How California Is Winning the Drought
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I wish the article did a better job of exploring various agricultural solutions - drip irrigation is just a baby step when compared to something like hydroponics. Hydroponic production uses anywhere (and I'm just trying to remember the various claims I've seen in both studies and articles without going back to them) from 75%-90% less water than conventional ag, beating drip irrigation off the low end.
Agroecology challenges the monoculture system that (I think) caused this over-consumption. By planting thirsty crops like corn and polluting the existing aquacultures with the pesticides needed to preserve an area lacking any sort of biodiversity, monocultures have created a fragile food supply that increasing prices (and terrible subsidies) continue to highlight. Agroecology, on the other hand, encourages a system of farming that takes into account the cultural/social context of a region while suggesting methods (grounding those suggestions in data) of production that respect local ecology and agricultural practices for increased production.
I looked it up because I thought there was no way that it could be true, you must've missed some important detail. But no, the article says exactly what you said it does.
What a perfect example of the intersection of the free market and the tragedy of the commons.
Privatization, regulation, collectivization, adaptive fees / "market pricing" - these are solutions proposed to situations which resemble the tragedy of the commons, in order that we can avoid the worst case scenario associated with continued individually-incentivized over-exploitation.
The term refers to situations where these incentives operating on a common good line up in a way which is potentially self-destructive to the system - not strictly to situations where they've already destroyed the system.
edit: proper link
It simply isn't possible for things to happen the way you describe them.
Prices are a function of supply and demand. When you say "nut trees require a lot of water, and thus nut prices are going up in the current drought" this implies that supply of nuts went down during the drought. Otherwise, consumers would have no reason to care about the amount of water required to produce nuts.
Given this, "CA farmers are increasing nut trees acreage" must be an incomplete picture. Even if some farmers are increasing acreage, there must be others who are decreasing by even more, otherwise prices would be going down, not up.
That was not the claim. The claim was that an decrease in supply of one input (water) could drive market conditions which lead to an increase in consumption (in the course of production) of another input (land use).
I don't think it's that much of a stretch to think that instability in market prices for a good may cause odd market behavior that has consequences in related areas.
Sure.
> When you say "nut trees require a lot of water, and thus nut prices are going up in the current drought" this implies that supply of nuts went down during the drought.
No, it doesn't. It could equally (in a real market with humans instead of an ideal market with rational actors -- particularly, in a market in which the perfect information assumption of rational choice theory does not hold) mean that demand for nuts increased because purchasers (not necessarily consumers -- nuts are purchased by lots of processed-food makers) expected supply to decrease in the drought, and there was a desire to stock up before that occurred.
> if some farmers are increasing acreage, there must be others who are decreasing by even more, otherwise prices would be going down, not up.
Even if we assume that the price increase must be supply driven (rather than demand driven based on price expectations based on beliefs about future supply), this is wrong, because it assumes that production per acre is constant, rather than, e.g., declining in a drought. If production on the same land use drops in a drought, then you could have reduced supply driving prices up without reducing land use -- depending on elasticity, this could conceivably even increase the total revenue of almonds sold -- leading to increased incentives to bring more acreage into production.
>Even if we assume that the price increase must be supply driven...
That doesn't matter to me, I was arguing against a specific mechanism. I never said there was no reason that more acreage might be used. I said that the reasoning of the poster was wrong.
depending on elasticity, this could conceivably even increase the total revenue of almonds sold
It really couldn't. If you are, as you say, assuming prices are driven by supply and demand, and there are no demand shocks, then total revenue must go down. That is econ 101.
If that's what you learned in that class, you should ask for a refund. If the demand curve is relatively steep (i.e. not elastic), then a supply shock (e.g. a drought) could change price drastically while changing quantity very little. This is not an uncommon situation, especially with respect to food commodities.
[EDIT:] Haha whoops! I certainly didn't intend to tell you anything about your own field. I think that in this case you might be missing important details about the situation on the ground. Irrigation water isn't auctioned off to the highest-bidding farmer. Rather, different farmers have rights to various amounts of water, and those rights are ordered so that some farmers will get nothing in a drought while others will get the same amount they get every year. So, while the industry as a whole has not profited from the supply shock we're discussing, the "lucky" farmers with senior water rights certainly have.
