4 ms·

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%.

by 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.

by bronson 12y ago

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.