
California Announces Restrictions on Water Use by Farmers - yincrash
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/13/us/california-announces-restrictions-on-water-use-by-farmers.html
======
jkyle
About time.

Agriculture is using 80% of the water, but accounts for a mere 2% of the GDP
(4% of employment)[1].

There's no reason we should be squeezing our rural and suburban centers that
fuel the overwhelming majority of our economy while giving farmer's a free
pass to suck the state dry of usable water which is mainly used for exported
profits and not sustaining local industries.

[1]
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/ag...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/agriculture-
is-80-percent-of-water-use-in-california-why-arent-farmers-being-forced-to-
cut-back/)

 _edit_

For clarification, mentioning the GDP is meant to show that cutting back on
agricultural usage will not affect our economy catastrophically even if the
industry sinks a bit. Will food prices go up? Perhaps.

Further, if the point is food _production_ and not food _profit_ for the
nation then the focus should be on producing the most water efficient foods
(per calorie) not the most profitable foods produced under an assumption of
free or near free water. So yeah, that might mean less prime rib and more
black eyed peas for Americans (figuratively speaking).

The cost of the product should reflect the cost of the resources required to
produce. This is not the current case.

~~~
WillPostForFood
The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP. What does
watering one's lawn contribute to?

~~~
jkyle
The point is watering your lawn is a drop in the giant reservoir. If only 20%
of the water is being used by residents (in reality, it's a bit less) and you
pass super aggressive water conservation laws targeting residential use such
that it's reduced by 50% then you've conserved a whopping.....

10%

In contrast, a mere 12% increase in agriculture efficiency gets you the same
win.

Targeting residents to curb the water crisis in CA is like targeting SNAP
benefits as a solution to the deficit.

It just plain won't work.

~~~
mindslight
While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status
quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn. And the response of
"cities" like Los Angeles is to subsidize people's servants completely redoing
their yards!

Implementing water restrictions is incredibly easy - you declare "no outdoor
water usage except on these two days of the week after 5pm" and issue fines to
people who don't comply. But it is incompatible with Californian entitlement,
because _gasp_ the grass might get a little brown.

~~~
vitd
I'm sorry, but have you ever been to Los Angeles? Where is this mythical place
you're talking about with these mythical people?

I live in Los Angeles proper, and the majority of my neighbors already had
low-water lawns to begin with. Those that don't (including me because the
owners of the house I rent don't want to change it) are basically just letting
the lawn die because we understand the situation and really aren't that vain.

Also, we do have watering restrictions and the city does give out fines if you
don't follow them. I'm not sure what you're talking about, frankly.

~~~
mindslight
Actually yes, I'm on the west side right now.

I'm in one of the few buildings without grass. The sidewalk across the street
is damp every morning. Walking around, I often see pools of runoff that have
persisted throughout the day. Most all the lawns are still being trimmed every
single week. Maybe this neighborhood is just terrible.

Are there actually any restrictions besides
[http://www.lawaterrestrictions.net/current-water-
restriction...](http://www.lawaterrestrictions.net/current-water-
restrictions/) ? To someone used to the Northeast's late-summer restrictions
those are laughable - you can still water your lawn every day of the week!

Good on you for letting your lawn wither, but I assure you that the out of
touch culture is alive and well.

------
raldi
But rather than reducing, even a little, the giant water subsidy that
agriculture gets (senior members of the agribusiness establishment pay pennies
on the dollar), it sounds like we're just telling some unlucky farmers they
now have a cap on their usage.

This is not an economically-optimal approach.

~~~
bdcravens
Wouldn't that simply cause increased costs to be passed to the consumer (or
just accept lowered profit), as opposed to doing what is necessary, which is
reducing water consumption?

~~~
ajmurmann
Increased product prices would likely lead to reduced demand and in turn
smaller farm output and water usage. Same is true for industry that also uses
enormous amounts of water.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Reduced demand, smaller output ... sounds like some CA farms will be going out
of business. Which, in a heavy drought, is probably inevitable anyway.

------
kolbe
I recently read East of Eden, and even though it was written about 19th
century California, some topics resonated very well today. This quote, in
particular:

"And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the
rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It
was always that way."

