6 ms·

I've heard that it's the farmers that are taking up the bulk of the water, and if they weren't planting water-intensive crops like pistachio nuts and almonds, w

by steven2012 12y ago

I've heard that it's the farmers that are taking up the bulk of the water, and if they weren't planting water-intensive crops like pistachio nuts and almonds, we wouldn't be in a drought. Is this correct, or just hogwash?

azinman2 12y ago
Water politics is nothing new in CA, and people vs agriculture has always been at the heart of the issue. LA in particular created a giant mess because it was desert.. getting water in was what made the sprawling so-cal possible. Nuts are disproportionate but right now they're all tapping into finite underground resources vs relying on rainfall. Being able to get to that underground water means market prices don't reflect the issue here. Of course china being part of the huge demand of almonds would probably only increase their consumption if prices went up because it would be seen even more as a luxury than is justified. It's going to get even crazier over the years, and desalination is too extreme for the amount of water that agriculture uses.
goodcanadian 12y ago
We are in a drought, regardless. A quick google search seems to indicate that agriculture accounts for something like 80% of the water use in California. So, in a sense, you are correct that we probably wouldn't have to worry about the drought from a drinking water point of view if not for agricultural use. However, we would have to worry about food supply issues nationally and economic issues in what is already one of the most economically depressed areas of the country. Besides, most cities, including where I currently live, are not actually all that worried about water for domestic use. There have been no restrictions with any real bite. It is agriculture that is going to hurt first . . . well, no, it is the natural environment that is going to hurt first. Agriculture should probably take a hit, but that is politically difficult and certainly not consequence free as posts like these seem to indicate.
- throwaway342526 12y ago
  " However, we would have to worry about food supply issues nationally and economic issues in what is already one of the most economically depressed areas of the country." The impact would be relatively minor. For example, we could simply stop growing rice in the desert and more than recover all water saved by urban use: http://www.kevinroderick.com/rice.html http://www.kevinroderick.com/rice.html There's more water lost to evaporation in rice fields than LA uses in its entirety all year long. We could very easily move California rice production to wet areas in the south which don't suffer droughts and which already produce most of our rice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States#Production http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_S...
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago
    The thing I say about rice is this: at least you can eat it. You can't say that about alfalfa, which uses over 5MAF of water per year (double the water input of rice) for negligible economic benefit (~a billion dollars in water needed to grow ~a billion dollars of alfalfa). This is chiefly used to feed cattle and more than 2/3rds of it is exported.
bronson 12y ago
It's not the farmers' fault that it's not raining. However, agriculture does take 80% of the state's water. Industry and residential take the remaining 20%. (Recent accounting shows habitat restoration taking 50%, farms taking 40%, and residential/industrial 10%, which is just a misleading way of saying the same exact thing). If it wasn't for crops, California would have enough water for decades of drought. They're making things tight now, and it's going to get a lot tighter once the groundwater is pumped dry. When that's gone, it doesn't come back. Reminds me of those "Food Grows Where Water Flows" signs along I-5. I've always wanted to scribble on the bottom: "and water does not flow here."
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  True, but it is the farmer's fault that they sank so much money into ridiculously water-intensive things like almond farming - each almond requires a gallon of water to produce, and if you don't keep the tree's properly watered, they'll die. (source: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-drought-almonds-water-use http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-dr...) It really irritates me how selfish the farming interests are, when my household managed to cut our already-low water use by nearly 30% last year, and we are still awash in delicious fruit in our garden which we trade with toehr local producers for veggies and so on throughout the summer, just by recycling leftover water from cooking, saving a little rainwater and so on. We're not hippies or anything, we just like the fact that we have some fruit trees in the garden and made some very minor lifestyle adjustments.
- WaxProlix 12y ago
  Oh man, those hilarious 'Congress Created Dustbowl' signs; everybody who passes those has to just wonder why these people started farms in the desert, right? Congress didn't make a dustbowl, you or your forbears just made a farm in a dustbowl and then assumed water from elsewhere would always be there for you. These same people would probably spout off about personal responsibility or some such nonsense if given the chance... The almonds and rice and alfalfa issues only exacerbate the original silliness of farming in the goddamn desert.
