
How Growers Gamed California’s Drought - j_baker
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/30/how-growers-gamed-california-s-drought.html
======
raldi
It takes a gallon of water to grow an almond. So eating a single almond, grown
in California, is like opening one of these
([https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gal...](https://hornstrafarms.com/product_images/large/monadnock_gallon_water.jpg))
and pouring it down the drain.

California grows 99% of the almonds in the United States, and 80% of all the
almonds in the world.

This is only financially possible because we give almond farmers (and
agriculture in general) gigantic subsidies on their water bills.

Sources:

[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-
califo...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-
water-going)

[http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/07/almonds-are-
sucking-...](http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/07/almonds-are-sucking-the-
life-out-of-california/374373/)

~~~
WalterSear
Almonds are a drop in the bucket, compared to the sacred cow(s) that is meat.

It's just a tad bit more than NPR's 'trying to lose weight by cutting your
fingernails'.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take-
long-s...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-j-rose/how-to-take-long-
showers_b_6875644.html)

[http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-
whos-...](http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/californias-drought-whos-really-
using-all-the-water/)

[http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry...](http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/sustain/global/sensem/MeatIndustry.html)

~~~
raldi
You're absolutely right. A quarter-pound hamburger costs 1,300 gallons of
water, according to the WSJ:
[http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120001666638282817](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB120001666638282817)

The organization that represents California cattle ranchers begged to differ,
contesting that it's only 110 gallons: [http://blog.calbeef.org/how-eco-
friendly-is-beef-infographic...](http://blog.calbeef.org/how-eco-friendly-is-
beef-infographic/)

Even using the latter number, just think about that. Eating one hamburger is
like dumping 110 one-gallon jugs of water down the drain -- or leaving your
kitchen faucet running full blast for over an hour with the current 1.8gpm
flow restrictor mandated by code. Or flushing your code-mandated low-flow
toilet 89 times.

And if you're talking about a 1-pound steak, multiply all those numbers by 4.

Am I saying you shouldn't eat beef? Of course not -- it's delicious! But
California's beef producers should have to pay market rate for their water. If
that means the price shoots up and I have to start eating hamburgers made from
Texas cattle, so be it.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Those kind of statements imply that cattle destroy that water. The water is
returned to the environment a few hours after it's ingested. It's usually just
part of the natural cycle.

I know you understand this: you talk about eating Texas cattle instead of
California cattle, but I wanted to emphasize it for others.

Vast numbers of cattle are raised in semi-desert conditions in Texas and
Montana without the use of irrigated feedstock. Those cattle occupy the same
ecological niche as the bison did 150 years ago, with a similar environmental
impact. Tearing up the native prairie to grow any sort of grain or vegetable
crop would destroy the land.

~~~
avn2109
>> "...cattle occupy the same ecological niche as the bison did 150 years ago,
with a similar environmental impact..."

Montana boy here. Even if I concede for purposes of argument that cattle and
bison are ecologically interchangeable ungulates (debateable at best), surely
we can all agree that it is not the cattle but rather the _cattlemen_
primarily responsible for reshaping the natural environment in the American
West, by bulldozing stock ponds, stringing barbed wire over the range,
drilling wells, poisoning coyotes, supplanting native grasses with snakeweed
and cheatgrass, and most importantly by enforcing a monoculture of cattle.
Nature abhors a monoculture almost as much as it abhors a vacuum, and you
would never find a bison-era Western landscape with only a single species of
charismatic megafauna.

Nobody objects to a smallholder's spread of a dozen head of angus, but when
millions of acres are given over to beef production alone, it's broadly
disingenuous to claim that the environmental impact of cattle is isomorphic to
that of bison on a systems level.

Cattle country today looks like this [0] and this [1], for miles and miles and
miles.

Bison country looked like this [2].

It's hard to see how those landscapes are even approximately interchangeable.

[0] [http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/HA027__1MHK0-1...](http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/HA027__1MHK0-1.png)

[1] [http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/HA030__1MHK0-1...](http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/HA030__1MHK0-1.png)

[2] [http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/HA031__1MHK0-2...](http://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/HA031__1MHK0-2.png)

NB. All these pictures are taken from an excellent and rather relevant piece
of journalism that ran in Harpers here (paywall):
[http://harpers.org/archive/2015/02/the-great-republican-
land...](http://harpers.org/archive/2015/02/the-great-republican-land-heist/)

And I stole my list of rancher's sins from Ed Abbey.