Consider the limit as demand becomes (locally) infinitely inelastic. Then a shift of input costs of X will cause the price to change by X. Total volume (call it Y) of goods sold stays the same and total revenue increases by YX. Total revenues net of costs remain the same since total costs increased by YX.
The main point here is that markets don't do weird counterintuitive things, at least in a partial equilibrium analysis. Shocks to the costs of inputs always result in less production and less profit.
[Reply to edit] No offense taken, I shouldn't have said "econ 101" in the first place since it could be interpreted as disparaging. What I meant is that once we accept the assumptions of partial equilibrium analysis, it really constrains what can happen, and it can be shown by simple well known theory. And you were right, I wrote "revenue" when I should have written "profit".
I'm sure that what you are saying about water rights is true, but I'm simply arguing that the increased "cost" of water must move the supply curve of nuts up (at every point) not down. This shift of the supply curve might cause some people to stop growing and others to start, there is nothing in the theory that contradicts that. But everything in this thread still fits into partial equilibrium analysis.
CA farmers are increasing nut trees acreage because nut trees require a lot of water, and thus nut prices are going up in the current drought, and thus the farmers are rushing to increase the production of such profitable product. (Heard on NPR)
Taken by itself, this contradicts neoclassical economics, no matter how charitably you read it. If it were implied there were more complex mechanisms whereby acreage increased even while total production decreased (as neoclassical economics implies it must), then the statement could not use the words "because" and "thus" in the way it did.
You and others have implied that I was wrong because the conclusion that nut tree acreage increased is still possible, but I never said it wasn't. I think it's perfectly fine, and important, to critique an argument as opposed to a conclusion. If I let this slide, then should I also nod and smile when someone argues that people should buy local since it makes everyone richer?
That doesn't make sense. Consumers have no reason to care why prices change. Do you really think that when there is a drought, consumers increase the amount of nuts that they consume at a given price, because they find the price reasonable due to the drought?
It's a mistake to rely on simple supply-and-demand to analyse this situation because laws of supply and demand are generally considered in an atmosphere of perfect competition, and ceteris parabus - all other factors being held equal other than the water cost, in this case.
It's a bigger mistake to assume consumers behave in ways that make no sense, in order to justify someone else's verbal argument (which made no reference to why consumers would act a certain way, and probably didn't even consider the issue).
Consumers have no reason to care why prices change.
In a world of pure supply and demand considerations that would be true. but as I've pointed out, we don't live in that world. We live in a world where many consumers are experiencing the same drought as the nut growers, and are aware of the impact it could have on prices, either because they live in the same place as where the nuts are grown or because they like to read the news.
Do you really think that when there is a drought, consumers increase the amount of nuts that they consume at a given price, because they find the price reasonable due to the drought?
No, and I didn't say that they did. I said they "accept that nut prices go up." Someone who enjoys nuts will limit their consumption if prices go up so much that the nuts are no longer affordable, but if they only go up a bit that person may consume the same amount of nuts they did before at a higher price because there isn't a suitable substitute. In other words, consumer preferences can result in inelasticity of demand.
It's a bigger mistake to assume consumers behave in ways that make no sense, in order to justify someone else's verbal argument (which made no reference to why consumers would act a certain way, and probably didn't even consider the issue).
Except a) this is an issue I happen to already be familiar with and b) I find consumers' behavior quite rational when I consider the totality of the circumstances.
None of this explains how knowledge of supply shocks would change a consumer's intrinsic demand for nuts.
>In other words, consumer preferences can result in inelasticity of demand.
Earlier you said As long as nut prices are going up faster than nut costs, so will nut acreage
No matter how inelastic demand is, it is impossible for prices to increase faster than costs. In the limit of infinitely inelastic demand, prices increase at the same rate as costs (all costs are passed on to the consumer).
No matter how inelastic demand is, it is impossible for prices to increase faster than costs. In the limit of infinitely inelastic demand, prices increase at the same rate as costs (all costs are passed on to the consumer).
That only obtains under perfect competition, as I already said. I'm not trying to convince you that this behavior falls out of basic economic laws, I'm saying you're looking at it in the wrong context. Please look up the terms perfect competition and monopolistic competition, or we will just be talking past each other.
As for imperfect competition (which I'm also familiar with, I have a PhD in economics), I see you mentioned it above but I still don't know why. Even if not sellers were a monopoly or oligopoly, everything I said above would apply, at least in very broad terms. You could probably come up with some demand function such that increasing input costs of a monopolistic producer resulted in an increase in production, but I don't see why you would think that actually applied here.
