7 ms·

California Goes Nuts

70 points by DamienSF 12y ago

physcab 12y ago
As a fun thought experiment I tried thinking about this issue as if it affected my profession (software development). Imagine if electricity was going scarce. Yet prices are pretty cheap in the kWh such that I don't really notice it. I just pay my monthly bill (actually it auto-pays itself) and I go on my merry way. But what if the electricity problem was real such that at a certain point we wouldn't have any light. Would I change my profession to "do my part"? Probably not. This is why you can't expect almond farmers to stop pumping ground water. This is their livelihood. They have families to support too. They need to pay their rents and buy food and maybe have some fun from time to time. That raises the question...who is going to be first? How does the government even begin to regulate? What a mess.
ghshephard 12y ago
The photography in this article is gorgeous, the material is great, and the presentation is almost flawless. I continue to be impressed with the output on Medium - I wonder how they manage to get outlets like Mother Jones to grace them with such awesome content.
vskarine 12y ago
I am going to think twice before buying nuts again... It takes 1 gallon of water to grow 1 almond! How many almonds' worth of water does it take to: * Flush a toilet: 1.6 * Run a dishwasher: 8 * Run a garden hose for 2 min: 20 * Take 10-min shower: 25 * Do a load of laundry: 45 How much water per year does it take to (in billions of cubic meters): * produce all of the almonds in California: 3.6 * provide water to all Los Angeles homes and businesses: 0.86 * provide water to all San Francisco homes and businesses: 0.11
- ianlevesque 12y ago
  According to the article China consumes most of them.
  - lr 12y ago
    I used to think China needed us. Now I think they are using us up the way the US has used up 3rd-world countries for decades.
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      China sends the USA iPhones and T shirts, the USA sends them almonds and airplanes (for now). Isn't world trade great? At this point, I don't think either country is exploiting the other, though China could do well to enforce environmental regulations (which would definitely drive up export costs). China doesn't have enough water to grow almonds. Water shortages here make California's water shortages look insignificant.
    - iamcurious 12y ago
      the way the US has used up 3rd-world countries for decades They still have a long way to go before treating you that way.
    - Mikeb85 12y ago
      Nah, first China would have to stage protests in our major cities, then bomb us claiming they're 'liberating us' from our oppressive despots, install Chinese-friendly dictators who give Chinese businesses a monopoly on almond production, then brutally suppress all anti-Chinese dissent claiming that those of us who don't want to succumb to our new Chinese overlords are terrorists. They'd also use us as cheap labour, and allow us to go thirsty while entire cities worth of water gets diverted by Chinese corporations for almond plantations, and then we'd slave away thirstily picking almonds for Chinese businesses to then whisk away back to China. Oh, and the whole while there'd be drones overhead bombing us every once in awhile, probably at family functions just to remind us who's in charge. This would be justified back in China by reminding the public that we're ignorant, violent Christian heathens in the face of their enlightened Taoist/Buddhist/Confucian philosophy, who are plotting to bomb Chinese almond corporations, rape Chinese women and eventually take over China itself (American people who immigrated to China will be 'proof' of this nefarious plot, what with our American cultural buildings that are disguised as unhealthy food outlets but are really terrorist hideouts). They'd also pay and arm our compatriots who succumb to the new order to hunt us down and kill us for objecting to our new almond-loving overlords (until they realise that they're also getting a raw deal, in which case they'd get drone'd and the cycle would repeat itself). Then we could say the Chinese are treating us the way the US has treated other nations.
- saiko-chriskun 12y ago
  * Produce a hamburger: 660
  - acadien 12y ago
    1 hamburger or 1 cow? Genuinely curious, also could you source that? Thanks!
    - raldi 12y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300929
      - acadien 12y ago
        Some of the comments made there are pretty interesting, specifically that it's not about the use of water its about the waste. -Ground water can be at least partially recouped through wells. This would be a really interesting number to look up. -Sewage water is wasted as it is dumped into the sea. Anything else? Where does water leave the cycle?
    - ocfx 12y ago
      Meat+Dairy uses the same amount of water as agriculture. People are just using almonds as a scapegoat.
    - coderzach 12y ago