pcl 12y ago
Central Valley farms are a big consumer of water in California, but bear in mind that this article is about a desalinization project in the San Diego area. That area of California gets its water largely from the Colorado River and the eastern Sierra Nevada range, whereas much of the Central Valley is in the western Sierra watershed. So the two regions don't have as much relative interdependencies as you might think. I don't really know what the Colorado's upstream usage breakdown is, but it's significantly over-allocated.
EdwardDiego 12y ago
Do people in California water their lawns? Cosmetic grass must be one of the biggest users of urban water - the last time I left our sprinkler system on for a day (I turned them on to humour our landlords, never turned them on since), it drained our 2500L tank, which is not ideal when you 'only' get 900L a day. I like the Las Vegas approach of painting rocks green, no watering and best of all, no mowing.
- rms 12y ago
  Sometimes, yes, but non-grass yards (landscaped with concrete and succulents, etc.) seem to be far more common here than other parts of the USA.
  - EdwardDiego 12y ago
    Ah, good to hear. :)
- ouchy 12y ago
  If all Californians stopped watering their lawns, the state's water situation would remain almost wholly unchanged. It's an incredibly minor contributing factor. Most of the laws passed mandating reduced watering are done primarily to satisfy the electorate that "something is being done," so they don't notice or care that groundwater supplies are being rapidly depleted in the interest of making billions off nut sales: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/almonds-water-walnuts-pistachios-california-drought-charts http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/almonds-water...
  - sanswork 12y ago
    While I agree that lawn watering regulations in most places will do very little to actually help conserve water directly I think it goes a long way to making water shortages real to people. It's very hard to believe there is a serious issue when everywhere you look sprinklers are going. Being forced to conserve water in a simple way like that probably isn't going to be a direct benefit but getting people thinking about it more by it directly affecting their lives definitely can be.
whyenot 12y ago
Agriculture uses about 40% of the total water supply in the state and industry/municipal use is about 10% [1]. Of the human uses of the state's water, 10% goes to water almond trees [2]. While an important industry, agriculture accounts for only 2% of the state's gross domestic product [3]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California 2. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California
pstrateman 12y ago
Agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water. They also have the cheapest water.
secabeen 12y ago
Nuts aren't a crop that you plant every year, like grain. Nut trees take years to grow and reach productive maturity. Most California nut farmers have built their orchards over decades, and expect decades of future production from them. If they don't water the trees, they could die, and lose the entire farm. If you have 30 years of future production (10s of millions of dollars in revenue) at risk, you'd take any measure necessary to protect that investment, regardless of the impact.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  I don't know if your statement about the decades of orchard development are true. There was a huge rush to convert acres to almonds in the last few years. 1/3rd of the acres in almonds were less than ten years old in 2013, and much of the new acres are in useless desert places of Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin counties and so forth. The long-standing orchards in places where you should actually grow nut tress -- Glenn, Tehama, Butte, Sutter, Colusa counties -- are the ones that are very old and they aren't in danger because water falls in those places. From the damn sky.
ouchy 12y ago
Follow the money: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/the-politics-of-drought-california-water-interests-prime-the-pump-in-washington/ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/the-politics-of-drou...
dpifke 12y ago
One other factor to consider is the (mostly successful) attempt by the grocery industry to differentiate their produce by offering "organic" crops at a 50-300% markup, which almost always lowers the yield per acre and often requires more water per acre. The markup way offsets the increased water costs, to the detriment of other water users.
scythe 12y ago
>water-intensive crops like pistachio nuts Erm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistachio#Habitat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistachio#Habitat >Pistachio is a desert plant, and is highly tolerant of saline soil. It has been reported to grow well when irrigated with water having 3,000–4,000 ppm of soluble salts.[7] Pistachio trees are fairly hardy in the right conditions, and can survive temperatures ranging between −10 °C (14 °F) in winter and 48 °C (118 °F) in summer. They need a sunny position and well-drained soil. Pistachio trees do poorly in conditions of high humidity, and are susceptible to root rot in winter if they get too much water and the soil is not sufficiently free-draining.