The world often doesn't.
Further up the thread is the citation that the thing you insist can't happen... is happening. Might be time to adjust your economic theories.
> I have a model of economics which makes sense to me
> Here is a case in the real world that breaks my model
> The real world must be wrong.
It makes economics resemble religious ideology rather than an attempt to understand and predict real-world behaviors.
Farmers and ranchers don't just use muni water sources. Yes, water is common when you look at the water table, but muni water districts tend to use reservoirs and farmers must use water rights (which are built into the California Constitution, BTW).
Nut farmers may be in a position to use more water (I doubt all of them are), but that doesn't mean that all California farmers are able to do the same. California rice farmers, for example, (farming rice in an arid near-desert should almost be a crime) have been netting more money by leasing their water rights than working their crops for years now.[1]
[1] http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_26181042/high-bidding-...
If you think that Glenn, Butte, and Tehama counties are deserts I strongly urge you to visit them, especially in the early spring. There's just water everywhere.
I wish there would be a good way to link related stories on HN, because what you describe is what I was referring to in a comment to a story about plastic-ball-based sun roofs for water reservoirs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10052633
It's a little more complicated than that. When it comes to produce, I think you are right being able to grow year round is a huge advantage. But, many of the nuts and stone fruit grown in California would actually do better if were cooler (better fruit set, fewer pests). What is very compelling about California agriculture is the dry, low humidity summers that prevent crop damage and at least in the central valley, quite possibly the best agricultural soil on the planet. Of course the federal and state water projects also help a lot by increasing access to water and historically have been a huge indirect government subsidy to CA agriculture.
> If you're growing inside, then you might as well grow where the water/people are.
California has a population approaching 40 million.
I think the Salinas Valley in California is even a stronger contender for this title than the Central Valley.
Well, no, you want to, ideally, grow where the water is but the people aren't. Because otherwise agricultural use and human use are competing for space in the same high-demand areas, and driving the prices up for each other. It may be even be worth moving some water to where the people aren't to support growing to permit this, given the normal tendency for people to also be where the water is.
(Even though the effect of automatically-provided water is to nudge people away from drinks that require plants and therefore more water to produce...)
I wonder when we will finally admit that we need to watch what foods we consume. Casava instead of rice, soy instead of meat, etc.
You are aware there have to be tradeoffs along those various axes, right? In particular, if you rule out the use of GMOs you're shooting yourself in the foot with regards to achieving other goals in a short timeframe.
If we just grew food where the water is, we wouldn't be having so much fuss over agriculture in the desert.
Food will continue to grow in California, because the support systems for wide scale farming are present, until the support systems develop elsewhere the farming won't move either.
The numbers at the provided link reveal the picture, talking about California having ~200,000 acres of grain corn and the US having 87 million acres of corn.
(As an aside, in my limited experience, Europeans might not know that corn on the cob as eaten in the US is always sweet corn, and that modern varieties barely need to be cooked, pretty much just heated through. Methods vary, but just a minute or two of boiling is pretty common.)
I suspect there's a reason why green is a common favorite color; it's a sign of life and vitality. Have there been any studies of mental health in areas without many green lawns?
Of course, there are less thirsty plants that can provide greenery.
EDIT: Cambria is in one of only three Monterrey Pine forests in CA, essentially an urban forest. The drought has exacerbated the pitch canker and beetle infestations. Forty per cent of the pine trees died last year. I lost four of the five on my property. Another four had died earlier. We are in danger of an explosive urban fire like the Oakland hills fire of 1991. One huge problem is the pines are protected. You cannot cut down one without a permit at $125 + $25 for each additional tree, plus restoration requirements. Most lots are small and close together so it may cost up to $2000 to cut down a tree. I had only four and I said screw the permit. But my neighbor has hundreds. It will cost millions to clear out the dead trees in town, but no state or federal grants seem to be forthcoming, but if you dont cut down your trees, after all the red tape, you get fined.
The other Australians in the forum thought that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
So...a place with spiders so big that people consider tipping over a refrigerator a reasonable approach to killing them, or a place with earthquakes.
I'll take the earthquakes!