~~~
thrownaway2424
History repeating. Here's Harpers from 1947 on the exact same topic:
[http://home.comcast.net/~mdevoto/AGAINST.htm](http://home.comcast.net/~mdevoto/AGAINST.htm)

------
aetherson
The hair-shirt environmentalism of laws like "restaurants can only serve you
water if you ask" is... it's really kind of appalling. It's like if you came
into an emergency room with one of your arms literally torn off your body and
they wouldn't, you know, triage you, but instead sent you to talk to a doctor
about how you're ten pounds overweight and how you really need to lose that
weight or else god think of the negative health consequences.

~~~
mc32
That silliness has more to do with raising awareness and being a reminder than
actually something which actually conserves water --simply it's symbolic

~~~
aetherson
But it's not symbolic, it's distracting. It focuses limited public attention
on doing something that's mildly personally inconvenient instead of actually
effective.

~~~
bduerst
But if you get enough public attention it can snowball into actually changing
what matters.

You tell everyone to think about the almond trees and it's so far disconnected
that they tend to forget about it. If it's the third restaurant visit this
month they had to ask for water, then they're going to be more accepting of
policy to save water with the farmers (i.e. do their part).

~~~
hueving
>then they're going to be more accepting of policy to save water with the
farmers

The policies are just saying that normal consumers have to save though. People
would be plenty accepting of a policy that just said farmers have to cut back.
There is no reason for shared sacrifice here. The small users (normal people)
already pay a fair price. The elephants are the ones screwing everyone and we
are wasting time discussing how the minority can cut back more. It's stupid.

------
socialist_coder
This article doesn't address why the California government is being so stupid
about water rationing.

Why isn't it reforming these broken water laws that are mentioned in the
article?

The CA govt just dodges the question, every time. Why? Are the agriculture
lobbyists really that powerful? Or is something else going on here?

~~~
TulliusCicero
Farmers are sacred in America. People are terrified of the idea that, "if we
cut how much water they get, how will we eat???" Never mind that such thinking
is nonsense. What will happen if water becomes more expensive is that farmers
will adopt more efficient technology, they will grow somewhat less of the
thirstier crops, and those crops will go up in price somewhat.

So yes, the downside is that the price of your almonds and alfalfa will be a
bit higher; the upside is that people will have enough water for day to day
use to live normally.

~~~
beamatronic
I'm ready to have a STEM-based government where all of the participants (
read: politicians ) are from a Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math
background.

~~~
nsnick
Doesn't China have a government like that?

~~~
dmoy
Yes, especially if you include economics in STEM, then 5 out of 7 on the
standing committee are in that boat, as well as many of the previous members.

------
jeffdavis
"the Central Valley, which is, geologically speaking, a desert"

Source? It seems contrary to what wikipedia says on the subject:

"The northern Central Valley has a hot Mediterranean climate; the more
southerly parts in rainshadow zones are dry enough to be Mediterranean steppe
or even low-latitude desert." \--
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_%28California%29...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_%28California%29#Climate)

~~~
rconti
It's worth clarifying, because every time this comes up, some California-
basher says "hurr durr why are these morons trying to farm in the desert"
while ignoring the fact that, pre-irrigation, natural runoff from the
mountains made many areas in central California swamps/wetlands.

It's incredibly fertile land with an absolutely massive water source (in
"normal" years). It's the diversion of water that's caused the issues, which
have been exacerbated by the drought.

------
cpursley
Here's a novel idea: charge market prices for water based on supply and
demand. The problem will sort itself out.

~~~
ianlevesque
The problem will also sort itself out when the water is gone.

~~~
jeffdavis
Market forces will force us to start conserving and optimizing now; and
solving problems sooner is generally better than solving them later.