      http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-gallons-of-water-to-make-a-burger-20140124-story.html http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-gallons-of-water... I've seen a lot of different numbers, most of them seem to be napkin math.
- nwenzel 12y ago
  There's a difference between a) flushing water down the toilet and b) pouring it back into the ground. edit - clarify; Edit2 - add the following I shouldn't have been so short or flippant. There is a difference between using water in a way that renders it basically unusable without cleaning/purifying it through energy intensive processes or massive dilution (dumping into the ocean which is still unusable without desalinization) and using water in a way that allows it to naturally return to the system through evaporation. We talk about agricultural use of water as if that creates some sort of excuse to be wasteful. Will not running the water while brushing your teeth or shaving solve the drought? No. Is it completely wasteful and unnecessary? Yes. I completely agree that ridiculously minor "feel good" measures like only getting a glass of water on request at restaurants will do little to nothing to show love any actual problem. I think it also hurts finding an actual solution because we feel like we're sacrificing so we've dibe our share. Sort of like driving a Prius. Solving the water shortage problem is going to take a lot more than low-flow shower heads. But it's also going to require a lot more than eating fewer almonds. And the fact that agriculture is a big consumer of water isn't a reason or an excuse to be wasteful. If you really want to contribute towards a healthier more sustainable planet, skip that burger and have a salad with some California avocados and sliced almonds on top.
  - deleted 12y ago
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- astrocyte 12y ago
  So, essentially they're targeting the least significant portion of water usage because they can do so more easily and they don't really consider this drought to be a big problem... Tax revenue from Agriculture means more. In the mean time, as the state heads towards a brick wall, they'll engage in silly water restrictions so it seems like they did something. Sounds about right for California. When something happens, use it as a reason to raise costs and taxes and do everything in your power to not solve the real issues. Sales tax is up again too right? California really knows how to show its residents love. Tax revenue from almonds is 30x more important than the general comfort of its residents is what I gather. That's just nuts..lol
  - prawn 12y ago
    Agriculture has more unified representation than the public. It's easier to reach and mobilise them. The public would feel more helpless in comparison.
    - astrocyte 12y ago
      or.. the public simply doesn't care. In that case, you get the government you deserve and California's government is absolutely nuts. Goes for the broader U.S as well. If people did care, they'd be more involved and wouldn't allow for such a group of clowns to tax them to the hill and piss it in the wind. The brightest people in the world focused on trying to get people to click on ads as their water supply dwindles and their government institutes retard level policies.
      - prawn 12y ago
        I think for many people it's not that they don't care but that they don't know what to do. When it comes to voting, you generally have a vote for a candidate/party that has to encompass all issues. The granularity might be such that you can't easily impact a specific issue. You might get all fired up about water rights, but then it's trumped by candidate/party positions on health policy or whatever. I can remember two issue-specific referenda in my voting life in Australia - one about a constitutional preamble tweak and one about becoming a republic. Both were binary decisions when they need not have been. It's also hard for people in the general struggle of life to get informed efficiently. The media they take in generally doesn't delve deep on any issue or has a vested interest in not doing so.
- marricks 12y ago
  Nope. Don't stop buying nuts. Stop buying meat & dairy: Almonds -- 350-500 gallons; (added in an edit by popular demand, not in source) Eggs -- 573 gallons; Chicken -- 815 gallons; Cheese -- 896 gallons; Pork -- 1630 gallons; Butter -- 2044 gallons; Beef -- 2500-5000 gallons; (gallons of water per pound of food) Source: http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra-2008-WaterfootprintFood.pdf http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra-2008-Waterfoo... And the meat & dairy industry takes up a whopping 47% of California's water. Source (page 3 [pdf page 9]): http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft... I actually made an account to comment on these posts. No one else seems to be putting things into perspective. We aren't draining ourselves of water from small things like produce and nuts..
  - phamilton 12y ago
    To properly normalize, a pound of almonds requires 350-400 gallons.
  - astrocyte 12y ago
