Not sure about soil. Climate… is coming.
Yes, it turns out that in each and every part of the world there are limiting factors that make agriculture less productive than it might be, of only those limiting factors were not there. Some places are too cold, some places are too dry, some places are too wet, some places are too hot, some places are too hot and too cold, or too dry and too wet, some are hot and dry and then cold and wet, some have poor soils, some aren’t flat enough, some have crazy people with guns running around, some have endangered species, some have poor transportation, some have too many people, some have too few people, and on and on.
California would be even more productive than it already is, if only there were two or three or four or five times as much water available. Except there isn’t, and wishing there were more water won’t magically make the water appear. Spending billions of dollars transport more water to California won’t make water cheaper, rather the reverse.
California farmers have to get used to the idea that sometimes there are going to be droughts, sometimes multi-year droughts, and while there might be water on the other side of the Rockies there is no way to get that water to California cheap enough to make it worth growing crops with. If people were dying of thirst in California then loading up trucks with bottled water would make sense, even if that water costs $2 for a 16 ounce bottle. But water at $2 a gallon isn’t going to grow $2 worth of crops.
Are palm trees water-hungry? I have a Mexican fan palm that I don’t water, though it gets some from watering nearby I suppose. And I don’t think the huge palms lining nearby streets get watered at all; I see a city truck watering other trees but never the palms. Have I just missed it?
You got that right. And that is where the political divide lies. There are those advocating for improvements to water storage and delivery (more dams, enlarging existing dams, more canals, etc.) with a cost shared by many so a few can prosper. And there are those denouncing these potential improvements due primarily to environmental issues.
It is a huge tangle of priorities, and the drought brings it all to the forefront. However, as pointed out up thread - we will get a few normal or above normal precipitation years and all will be forgotten. Until the next drought.
BTW, the only place water is “imported” to CA is via the Colorado River. I am not aware of water being piped-in from any other state, directly. Altho, technically, the Colorado River is part of CA. All other water we are talking about here is water that has fallen within the CA borders as rain or snow - under existing water projects.
Wouldn’t you have to say that the agricultural products benefit the many?
Isn’t a government-built, taxpayer-funded water system to make this region produce bountifully much like the interstate highway system, or the internet, or other systems built, funded and yielding returns on the same model?
If a few farmer/farming conglomerates make boodles doing so, how is that different from trucking companies and Microsoft/Apple/Google?
Yes. If it’s really more expensive to move all this water in order to grow crops more cheaply (the better climate/soil makes the crops themselves cheaper to grow) than it would be to grow the crops with plentiful water in a place with worse climate and soil, then that’s what should be done.
The government should take money from all of us to subsidize growing crops in a place that is not the cheapest overall in resources.
Now, if better climate + expensive water is actually cheaper than worse climate + cheap water, then that’s another story. But if Stranger on a Train is right, it’s expensive as heck to move water long distance.
Nevada, New Mexico, old Mexico, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and California are all part of the Colorado River water allocation. They all get their share.
Lake Mead’s water volume is currently (June 26) 10,313,200 acre·ft, down from it’s maximum of 26,134,000 acre·ft.
The Colorado River is the sole source of water for the Imperial Valley in southern California, one of the most productive agricultural regions in the U.S…
California gets its share and Lake Mead is disappearing. Maybe a new arrangement is called for?
I guess it depends. According to the CA Dept of Agriculture:
California exported over eight billion dollars of agricultural products in 2004, and is the top exporter in the nation for fruits, tree nuts, and many other specialty crops. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) work together to expand and maintain access to global markets for California growers.
Emphasis mine. That is what I am thinking about when we talk about building infrastructure like this - who benefits - the few. It is not like it would make those specialty crops cheaper stateside.
I do concur that there are a lot of benefits to society in general for these type of investments, but there is probably a break-even point in the investment versus the benefit. I dont’ know what that calculus is, tho.
So, just abandon a very significant percentage of US agricultural land and productivity, because the water for it is somewhere above an arbitrary cost point?
Way too much like dictating that 50% of current drivers have to give up their cars.
I thought I’d covered that when I said that the Earth was an oblate spheroid. But I’ve read that the water coverage of the Earth would be very different if it did not rotate.
It’s not arbitrary. By the very definition I gave, it would cause other chunks of the U.S. with agricultural land to now be economically viable as they would not be competing with California farmers with their government supplied water.
If 50% of drivers were receiving free gas from taxes paid by the other 50%, who had a gasoline shortage, then yes.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t evaluate whether the people are getting a return on investment. A highway on a major corridor between cities is a major benefit and a smart investment; a “bridge to nowhere” benefits a handful of people and is not.
From the figures I can find, agriculture in CA uses around 70 million acre-feet per year and produces $43B in crop value. That means that agriculture is only producing a bit over $600 per acre-foot of water.
Obviously, the farmers value the water even less than that, because water isn’t their only input. The real conversion is probably $200 or less.
And of course that’s an average, so some farmers–for rice and other water-inefficient crops–value it even less; probably well under $100.
Furthermore, that’s only counting the total income for the farmer. I don’t know how to quantify the overall benefit to the public–I’m not even sure what the tax rate is–but clearly it’s not the full amount.
Compare against the cost of desalination, which is $2000 per acre-foot. Is it really a good idea to make the public pay absurdly high prices for water when farmers use it so wastefully?
Not really sure how much truth there is to that, probably some. The most significant factor is the coriolis effect, which does not push water toward the equator but causes it to circulate. In terms of water and air wanting to move toward the equator, I suspect the sun’s heat would be much more significant that centrifugal attraction. And, of course, the equatorial bulge would put lower latitudes at a higher relative elevation than more polar latitudes, so the whole thing balances out (as it has been doing for billions of years).
Guys could you possible take the shape/rotation of the Earth to another thread? pls?
This is pretty damning. The solution to the water “shortage” sounds glaringly obvious. The total predicted water supply to the state for a year should be divided up into “lots”.
These lots should be sorted by probability : an “A” class lot gets first pick of the water, a “C” class lot gets last pick and in drought conditions will get no water at all.
All the water consumers - the farmers, the utility companies, etc would bid on these lots in an open market auction. Utility companies would be required by law to buy enough “A” class lots to supply all households and businesses with water needed for direct human consumptions.
The market price would be the value each of these entities place on the water. Obviously, the utility companies representing city residents would have vastly more money to put down in the auction and would get all the water they needed.
The utility companies could even offer multi-tier service. Residential houses and restraunts would be fed from “A” class lots, but you could purchase a landscape irrigation connection as well that would be fed from a “C” class lot pumped down the same pipe. During drought conditions, an electric valve controlled by the utility company would cut off the water to a C class connection.
There are certainly some interesting auction systems one could come up with, but I don’t see them as being politically viable, at least in the short term. Whatever the solution, it can’t look like a giant power grab, since otherwise the very powerful farm lobbyists will oppose you.
So again, I propose just buying out the water rights. Find those farmers with the lowest production per acre-foot water–say, $100–multiply by 20 or so to account for the lifetime benefit of the water rights, and find willing sellers. Instead of $2000 for a single acre-foot, it’s $2000 for an acre-foot per year.
Only a few percent of ag users would be affected. After all, diverting 3% of the total supply would increase urban supply by 30% and only cut ag supply by 3.75%. It’s a small enough fraction that there should be no need to strong-arm anybody.