~~~
jczhang
A bit unrelated, but u should check out Ken Burns' doc on the Dustbowl. Its
fantastic.

------
ajmurmann
Why can't we just have a 2 tier water pricing system? Tier 1 is very cheap, so
that everyone can afford water to drink and wash themselves. Anything over
that amount in tier 1 get's priced at something more realistic. That
incentivizes industry to be economic about their water usage and private
people are deterred from being wasteful.

~~~
yincrash
that would require new infrastructure in _all buildings_ to have two sets of
pipes.

edit: apparently i misunderstood the parent and it cost me 5 downvotes

~~~
Domenic_S
Uh, why? We already meter usage, so apply the tiered rates the same way we
tier electricity.

------
kansface
Scott (from slatestarcodex) suggests[1] CA buy out all of its alfalfa farmers
Catch-22 style [2]. The total pay out would cost on the order of a couple of
dollars per CA resident which is far far cheaper than the alternatives.
Alfalfa is an extremely water intensive crop that is used to feed cows. This
measure would save water commensurate to the amount we lost in the drought.

This is the easily the best proposal I have heard but it stands no chance of
passing. Paying farmers in the desert to not grow crops is ... unamerican.

[1] """I realize that paying people subsidies to misuse water to grow
unprofitable crops, and then offering them countersubsidies to not take your
first set of subsidies, is to say the least a very creative way to spend
government money – but the point is it is better than what we’re doing now."""

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-
do...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-doing/)

[2] """His [Major Major’s father] specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good
thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of
alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the
government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn’t earn on new land to
increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce"""

~~~
bradleyjg
I'd think your best bet would be to buy the land currently used to grow
alfalfa and permanently fallow it rather than trying to run a program where
you pay alfalfa farmers not to farm. The latter program has the obvious
problem of identifying would be alfalfa farmers once no one has grown alfalfa
in a while.

~~~
kansface
I agree, but this would be more expensive.

------
BigChiefSmokem
Can someone explain to me why we don't just build a pipeline from Seattle or
some rich water source up north down to California?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Seattle isn't actually that rainy, it's just a constant drizzle, actually.
Water restrictions about on the summer also.

If you want to see how it is done, China recently built a north south water
diversion canal. Though it hasn't paid off yet.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Just more context: [http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/04/seattle-
does...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/04/seattle-doesnt-get-
that-much-rain/)

------
mmanfrin
Good, the gordian knot needed to be cut. 165 years of near-unrestricted use of
the flowing commons needed a stop.

~~~
saosebastiao
Now if only they would follow the 200 year old recommendation of economists
and put a price on it.

EDIT: To clarify, consensus on the role of prices on economic allocation goes
back to Adam Smith, but using prices specifically to regulate allocation of
natural resources only really goes back to Henry George, which I guess is a
bit younger than California's misuse of water. Regardless, we're still about a
century behind economists in knowing exactly what to do about this problem.

------
shmulkey18
Of course, we can't implement the obvious and economically rational solution:
let the water market operate freely, rather than having the government dictate
prices, impose rationing, encourage neighbors to rat out putative "water
wasters" and so on. Long live central planning!

~~~
s73v3r
Yay! Let the rich be the only ones who can afford water!

~~~
shmulkey18
Yay! Let the rich be the only ones who can afford computers! Shoes! Books!
Potting soil! Clothing! Housing! Cars!

The list of horrors that the free market visits upon the non-rich is truly
shocking. After all, by your logic all non-regulated goods must be affordable
only by the rich.

The level of economic ignorance in this thread is stupefying.

~~~
s73v3r
Those things are not in short supply. The level of economic ignorance in your
comment is stupefying.

------
waterwaterwater
3/4 of the planet is Water. If the cost of water reaches the cost of
desalination, then it will become cost effective to desalinate.