~~~
Retra
I'm skeptical that your use of "market forces" is distinguishable from "magic"
here.

~~~
Dylan16807
You could solve the problem just by making water cost more. Wasteful farming
can't take the hit, residential users can. It doesn't take magic.

But even simpler than that, if you let people with water rights _sell_ their
water, they will be less likely to _waste_ it.

Or maybe get rid of water rights...

------
WaxProlix
Previous conversation on this topic [1] yielded about the same results that
we've had in the past 30 minutes here. Doesn't seem like anything's going to
change; we'll all just continue posting about it to our favorite blogs and
meta-blogs, and (almond|alfalfa|whatever) farmers will continue to eat
subsidies and turn them into drought.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9175649](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9175649)

~~~
thaumaturgy
At least people are starting to discuss this, which is an important
improvement over the past situation. These are the first articles I've seen
coming across my news feeds which are daring to bruise the sacred cow of
California agriculture -- and I've bumped into a couple of people now who
unprompted mentioned the 80% statistic for statewide agricultural water use.
So word's getting around.

------
salem
Charge market prices for water, and let the tech industry help with
efficiency.

That's how Australia did it: [http://irrigation.org.au/documents/publications-
resources/co...](http://irrigation.org.au/documents/publications-
resources/conference_papers_2008/200508_Stream1_RMaskey1.pdf)

------
raldi
If you live in California, and you're not registered to vote by mail, please
do so. It only takes five minutes.

Here are step by step instructions:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/housingforsf/comments/22xoht/help_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/housingforsf/comments/22xoht/help_hfsf_register_to_vote_by_mail_and_tell_us/)

~~~
habith
I'd like to add that registering to vote is the first step.

Researching the propositions (and candidates for that matter) that get put on
the ballot yourself (LAO[1], SOS[2], Ballotpedia[3] and Google) and ignoring
media coverage/ads can make a huge difference.

The Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) is particularly useful. Their analysis of
prop 1[4] combined with Ballotpedia's[5] summary was very informative.

[1]: [http://www.lao.ca.gov/](http://www.lao.ca.gov/)

[2]: [http://www.sos.ca.gov/](http://www.sos.ca.gov/)

[3]: [http://ballotpedia.org/](http://ballotpedia.org/)

[4]:
[http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2014/prop-1-110414.aspx](http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2014/prop-1-110414.aspx)

[5]:
[http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1,_Water_Bond_...](http://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_1,_Water_Bond_%282014%29)

------
mondo_negro
More and more the US is starting to look like one of those countries full of
corrupt and incompetent politicians and their cronies who enrich themselves
from the sweat of the general population and are untouchable.

~~~
olefoo
So, reversion to the mean.

------
hyperbovine
Fortunately we in California have a well-established means of circumventing
partisan bickering and political gridlock. Granted it usually ends in
disaster, but I am counting the minutes until one or more water-rights related
voter initiatives show up on the ballot. Considering how the numbers stack up,
I would be very weary indeed if I were a Central Valley farmer.

------
wdr1
Things I don't understand as a California:

\- Why we continue to sell (nationally) bottled water from California

\- Why public golf courses are green

\- Why my public officials nag us not to water our lawns as often, when that's
not the problem. (FWIW, yes, I replaced my own lawn with drought resistant
plants a few years ago.)

~~~
STRiDEX
Because why have a golf course at all if there's no grass? How many golfers do
you see practicing their chip shots on asphalt? Golf courses aren't the issue,
as they pay the market price for water and often have very maintained
irrigation systems as they have to keep their water bill low enough to remain
profitable.

------
jmspring
California and water wars go back a long time.

Water law is incredibly complicated (grants, rights, etc).

It's wikipedia, but still a good read:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars)

------
fsk
Most of the western states have totally messed up "water rights" laws.

------
mmanfrin
But hey guys, at least we might soon have a law saying restaurants have to be
explicitly asked before serving drinking water!

------
myhf
[http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/arithmetic.html](http://www-
formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/arithmetic.html)

------
jstalin
Issues like this aren't resolved until enough people are personally effected.
When a community or two wakes up and turns on their faucet and nothing comes
out, then there will be change.

------
jchrisa
They need to grow something under those trees.

------
techbio
How many raindrops are there left?

------
techbio
How many raindrops are there?

------
davidf18
Israel is/will be producing one-third of its water from desalinization. The
largest plant produces 165 million gallons per day. The firm that runs that
plant is building a plant in Carlsbad, CA which in 2016 will produce about 50
million gallons per day. Other plants will be built.

[http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.575985](http://www.haaretz.com/business/1.575985)