    Here's an idea for California : Stop trying to hog the economic output of the world. Your state can no longer support it. California : > 3 million illegal immigrants and growing (California policies welcome it) > Continuing to cram people into the major cities (stop) > Stop producing so much water demanding products.. Let another state that has a more adequate water supply and conditions do it > Stop trying to produce 80% of the nation's agriculture. Let other states do it. ^ Solutions that put things into perspective. Why are none of them being pursued? because it attacks tax revenue and money. Money from other sources > people's comfort who live in California. All of that money ($115 billion in annual tax revenue and still in debt up to their ears and no money to fund water solution projects .. corruption, waste) Perspective : California doesn't give a rats ass about its residents. It exists and makes policies to further grow its tax base .. consequences be dammed. Residents always put up with the idiocy. So, screw them (over and over)
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lr 12y ago
The images of California reservoirs remind me of images of the Aral sea in Uzbekistan which was drained during Soviet times in order to grow cotton in the middle of the Central Asian desert. Humans really are greedy and stupid.
- astrocyte 12y ago
  and myopic and self-centered .. > Not planning ahead for a foreseeable event and > 33.8 million people not batting an eye for over 5 years while their state runs completely dry of water People have to face personal consequences in today's society before they wake up. Notably, that's when you hear the most yapping and observe the most activity : When something is too far gone and its too late.
sologoub 12y ago
This is why we should be looking seriously at desalinization for both drinking and irragation water. With proper designs, we should be able to mitigate a lot of the bad side effects while protecting more of the land based ecosystems.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  Costs a lot of money. We can always make water given enough energy, and we have enough uranium to last us a few centuries if we want to build expensive nuclear plants. But no one wants to pay the cost. When we say: there is a shortage of X, what we really mean is that there is a shortage of cheap X, and we aren't yet ready to pay the cost for expensive X. Like almonds, they are yummy, but if the price went up by 10 because they had to use desalinated water, we might not eat so many.
  - dspeyer 12y ago
    Any idea how hard it would be to genetically engineer an almond tree that could drink sea water?
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      Probably prohibitively difficult anytime in the forseeable future. Lots of people are spending money trying to improve, on a much more limited scale than "drink sea water", salt tolerance on a variety of crops where that is probably easier than almond trees, and that's not easy.
  - astrocyte 12y ago
    Last I recalled, California has some of the highest taxes in the U.S and has the highest Gross State product. So, where's the money going? I guess everyone is so busy working their faces off that they don't have time to ask such important questions. O'well, no Desalinization plants for you. California Tax revenue : $115,089,654,000 (115 billion). I think this issues can get a hellavuh lot worse than it is right now before any serious action is taken. When I start seeing billion dollar steps being made to address the issue, that's when I'll consider that they take it seriously.
raldi 12y ago
According to the following op-ed written by an almond farmer, they're paying $1000 per acre-foot for their discount water. That works out to three gallons for a penny. And that's 40x what they were paying quite recently. To put that in perspective, if you were paying $1000 per acre-foot for the water in your home, you could flush your toilet 42 times a day for a month and your bill would come to less than $5. Remember that the next time someone tells you to let it mellow. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gleason-almond-farmer-20150326-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gleason-almond-fa...
- tdaltonc 12y ago
  A gallon of water delivered to your toilet and a gallon of water delivered to an orchard have very different infrastructure, quality, and leakage costs. I'm not saying that water prices are reasonable, but neither is your comparison.
- chatmasta 12y ago
  I pay comcast almost $100 a month for shitty Internet, throttled at peak times, max 20mbps one direction if I'm lucky, and I think there is even a cap on the bandwidth I can use. I can pay Layer3 or HE $0.50 per mbps and get 200mbps to my server for the same price. The difference is that layer3 only needs to lay cables between a few dozen datacenters. Comcast needs to lay them between the data centers, and then millions of homes. Economies of scale, etc.
  - lsc 12y ago