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDk9FPZVMDQ
Actually as far as dangerous animals here they are pretty rare in the cities where most people live. I grew up on a farm and snakes there were very common (not too many spiders though). I would run across a deadly snake around once or twice a week except during winter when they were hibernating. I was never bitten, but I did catch quite a few - it is not too hard to do as long as you use a long stick and have a strong bag without any holes to put them into.
Cambria is only 6,000 people, so, yeah, it probably could.
> To allow a situation to continue that puts dead trees ahead of human life is totally insane.
Except that fire is a standard part of the lifecycle of those trees. So, that town is in the middle of a known fire hazard area. And, given the population age and that there are practically no jobs other than tourism in the area, most of the people probably chose to buy a house there after they made their money elsewhere.
This is kind of like people who get flooded after they build a house in a flood plain.
A couple of decades ago I was on the board of a small mutual water company on Skyline above Woodside. We were having trouble meeting water quality standards, no serious violations, but the county was hassling us. We built a desal plant strictly for filtering water and removing minerals. Worked like a charm.
Except that you seem to conveniently omit the fact that there were also anti-tax people complaining about the unfair burden it would put on ratepayers.
In addition, part of the whole deal is that a desalinization plant is intended to allow more people into the area rather than simply servicing the existing ones.
Finally, I have a better solution. Let's shut down the town. It would be cheaper to dump all your sorry asses somewhere that has desalinization already.
Now, how about that solution? Oh, you don't like that solution? Gee, perhaps there's a bit of tension between different groups and the different solutions?
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/03/18/3544036/cambria-wate...
In nominating the Cambria project, GWI said the fast-tracked construction of the project “is unprecedented in California” and “sets a new benchmark for what is achievable in the face of severe water stress.”
...
The nomination also said, “Although the city had looked at seawater desalination before, Governor (Jerry) Brown’s declaration of a drought emergency freed up the possibility of developing an alternative brackish water option, which was exempt from a burdensome environmental review process, enabling it to move ahead in record time.”
If you want to see what life is like without environmental regulations take a trip to any major Chinese city. Has the pendulum maybe swung too far in the us? Perhaps, certainly in some ways and combined with nimby zoning there's certainly a lot of room for improvement. But in other ways it's worked great and with climate change you could argue the reverse.
I also note that one of the things that makes life more difficult for the water situation there is that they lost use of an aquifer due to gasoline contamination by Chevron.
BTW, The link to the Tribune just goes to their front page, but that's always problem if one is not a subscriber.
The original desal plant wasnt just looked at. It was fully funded as demonstration desal plant in 2009 by Obama's jobs program.. It was finally killed by the Coastal Commission's refusal to allow the drilling of a test well on the beach to measure water flow.
I'm not against environmental regulation. I certainly wouldnt want to live China or even Texas. We need more or more effective. Dont get me going on Wall street or regulatory capture or Citizens United.
Next winter, there was a windstorm and a tree fell on a neighbors house.
Well then some hooligans might poison those trees and oh look, now they are completely dead (easier to do than you might think, copper nails driven in will do the trick).
Unfortunately by the time the law envisions the new rules being fully implemented — 2040 — aquifers across the state are likely to be permanently damaged or destroyed by over-pumping.
http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2013/12/21/c...
And here's an article with the timeline for the law's implementation:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140917-calif...
That fact alone tells you a lot. Some formations are more resilient; these tend to experience less subsidence. In systematic terms, sticky bag vs rigid tank.
In a sad, and very close to home, way Sunnyvale has been drawing more heavily on wells in the area to back fill water allocations and that appears to have created some subsidence near my home.
But from a technical point of view, one wonders if it would be possible to build replacement aquifers underground. I'm imagining something related to a tunnel boring machine but leaves behind a structure capable of holding water and supporting the ground above itself when "empty" sort of a loose lattice network of structures.
For example, all three Chunnel tunnels add up to less than 4500 acre-feet in volume.
- Land subsiding (sinking) which permanently lowers the capacity of the aquifer
- Chemical and pH composition changes, which can limit the usefulness of water drafted in the future
- Irreversible damage to native aquatic ecosystems, where the water table reaches the surface, which would have normally survived the drought.
I view the law more as a warning to the agribusinesses than anything else.
Up until now, the agribusinesses assumed they had free rein. The fact that laws are now on books is a warning that if they don't start taking action, more laws are coming that will be far more immediate.
California has a proposition system. If the people aren't getting water, they will vote to shut down farming.