------
dragonwriter
This is not, strictly speaking, a set of restrictions "on water use by
farmers", its a restriction on some "senior" (pre-1914) water-rights holders,
with more expected; many (but not all) of the rights-holders are farmers, but
some are, e.g., municipal districts, like the East Contra Costa Water
District, whose use has also been curtailed.

------
alexhu11
Great! A book I recommend to explain how thoroughly screwed up water policy in
the West is Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. Water policy has been run largely
as corporate welfare for large agricultural growers at the expense of
taxpayers and the environment.

------
azinman2
So I'm hearing a lot of misinformation here in these comments. I recently
attended a talk [1] by the Chair of the CA water board (Felicia Marcus) and it
was very illuminating.

!!! WATCH THIS VIDEO LINKED AT THE END !!!. It was for MIT club of NorCal and
is like 2 hours, so its far more technical/deep and BALANCED than anything
you'll find on CNN/nytimes/etc.

I'll try to summarize some of her points here that I think would be useful and
relevant, but really you should watch her speak in that link.

1) We talk about 80% going to agriculture, as if there some single reservoir
that we all drink out of. Everyone gets their water from different sources,
and they're all suitable for different uses. SF, for example, has an exclusive
license to Hetch Hetchy water source. Agriculture is never going to see that
and doesn't affect us.

2) There are rural parts of CA that have no water coming out of the tap. She
said that was her #1 priority right now.

3) We need lots of water to feed the nation. CA is one of 5 Mediterranean
climates in the world, and that makes it suitable to grow all kinds of stuff
that doesn't grow anywhere else. 2% GDP is irrelevant because you die without
food.

4) As a culture we don't have a connection to agriculture, and it is causing
drifts on both sides. The farmers are pointing fingers at urban areas, and
vice versa.

5) We have less a rain problem and more a storage problem. 1900-2000 was
unusually wet for CA and so we didn't build enough storage for the dry years.
Groundwater is actually the most environmentally friendly storage and we get
something like 40% normally of our water from it, and 60% now (I think?)

6) We don't have a market planned economy. You can't tell farmers what to
grow. There is no 5 year plan -- this isn't china.

7) The state is doing a lot of things to combat these issues all
simultaneously. The issue is extremely complex and multi-pronged. You'd likely
be impressed with all the projects under way.

8) Ground water rights can be changed at a local county level very quickly.
They have a huge amount of power and need to be first to do so. It's a bit of
a mexican stand off between them, but this is where culture and local advocacy
can make a difference. Santa Cruz has done really well with this, and I think
San Diego as well.

9) CA does have the power to come down on people/counties/companies that they
view as using excessive resources... it's built into the CA constitution. All
they need to do is threaten and people change. They've done that several
times.

10) We say oh, my shower is like 1% of the problem. Getting water at a
restaurant is 0.5% of the problem. It's still water, waste is waste, and we
need everything we can get.

11) We don't reuse/capture water efficiently or at all. Especially floods. To
combat this we need lot of small efficient that add up. Capturing storm water
is one example. Recycling waste water is another, and there's an additional
10% that can be gained through forrest management in the sierras better
directing the melting snow run off (!).

12) CA is seeing the mistakes of San Paulo and Australia and trying not to
repeat them. They're collaborating world-wide on these issues... lots of
Israeli tech is making its way to desalination. Smart people are being
resourceful and not isolationist about this.

WATCH THIS: [1]
[http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/mitcnc/videos/31839-califo...](http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/mitcnc/videos/31839-california-
water-2015-felicia-marcus-chair-california-water-resources-control-board)

~~~
seanflyon
> CA is one of 5 Mediterranean climates in the world, and that makes it
> suitable to grow all kinds of stuff that doesn't grow anywhere else. 2% GDP
> is irrelevant because you die without food.

You can live perfectly fine without Mediterranean food and if California
stopped growing water-intensive crops it would cause a shortage of those
crops, not a shortage of food.