    >I can pay Layer3 or HE $0.50 per mbps and get 200mbps to my server for the same price. I find this unlikely, or at the very least, exaggerated If you buy several gigabits from he.net, you can get around $0.50 per mbps. As of last year, for the same quantities, you are looking at about 6x that for Level3 (I assume you mean Level3, not Layer3) Level3 is probably the most expensive major bandiwdth provider you are likely to encounter (they also have the largest network... if I was going to spend three bucks a megabit, and to be clear, I'm not, I'd spend it with Level3.) He.net is one of the cheapest, and only approaches "largest network" if you are counting IPv6 peers. If your provider is charging you the same for both, most likely they have a he.net link for normal traffic, and then a burstable Level3 link, and they only use the latter as a backup. (Also note, the pricing I'm talking about is only valid for the "one to five gigabits" level... bandwidth is one of those things that gets dramatically cheaper as you buy more. Dramatically.) Also interestingly, if you want comcast in the datacenter... their pricing is closer to Level3 than it is to He.net. Even if you want to do 'paid peering' and only want to send data to/from comcast over the link. (Of course, no sane person would send traffic other than the traffic to/from comcast customers out said comcast link.) (Of course, none of this has anything to do with your point, but someone was wrong on the internet, etc...)
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rb2k_ 12y ago
I never quite got what "it takes x gallons" actually means. Where does the water go? Does it get sucked up by the plant somehow? Does the plant split the water into oxygen/hydrogen and those get bound to some other atom? Does it just disappear into the ground and end up as groundwater? Does it just evaporate and rain down somewhere else? Does it end up going to a river and ending up in the ocean as saltwater? (Actual question)
- vacri 12y ago
  It evaporates through the leaves of the tree, as the plant respires. One tree produces X amount of almonds/year, and requires Y amount of water to stay healthy. Y/X gives you the water-per-almond. Most of what makes up a tree's physical substance is pulled from the air, but it still needs some nutrients from the soil and water to move those nutrients in order to survive.
  - Almaviva 12y ago
    So if it evaporates, as in the parent question, what does "requires 1 gallon of water" mean? One gallon goes back in the air, right? It will presumably end up as rain? So the net loss of water is 0, or am I missing something? Is there some loss that is permanent or slow to recover, here?
    - rb2k_ 12y ago
      I guess the main problem is that the rain might fall somewhere else that is not California and we now have to move that water back there because otherwise they'd run out.
    - danjayh 12y ago
      This would be true if they were actually getting rain, and they were using surface water, but that is not the case. They are in the middle of a drought, and they are using ground water, which replenishes very slowly.
    - thrownaway2424 12y ago
lurchpop 12y ago
meanwhile california residents are lectured about watering lawns
mapt 12y ago
I'm curious: How do the following compare in water utilization, in typical preparation? Bonus: since we're comparing gallon of water to gallon of caloric beverage, you get to use a dimensionless quantity! Or you can be boring and call it "Gallons of water used per gallon of ____". -Almond milk -Peanut milk -Soy milk -Cow milk
- mapt 12y ago
  Quick googled + calculator estimates: Cow milk seems to be around 1000 gallons per gallon. Soy milk comes in around 130 gallons per gallon. Almond milk, around 400 gallons per gallon. Peanut milk is less popular than I thought, but should come in somewhere close to soy.
vvpan 12y ago
"Low in carbohydrates and high in monounsaturated fat and protein, these nuts are buoyed by a rising wave of nutritional consensus and diet fads (gluten-free, paleo, low-carb, etc.)." Important point. The dietary fads seem to completely disregard environmental concerns and general impact on the production area.
- eclipxe 12y ago
  The more important point is China consumption, which doesn't seem to be tied to any dietary "fad" as you call it.
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gorachel007 12y ago
To put this in another perspective; 1 gallon = 128 ounces. If you're supposed to drink 6 to 8 8oz glasses of water a day, for the same amount of water you could either remain well-hydrated for 2 to 3 days or eat a single almond.
crazy1van 12y ago
Sounds like the state needs to let the price of water rise naturally according to its increased scarcity. That should raise the price of nuts, which will lower demand and bring water consumption back to equilibrium. Hold the price down on a resource that has its supply drastically cut and we'll end up with scarcity.
dspeyer 12y ago
> [H]e’s heard ... that I’m a magazine writer looking into California’s almond boom. He demands to know what my angle is. Am I going to blame almonds for the state’s mounting water woes, like other articles have? > When I assure him I’m after the whole story, he softens. And yet, is not blaming almonds exactly what the author proceeds to do? I'm not saying they aren't to blame, but this seems a bit dishonest.

