a lot of water to "fatten up" the produce they sell.

Aloha 12y ago
I don't really think you have an even basic understanding about how plants grow or work. Watering a plant in no way makes the plant magically contain more water than a properly watered plant, it just means more run off. Also, crops are often not sold by the farmer by weight, but rather by a mix of volume and average quality.
- danans 12y ago
  The info from my post came from someone involved in water use research. I fully believe that a lot is lost to run-off also, but how do you define "properly watered". Is there a single set point per plant that is "optimal" and optimal by what measure? At the market, I have seen pretty large variance in the water content of different produce, often dependent on on the source. Also, for what type of plant is volume not correlated with weight? EDIT: The downvote of my prior post seems unwarranted. Even if it could be demonstrated that my facts were wrong, there was nothing pejorative in anything I wrote, unlike the first sentence of your reply.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago

This might be a golden opportunity to switch to more drought resistant and low water consuming crops.