~~~
azinman2
That's a non balanced argument. Lots of stuff that grows only in such a
climate is way less resource intensive than other stuff being grown that could
be moved. For example cattle are far more water intense than even almonds
(which are water intensive) yet have no requirement to be in CA. Rice
similarly. Plus diversity of food is not only healthy, but increases quality
of life.

~~~
seanflyon
I don't think that anything you wrote here makes sense as a response to my
comment. Less resource intensive crops grow here, great. If they are cost
effective then we should continue to grow them, if they are not cost effective
then clearly they are not "way less resource intensive". The notion that we
should maintain water-intensive agriculture because "you die without food" has
nothing to do with reality. There is plenty of food and we could grow far more
if we wanted to.

We are talking about luxury items. If you want crops that only grow in
Mediterranean areas, great, so do I. We enjoy our luxuries, but we should not
subsidize the unsustainable production of luxuries, which is what we are doing
by giving them water at far bellow market rates.

------
FrankenPC
One solution is technology. Trap evaporated water and recycle it. Invest in
high performance hydroponics. There are so many solutions to flood farming
that no one bothers to invest in because the water is essentially free to
them.

~~~
sigzero
This has been slowly building to this crisis since the 70s at least.
California hasn't done anything of value to curtail the crisis.

------
Meiscooldude
The company I work actually works on a project to help with the whole water
right issue in the west.

Watersage.com

~~~
Meiscooldude
Also would like to say I'm not on that team, and I don't support stupid
silverlight.

------
jdlyga
What a nightmare. Makes me glad I live on the east coast.

~~~
Yhippa
But hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, humidity, and mosquitos.

~~~
adventured
Most of the east coast doesn't suffer under a meaningful hurricane threat. For
example, the average 'hurricane' that has hit Virginia in the last 40 years,
had 40 to 70 mph winds.

Earthquakes of any consequence are extremely rare on the east coast (basically
non-existent).

Most of California's population centers are humid in fact. Los Angeles
averages around 71% daily humidity; San Diego is 70%; San Francisco is 74%
(among the highest in the US). By comparison Washington DC averages 64%;
Pittsburgh averages 68%; NYC averages 63%. And for contrast, Denver averages
52% daily humidity, and Vegas is 30%.

~~~
maxxxxx
You will perceive LA humidity as much lower as DC humidity.

------
cbr
Unfortunately this does nothing to address groundwater depletion; it's just
about how much water people are allowed to draw from rivers. With groundwater
we have a dollar auction / arms race where the people with the deepest wells
get the water, which is a terrible way to allocate water. If you want the
system of private wells that sustain rural communities to keep functioning you
have to restrict wells.

------
mc32
Unfortunately for farmers, urban dwellers far outnumber them. Of course
farmers need to devise more efficient ways to water their crops, but I think
it's strange urban dwellers don't understand the inelasticity of water for
farming.

At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it
means not planting x acres that year.

Without water, locavores will have to become televores. Calif produces food
for the whole nation. So while as a percentage of economic output farming is
relatively small, as a percentage of food production it's high and thus
critical to maintain viability.

The Japanese expend enormous resources on keeping their rice farmers viable in
the face of cheaper alternatives, but, in some ways they have a point. Without
your farmers you starve.

Yes, farmers should try to use water more efficiently and the gov should
encourage that adoption via stick and carrot, but vilifying farmers is not the
way to go.

And, this should have been started years ago. Not just now. Surprise, your
water is cut, sorry for not preparing you for this via policy!

~~~
Domenic_S
You simply don't understand the scale of the water we use.

> _At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it
> means not planting x acres that year._

Urban direct water usage (ie., showers, watering lawns, flushing the toilet,
etc) only accounts for 4% of the State water budget. FOUR PERCENT. [0] Cutting
your shower from 15 mins to 5 is utterly meaningless compared to agricultural
use.

[0] PDF warning: [http://pacinst.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft...](http://pacinst.org/wp-
content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf)

~~~
nsxwolf
Parent's point is simply that in the home you can drastically cut water usage
without it affecting your life much, but in farming the consequences are
large.

~~~
Domenic_S
Of course they're large, because they use a lot of water. That's the whole
point.

Cutting residential usage is comparatively easy because _we don 't actually
use that much water at home._ See the study I linked above if you don't
believe me.