azinman2 12y ago

Water politics is nothing new in CA, and people vs agriculture has always been at the heart of the issue. LA in particular created a giant mess because it was desert.. getting water in was what made the sprawling so-cal possible. Nuts are disproportionate but right now they're all tapping into finite underground resources vs relying on rainfall. Being able to get to that underground water means market prices don't reflect the issue here. Of course china being part of the huge demand of almonds would probably only increase their consumption if prices went up because it would be seen even more as a luxury than is justified. It's going to get even crazier over the years, and desalination is too extreme for the amount of water that agriculture uses.

goodcanadian 12y ago

We are in a drought, regardless. A quick google search seems to indicate that agriculture accounts for something like 80% of the water use in California. So, in a sense, you are correct that we probably wouldn't have to worry about the drought from a drinking water point of view if not for agricultural use. However, we would have to worry about food supply issues nationally and economic issues in what is already one of the most economically depressed areas of the country. Besides, most cities, including where I currently live, are not actually all that worried about water for domestic use. There have been no restrictions with any real bite. It is agriculture that is going to hurt first . . . well, no, it is the natural environment that is going to hurt first. Agriculture should probably take a hit, but that is politically difficult and certainly not consequence free as posts like these seem to indicate.

throwaway342526 12y ago
" However, we would have to worry about food supply issues nationally and economic issues in what is already one of the most economically depressed areas of the country." The impact would be relatively minor. For example, we could simply stop growing rice in the desert and more than recover all water saved by urban use: http://www.kevinroderick.com/rice.html http://www.kevinroderick.com/rice.html There's more water lost to evaporation in rice fields than LA uses in its entirety all year long. We could very easily move California rice production to wet areas in the south which don't suffer droughts and which already produce most of our rice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_States#Production http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_production_in_the_United_S...
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  The thing I say about rice is this: at least you can eat it. You can't say that about alfalfa, which uses over 5MAF of water per year (double the water input of rice) for negligible economic benefit (~a billion dollars in water needed to grow ~a billion dollars of alfalfa). This is chiefly used to feed cattle and more than 2/3rds of it is exported.

bronson 12y ago

It's not the farmers' fault that it's not raining. However, agriculture does take 80% of the state's water. Industry and residential take the remaining 20%. (Recent accounting shows habitat restoration taking 50%, farms taking 40%, and residential/industrial 10%, which is just a misleading way of saying the same exact thing). If it wasn't for crops, California would have enough water for decades of drought. They're making things tight now, and it's going to get a lot tighter once the groundwater is pumped dry. When that's gone, it doesn't come back. Reminds me of those "Food Grows Where Water Flows" signs along I-5. I've always wanted to scribble on the bottom: "and water does not flow here."

anigbrowl 12y ago
True, but it is the farmer's fault that they sank so much money into ridiculously water-intensive things like almond farming - each almond requires a gallon of water to produce, and if you don't keep the tree's properly watered, they'll die. (source: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-drought-almonds-water-use http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/california-dr...) It really irritates me how selfish the farming interests are, when my household managed to cut our already-low water use by nearly 30% last year, and we are still awash in delicious fruit in our garden which we trade with toehr local producers for veggies and so on throughout the summer, just by recycling leftover water from cooking, saving a little rainwater and so on. We're not hippies or anything, we just like the fact that we have some fruit trees in the garden and made some very minor lifestyle adjustments.
WaxProlix 12y ago
Oh man, those hilarious 'Congress Created Dustbowl' signs; everybody who passes those has to just wonder why these people started farms in the desert, right? Congress didn't make a dustbowl, you or your forbears just made a farm in a dustbowl and then assumed water from elsewhere would always be there for you. These same people would probably spout off about personal responsibility or some such nonsense if given the chance... The almonds and rice and alfalfa issues only exacerbate the original silliness of farming in the goddamn desert.

pcl 12y ago

Central Valley farms are a big consumer of water in California, but bear in mind that this article is about a desalinization project in the San Diego area. That area of California gets its water largely from the Colorado River and the eastern Sierra Nevada range, whereas much of the Central Valley is in the western Sierra watershed. So the two regions don't have as much relative interdependencies as you might think. I don't really know what the Colorado's upstream usage breakdown is, but it's significantly over-allocated.