70 points by DamienSF 12y ago

As a fun thought experiment I tried thinking about this issue as if it affected my profession (software development). Imagine if electricity was going scarce. Yet prices are pretty cheap in the kWh such that I don't really notice it. I just pay my monthly bill (actually it auto-pays itself) and I go on my merry way. But what if the electricity problem was real such that at a certain point we wouldn't have any light. Would I change my profession to "do my part"? Probably not. This is why you can't expect almond farmers to stop pumping ground water. This is their livelihood. They have families to support too. They need to pay their rents and buy food and maybe have some fun from time to time. That raises the question...who is going to be first? How does the government even begin to regulate? What a mess.

ghshephard 12y ago

The photography in this article is gorgeous, the material is great, and the presentation is almost flawless. I continue to be impressed with the output on Medium - I wonder how they manage to get outlets like Mother Jones to grace them with such awesome content.

vskarine 12y ago

I am going to think twice before buying nuts again... It takes 1 gallon of water to grow 1 almond! How many almonds' worth of water does it take to: * Flush a toilet: 1.6 * Run a dishwasher: 8 * Run a garden hose for 2 min: 20 * Take 10-min shower: 25 * Do a load of laundry: 45 How much water per year does it take to (in billions of cubic meters): * produce all of the almonds in California: 3.6 * provide water to all Los Angeles homes and businesses: 0.86 * provide water to all San Francisco homes and businesses: 0.11

