What other states does CA get it water from?
I don’t think anyone is suggesting we just shut off the spigot to agriculture. But (and we’re really getting into GD territory here), agriculture is politically powerful and many of us wish they would spend less time lobbying for special breaks and more time figuring out how to use less water.
I wonder–could the state simply buy out the water rights of the least efficient producers? Surely, for a few crops at least, the total value of the production is less than the value of the water. The state could buy out these farmers with a lump sum. Seems politically tenable (no farmers are getting screwed, and it would be voluntary) and must be loads cheaper than desalination.
It was a serious question. The Earth is not round but an oblate spheroid. This is caused by the Earth’s rotation. Water is pushed out at the equator. Yes, the difference is slight, but it’s there.
Yes. I was unaware that California actually has a huge water supply that is mostly getting wasted on growing crops! A bunch of information workers in their McMansions (even *with *the palm trees and other water hungry landscaping) have to be objectively a better use of the water than agriculture.
As it’s been pointed out, agriculture could be grown elsewhere. Information workers are more efficient if they work in a city with other information workers because they can then specialize and there’s more access to capital, etc. Agriculture gets only marginal proximity benefits.
Why are information workers objectively more valuable? Maybe I should specify software/engineering. Even if you ignore all the other things they do, programmers and engineers have the capability to design and build robots and expert systems that can act like labor amplifiers using today’s technology, and in the future, completely replace most workers in most industries. From an economic perspective, this is better than gold. If a given information worker can improve robot or software design in his or her lifetime to replace 10 or 100 workers elsewhere in the world, that makes the true value of his or her lifetime labor equal to 10 or 100 people worth of work.
Agree. And what it sort-of boils-down to (pun intended) is where do we, the taxpayers, want to pay: spend more on infrastructure to allow growing more expensive produce, or spend more on subsidies to farmers to not grow food, as Dr. Strangelove proposes. Either way, we’re all going to pay.
When you see farmers in the Central Valley still flooding crops and air spraying them to irrigate them, then you know water is underpriced for them. It’s hard to make people conserve something that appears plentiful and relatively cheap. Remember, though, that it’s mostly in-state folks who are subsidizing the cost of the water (I think), but the rest of the country benefits from cheaper agricultural products. If the farmers were only selling their produce in CA, things might net out the same either way, but that isn’t the case.
OTOH, when they either go to dripline watering or braceros with watering cans, farm crops will triple in price.
Again, I maintain this is all interesting discussion from a historical perspective, but within 25 years only some parts of Northern California will be agriculturally productive.
Anyone who drives I-5 between Northern and Southern CA will see the signs along the sides of the road declaring “Congress-Created Dust Bowl” with the background of dried out landscapes. I would think if water were priced appropriately we would either see farmers invest in more efficient irrigation, such as drip systems for orchards, or open revolt.
It seems the issue is politicized to some extent. Some of those roadside signs blame Nancy Pelosi, specifically.
Anyway, to the OP, I think it is prudent to invest in desalinization for coastal, urban areas, but also apply some limits to agriculture, at least for certain crops.
Just a tad. The California water wars have always been as much about political power (which translates to different forms of subsidy, leading to profits for someone) as about any actual farming, agriculture or, you know, water issues.
I was summarily banned from a hobby board a few years ago for making a mild comment about driving by these signs, which have a great deal more to do with availability of water rather than its price. Congress won’t override environmental protections based on water flow in the Colorado and elsewhere, protections that were a condition of ever being able to use that imported water… so they’re the bad guys. (The board owner turned out to make his living from the legal end of the water wars.)
Cite for both those claims, please? This is GQ, remember.
Largely opinion based on being a Central Valley resident for 50 years. The costs of going to direct watering systems for hundreds of thousands of acres now served with bulk systems is staggering; either crop prices or subsidies go up to cover them. Both come from the consumer/taxpayer base.
Desertification of the US agricultural belt is already underway, with the most prominent effects so far being seen in the former desert of the SoCal ag regions.
If that’s insufficient, I withdraw the comments and will see you here around 2040 to take my punishment.
Uh…so they have to pay subsidies in some places for farmers not to grow crops.
In other places, they pay subsidies so farmers can grow crops in the wrong biome using artificially cheaper water…
This kind of sort of sounds like you’re spending federal money twice to create problems that have an obvious solution (grow the crops that require all that water in places where there is lots of water and subsidies were being paid so the farmers grow nothing)
That would be too easy…
Well, there’d still be a problem long term, but it would be a good quick fix. Agri uses about 80% of the water.
Not sure if you’re addressing my immediately prior post, but I meant subsidies to pay for the new water-delivery systems, not crop subsidies per se.
Most of the California ag region could grow little or nothing on the locally available water. It’s relatively recent seabottom land and thus inherently fertile, but far too arid except for a relative handful of commercial crops. IMHVO, this situation is only going to get worse as climate change reduces rainfall and ground water sources are exhausted.
So what is the solution? Abandon most of CA ag? Force them to grow only non-irrigation crops, which would have huge economic impact across not only California but the other regions that grow those crops? Subsidize an efficient ag watering system at a cost and effort close to that of the original CVP? Abandon government support and let the region go to a boom/crash basis with unpredictable but likely much higher crop prices? Or… what?
Just getting yer knickers in a twist because the farmers “waste cheap water” isn’t going to lead to much of a solution at all. It’s on a par with getting upset because people still drive cars that get less than 35MPG - maybe “correct” on some level but not really a viewpoint that will lead to a viable solution.
Water is not pushed out at the equator, the Earth is. If you were to take a bowling ball and try to simulate the Earth’s oceans on it, you would be working with something like 3 or 4 tablespoons of water.
That’s all too GD-like to address in GQ. Suffice it to say that for the purpose of this thread, we want people to know that ag uses about 80% of the water in CA. We don’t have a water problem because people flush their toilets too often or take overly long showers-- which are the solutions most often focused on when we’re in drought.
More or less the things for AG water which are the equivalent of ‘fixing the dripping faucet" and "taking shorter showers’ could save 10% of Ag water use. This is more than all the water used for personal use in CA.
Certainly Ag is critical for CA and the USA. But reliance of super cheap water has allowed too many farmers to get lazy and waste water.
All I am asking is for them to do the farming equiv of fixing the dripping faucet.
Is that too much?
Will these crops grow in areas that have the water? It takes more than just water to grow things.
Someone earlier mentioned growing citrus trees in Minnesota. Does Minnesota have the climate or the soil to support citrus?