EdwardDiego 12y ago

Do people in California water their lawns? Cosmetic grass must be one of the biggest users of urban water - the last time I left our sprinkler system on for a day (I turned them on to humour our landlords, never turned them on since), it drained our 2500L tank, which is not ideal when you 'only' get 900L a day. I like the Las Vegas approach of painting rocks green, no watering and best of all, no mowing.

rms 12y ago
Sometimes, yes, but non-grass yards (landscaped with concrete and succulents, etc.) seem to be far more common here than other parts of the USA.
- EdwardDiego 12y ago
  Ah, good to hear. :)
ouchy 12y ago
If all Californians stopped watering their lawns, the state's water situation would remain almost wholly unchanged. It's an incredibly minor contributing factor. Most of the laws passed mandating reduced watering are done primarily to satisfy the electorate that "something is being done," so they don't notice or care that groundwater supplies are being rapidly depleted in the interest of making billions off nut sales: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/almonds-water-walnuts-pistachios-california-drought-charts http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/almonds-water...
- sanswork 12y ago
  While I agree that lawn watering regulations in most places will do very little to actually help conserve water directly I think it goes a long way to making water shortages real to people. It's very hard to believe there is a serious issue when everywhere you look sprinklers are going. Being forced to conserve water in a simple way like that probably isn't going to be a direct benefit but getting people thinking about it more by it directly affecting their lives definitely can be.

whyenot 12y ago

Agriculture uses about 40% of the total water supply in the state and industry/municipal use is about 10% [1]. Of the human uses of the state's water, 10% goes to water almond trees [2]. While an important industry, agriculture accounts for only 2% of the state's gross domestic product [3]. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California 2. http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/05/_10_percent_of_california_s_water_goes_to_almond_farming.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_California

pstrateman 12y ago

Agriculture is by far the largest consumer of water. They also have the cheapest water.

secabeen 12y ago

Nuts aren't a crop that you plant every year, like grain. Nut trees take years to grow and reach productive maturity. Most California nut farmers have built their orchards over decades, and expect decades of future production from them. If they don't water the trees, they could die, and lose the entire farm. If you have 30 years of future production (10s of millions of dollars in revenue) at risk, you'd take any measure necessary to protect that investment, regardless of the impact.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
I don't know if your statement about the decades of orchard development are true. There was a huge rush to convert acres to almonds in the last few years. 1/3rd of the acres in almonds were less than ten years old in 2013, and much of the new acres are in useless desert places of Kern, Fresno, San Joaquin counties and so forth. The long-standing orchards in places where you should actually grow nut tress -- Glenn, Tehama, Butte, Sutter, Colusa counties -- are the ones that are very old and they aren't in danger because water falls in those places. From the damn sky.

ouchy 12y ago

Follow the money: http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/the-politics-of-drought-california-water-interests-prime-the-pump-in-washington/ http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014/04/the-politics-of-drou...

dpifke 12y ago

One other factor to consider is the (mostly successful) attempt by the grocery industry to differentiate their produce by offering "organic" crops at a 50-300% markup, which almost always lowers the yield per acre and often requires more water per acre. The markup way offsets the increased water costs, to the detriment of other water users.

scythe 12y ago

>water-intensive crops like pistachio nuts Erm? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistachio#Habitat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistachio#Habitat >Pistachio is a desert plant, and is highly tolerant of saline soil. It has been reported to grow well when irrigated with water having 3,000–4,000 ppm of soluble salts.[7] Pistachio trees are fairly hardy in the right conditions, and can survive temperatures ranging between −10 °C (14 °F) in winter and 48 °C (118 °F) in summer. They need a sunny position and well-drained soil. Pistachio trees do poorly in conditions of high humidity, and are susceptible to root rot in winter if they get too much water and the soil is not sufficiently free-draining.