ianlevesque 12y ago
According to the article China consumes most of them.
- lr 12y ago
  I used to think China needed us. Now I think they are using us up the way the US has used up 3rd-world countries for decades.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    China sends the USA iPhones and T shirts, the USA sends them almonds and airplanes (for now). Isn't world trade great? At this point, I don't think either country is exploiting the other, though China could do well to enforce environmental regulations (which would definitely drive up export costs). China doesn't have enough water to grow almonds. Water shortages here make California's water shortages look insignificant.
  - iamcurious 12y ago
    the way the US has used up 3rd-world countries for decades They still have a long way to go before treating you that way.
  - Mikeb85 12y ago
    Nah, first China would have to stage protests in our major cities, then bomb us claiming they're 'liberating us' from our oppressive despots, install Chinese-friendly dictators who give Chinese businesses a monopoly on almond production, then brutally suppress all anti-Chinese dissent claiming that those of us who don't want to succumb to our new Chinese overlords are terrorists. They'd also use us as cheap labour, and allow us to go thirsty while entire cities worth of water gets diverted by Chinese corporations for almond plantations, and then we'd slave away thirstily picking almonds for Chinese businesses to then whisk away back to China. Oh, and the whole while there'd be drones overhead bombing us every once in awhile, probably at family functions just to remind us who's in charge. This would be justified back in China by reminding the public that we're ignorant, violent Christian heathens in the face of their enlightened Taoist/Buddhist/Confucian philosophy, who are plotting to bomb Chinese almond corporations, rape Chinese women and eventually take over China itself (American people who immigrated to China will be 'proof' of this nefarious plot, what with our American cultural buildings that are disguised as unhealthy food outlets but are really terrorist hideouts). They'd also pay and arm our compatriots who succumb to the new order to hunt us down and kill us for objecting to our new almond-loving overlords (until they realise that they're also getting a raw deal, in which case they'd get drone'd and the cycle would repeat itself). Then we could say the Chinese are treating us the way the US has treated other nations.
saiko-chriskun 12y ago
* Produce a hamburger: 660
- acadien 12y ago
  1 hamburger or 1 cow? Genuinely curious, also could you source that? Thanks!
  - raldi 12y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9300929
    - acadien 12y ago
      Some of the comments made there are pretty interesting, specifically that it's not about the use of water its about the waste. -Ground water can be at least partially recouped through wells. This would be a really interesting number to look up. -Sewage water is wasted as it is dumped into the sea. Anything else? Where does water leave the cycle?
  - ocfx 12y ago
    Meat+Dairy uses the same amount of water as agriculture. People are just using almonds as a scapegoat.
  - coderzach 12y ago
    http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-gallons-of-water-to-make-a-burger-20140124-story.html http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-gallons-of-water... I've seen a lot of different numbers, most of them seem to be napkin math.
nwenzel 12y ago
There's a difference between a) flushing water down the toilet and b) pouring it back into the ground. edit - clarify; Edit2 - add the following I shouldn't have been so short or flippant. There is a difference between using water in a way that renders it basically unusable without cleaning/purifying it through energy intensive processes or massive dilution (dumping into the ocean which is still unusable without desalinization) and using water in a way that allows it to naturally return to the system through evaporation. We talk about agricultural use of water as if that creates some sort of excuse to be wasteful. Will not running the water while brushing your teeth or shaving solve the drought? No. Is it completely wasteful and unnecessary? Yes. I completely agree that ridiculously minor "feel good" measures like only getting a glass of water on request at restaurants will do little to nothing to show love any actual problem. I think it also hurts finding an actual solution because we feel like we're sacrificing so we've dibe our share. Sort of like driving a Prius. Solving the water shortage problem is going to take a lot more than low-flow shower heads. But it's also going to require a lot more than eating fewer almonds. And the fact that agriculture is a big consumer of water isn't a reason or an excuse to be wasteful. If you really want to contribute towards a healthier more sustainable planet, skip that burger and have a salad with some California avocados and sliced almonds on top.
- deleted 12y ago
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astrocyte 12y ago
So, essentially they're targeting the least significant portion of water usage because they can do so more easily and they don't really consider this drought to be a big problem... Tax revenue from Agriculture means more. In the mean time, as the state heads towards a brick wall, they'll engage in silly water restrictions so it seems like they did something. Sounds about right for California. When something happens, use it as a reason to raise costs and taxes and do everything in your power to not solve the real issues. Sales tax is up again too right? California really knows how to show its residents love. Tax revenue from almonds is 30x more important than the general comfort of its residents is what I gather. That's just nuts..lol
- prawn 12y ago
  Agriculture has more unified representation than the public. It's easier to reach and mobilise them. The public would feel more helpless in comparison.
  - astrocyte 12y ago
    or.. the public simply doesn't care. In that case, you get the government you deserve and California's government is absolutely nuts. Goes for the broader U.S as well. If people did care, they'd be more involved and wouldn't allow for such a group of clowns to tax them to the hill and piss it in the wind. The brightest people in the world focused on trying to get people to click on ads as their water supply dwindles and their government institutes retard level policies.
    - prawn 12y ago
      I think for many people it's not that they don't care but that they don't know what to do. When it comes to voting, you generally have a vote for a candidate/party that has to encompass all issues. The granularity might be such that you can't easily impact a specific issue. You might get all fired up about water rights, but then it's trumped by candidate/party positions on health policy or whatever. I can remember two issue-specific referenda in my voting life in Australia - one about a constitutional preamble tweak and one about becoming a republic. Both were binary decisions when they need not have been. It's also hard for people in the general struggle of life to get informed efficiently. The media they take in generally doesn't delve deep on any issue or has a vested interest in not doing so.
marricks 12y ago
Nope. Don't stop buying nuts. Stop buying meat & dairy: Almonds -- 350-500 gallons; (added in an edit by popular demand, not in source) Eggs -- 573 gallons; Chicken -- 815 gallons; Cheese -- 896 gallons; Pork -- 1630 gallons; Butter -- 2044 gallons; Beef -- 2500-5000 gallons; (gallons of water per pound of food) Source: http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra-2008-WaterfootprintFood.pdf http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Hoekstra-2008-Waterfoo... And the meat & dairy industry takes up a whopping 47% of California's water. Source (page 3 [pdf page 9]): http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft... I actually made an account to comment on these posts. No one else seems to be putting things into perspective. We aren't draining ourselves of water from small things like produce and nuts..
- phamilton 12y ago
  To properly normalize, a pound of almonds requires 350-400 gallons.
- astrocyte 12y ago
  Here's an idea for California : Stop trying to hog the economic output of the world. Your state can no longer support it. California : > 3 million illegal immigrants and growing (California policies welcome it) > Continuing to cram people into the major cities (stop) > Stop producing so much water demanding products.. Let another state that has a more adequate water supply and conditions do it > Stop trying to produce 80% of the nation's agriculture. Let other states do it. ^ Solutions that put things into perspective. Why are none of them being pursued? because it attacks tax revenue and money. Money from other sources > people's comfort who live in California. All of that money ($115 billion in annual tax revenue and still in debt up to their ears and no money to fund water solution projects .. corruption, waste) Perspective : California doesn't give a rats ass about its residents. It exists and makes policies to further grow its tax base .. consequences be dammed. Residents always put up with the idiocy. So, screw them (over and over)
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lr 12y ago

The images of California reservoirs remind me of images of the Aral sea in Uzbekistan which was drained during Soviet times in order to grow cotton in the middle of the Central Asian desert. Humans really are greedy and stupid.

astrocyte 12y ago
and myopic and self-centered .. > Not planning ahead for a foreseeable event and > 33.8 million people not batting an eye for over 5 years while their state runs completely dry of water People have to face personal consequences in today's society before they wake up. Notably, that's when you hear the most yapping and observe the most activity : When something is too far gone and its too late.

sologoub 12y ago

This is why we should be looking seriously at desalinization for both drinking and irragation water. With proper designs, we should be able to mitigate a lot of the bad side effects while protecting more of the land based ecosystems.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago
Costs a lot of money. We can always make water given enough energy, and we have enough uranium to last us a few centuries if we want to build expensive nuclear plants. But no one wants to pay the cost. When we say: there is a shortage of X, what we really mean is that there is a shortage of cheap X, and we aren't yet ready to pay the cost for expensive X. Like almonds, they are yummy, but if the price went up by 10 because they had to use desalinated water, we might not eat so many.
- dspeyer 12y ago
  Any idea how hard it would be to genetically engineer an almond tree that could drink sea water?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Probably prohibitively difficult anytime in the forseeable future. Lots of people are spending money trying to improve, on a much more limited scale than "drink sea water", salt tolerance on a variety of crops where that is probably easier than almond trees, and that's not easy.
- astrocyte 12y ago
  Last I recalled, California has some of the highest taxes in the U.S and has the highest Gross State product. So, where's the money going? I guess everyone is so busy working their faces off that they don't have time to ask such important questions. O'well, no Desalinization plants for you. California Tax revenue : $115,089,654,000 (115 billion). I think this issues can get a hellavuh lot worse than it is right now before any serious action is taken. When I start seeing billion dollar steps being made to address the issue, that's when I'll consider that they take it seriously.

raldi 12y ago

According to the following op-ed written by an almond farmer, they're paying $1000 per acre-foot for their discount water. That works out to three gallons for a penny. And that's 40x what they were paying quite recently. To put that in perspective, if you were paying $1000 per acre-foot for the water in your home, you could flush your toilet 42 times a day for a month and your bill would come to less than $5. Remember that the next time someone tells you to let it mellow. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gleason-almond-farmer-20150326-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gleason-almond-fa...

tdaltonc 12y ago
A gallon of water delivered to your toilet and a gallon of water delivered to an orchard have very different infrastructure, quality, and leakage costs. I'm not saying that water prices are reasonable, but neither is your comparison.
chatmasta 12y ago
I pay comcast almost $100 a month for shitty Internet, throttled at peak times, max 20mbps one direction if I'm lucky, and I think there is even a cap on the bandwidth I can use. I can pay Layer3 or HE $0.50 per mbps and get 200mbps to my server for the same price. The difference is that layer3 only needs to lay cables between a few dozen datacenters. Comcast needs to lay them between the data centers, and then millions of homes. Economies of scale, etc.
- lsc 12y ago
  >I can pay Layer3 or HE $0.50 per mbps and get 200mbps to my server for the same price. I find this unlikely, or at the very least, exaggerated If you buy several gigabits from he.net, you can get around $0.50 per mbps. As of last year, for the same quantities, you are looking at about 6x that for Level3 (I assume you mean Level3, not Layer3) Level3 is probably the most expensive major bandiwdth provider you are likely to encounter (they also have the largest network... if I was going to spend three bucks a megabit, and to be clear, I'm not, I'd spend it with Level3.) He.net is one of the cheapest, and only approaches "largest network" if you are counting IPv6 peers. If your provider is charging you the same for both, most likely they have a he.net link for normal traffic, and then a burstable Level3 link, and they only use the latter as a backup. (Also note, the pricing I'm talking about is only valid for the "one to five gigabits" level... bandwidth is one of those things that gets dramatically cheaper as you buy more. Dramatically.) Also interestingly, if you want comcast in the datacenter... their pricing is closer to Level3 than it is to He.net. Even if you want to do 'paid peering' and only want to send data to/from comcast over the link. (Of course, no sane person would send traffic other than the traffic to/from comcast customers out said comcast link.) (Of course, none of this has anything to do with your point, but someone was wrong on the internet, etc...)

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rb2k_ 12y ago

I never quite got what "it takes x gallons" actually means. Where does the water go? Does it get sucked up by the plant somehow? Does the plant split the water into oxygen/hydrogen and those get bound to some other atom? Does it just disappear into the ground and end up as groundwater? Does it just evaporate and rain down somewhere else? Does it end up going to a river and ending up in the ocean as saltwater? (Actual question)

vacri 12y ago
It evaporates through the leaves of the tree, as the plant respires. One tree produces X amount of almonds/year, and requires Y amount of water to stay healthy. Y/X gives you the water-per-almond. Most of what makes up a tree's physical substance is pulled from the air, but it still needs some nutrients from the soil and water to move those nutrients in order to survive.
- Almaviva 12y ago
  So if it evaporates, as in the parent question, what does "requires 1 gallon of water" mean? One gallon goes back in the air, right? It will presumably end up as rain? So the net loss of water is 0, or am I missing something? Is there some loss that is permanent or slow to recover, here?
  - rb2k_ 12y ago
    I guess the main problem is that the rain might fall somewhere else that is not California and we now have to move that water back there because otherwise they'd run out.
  - danjayh 12y ago
    This would be true if they were actually getting rain, and they were using surface water, but that is not the case. They are in the middle of a drought, and they are using ground water, which replenishes very slowly.
  - thrownaway2424 12y ago

lurchpop 12y ago

meanwhile california residents are lectured about watering lawns

mapt 12y ago

I'm curious: How do the following compare in water utilization, in typical preparation? Bonus: since we're comparing gallon of water to gallon of caloric beverage, you get to use a dimensionless quantity! Or you can be boring and call it "Gallons of water used per gallon of ____". -Almond milk -Peanut milk -Soy milk -Cow milk

mapt 12y ago
Quick googled + calculator estimates: Cow milk seems to be around 1000 gallons per gallon. Soy milk comes in around 130 gallons per gallon. Almond milk, around 400 gallons per gallon. Peanut milk is less popular than I thought, but should come in somewhere close to soy.

vvpan 12y ago

"Low in carbohydrates and high in monounsaturated fat and protein, these nuts are buoyed by a rising wave of nutritional consensus and diet fads (gluten-free, paleo, low-carb, etc.)." Important point. The dietary fads seem to completely disregard environmental concerns and general impact on the production area.

eclipxe 12y ago
The more important point is China consumption, which doesn't seem to be tied to any dietary "fad" as you call it.

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gorachel007 12y ago

To put this in another perspective; 1 gallon = 128 ounces. If you're supposed to drink 6 to 8 8oz glasses of water a day, for the same amount of water you could either remain well-hydrated for 2 to 3 days or eat a single almond.

crazy1van 12y ago

Sounds like the state needs to let the price of water rise naturally according to its increased scarcity. That should raise the price of nuts, which will lower demand and bring water consumption back to equilibrium. Hold the price down on a resource that has its supply drastically cut and we'll end up with scarcity.

dspeyer 12y ago

> [H]e’s heard ... that I’m a magazine writer looking into California’s almond boom. He demands to know what my angle is. Am I going to blame almonds for the state’s mounting water woes, like other articles have? > When I assure him I’m after the whole story, he softens. And yet, is not blaming almonds exactly what the author proceeds to do? I'm not saying they aren't to blame, but this seems a bit dishonest.