Am I reading this wrong? The "1000 gallons" seems superfluous since we're already talking about percentages. Replace it with "gallon of water" or even "amount of water" and the 70% doesn't change.
"Nearly halved tomato water requirements" sounds fairly impressive to me.
If you bake 100 brownies, you satisfy the requirement of baking at least 10 brownies, as well as the requirement of baking at least 10 to 20 brownies.
Exactly. I was there in April. It was surreal to me how normal everything seemed to me. I do not think reality sets in until you run out, which has happened to some towns in the Central Valley.
Edit: also, the fact that some residential areas are not metered seems nuts: http://www.mercurynews.com/science/ci_25303957/california-dr...
I understand that personal use is nothing compared to agricultural use, but it's as if everyone will continue business as usual until all the water is gone, and then it feels like "shrug oh well guess we'll move".
This has happened before and in the past the state made a big deal about it and everyone panicked. But before we ran out of water, the biggest deluge of water hit California in decades and the populous prayed for sun instead.
In March people were claiming the state had 12 months of water remaining. Lets assume that number is holding and we've got about 7 months of water left.
If the entire state simply halted all urban and industrial water use, that would buy about 3 extra weeks before the state runs out of water. And that is in a scenario where 40 million people (and all non-ag industry) simply cease to consume water at all.
Not washing cars or watering lawns is a great emotional gesture, but nothing short of real policy or weather changes will make any meaningful difference.
The stuff california implements now has been standard here for decades, and we have more water than we can use.
http://www.enlight-inc.com/blog/?p=1036
The story that keeps circulating on the internet is that a guy in Colorado was fined for doing just for that. But looking at it more closely you find he was damming creeks on his property and building holding ponds (essentially lakes), which is subject to standard environmental regulations.
http://water.state.co.us/DWRIPub/Documents/DWR_RainwaterFlye...
Anyway, there is nothing inherently "anti-government" about pointing out what is and is not proscribed by the law.
I've lived in SoCal for about three years and even in that short time the changes brought on by the drought have been substantial.
https://www.calwater.com/latest_news/july-conservation-progr...
Actually, why would Europe institute such measures in the first place? They aren't suffering from drought. In a non drought situation why would you undertake such measures? The reason desalination plants aren't commonly built is that if you have adequate water alternatives, they actually hurt the environment, so there's no benefit.
And most Germans use toilets that never fill the bowl and only rush about 1 liter of water to save water (the new ones without poop shelf, at least).
Why we do this? (a) efficiency, (b) water is expensive, even though we have more than we can use.
Actually, in my city people use so little water that the water company (despite population growth) has to clean the pipes artificially, because they were designed to self-clean from the constant water stream, but people just don’t use enough water for that. (Why they have to be cleaned? We have insane CaCO3 concentrations in the water. Wash clothes, and your jeans can stand on their own).
The reason for this is that lawns and pools aren't the problem. The problem is, and continues to be agricultural use of water. You could rip out literally every single lawn and golf course in the entire state of California today and the impact it would have on statewide water use would be within the margin of error for measurement. We're talking literally less than 5% of total water usage.
The scope of this problem is so massive that most people have difficulty comprehending it, both due to the massive amount of water involved, and the massive amount of land area involved. People think all the lawns cover a huge surface area. It's a rounding error compared to the size of the industrial farms in the Central Valley and the amount of water they use.
Some crops in particular use far more water than others as well. The two biggest offenders are almonds and alfalfa. If we temporarily stopped growing those two crops in California, the crisis would be literally non-existent. The entire cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco use about 800,000 acre-feet of water per year COMBINED.[1] Alfalfa growers in California are using 5.3 MILLION acre feet of water.[2]
On top of that, Alfalfa contributes so little to the California economy that we could buy out the entire Alfalfa growing industry in this state and it would only cost a total of about two dollars per resident.
Most people are already fairly water conscious, and don't go around wantonly wasting it, so when they're asked to further cut back an additional 20% on their water use and threatened with increased fees and fines if they don't, they tend not to be too happy about it. Especially when you take into account the fact that household water use(drinking water, showers, toilets, cooking, lawns, swimming pools, sprinklers and such) accounts for roughly 3%[2] of total use in the entire state, why should we all suffer, cut back, put up with low-flow showerheads, drain our pools, let our lawns die and leave piss sitting in our toilets to save 20% of 3%? All that to save 0.6% of the total water used in the state? Sorry, but no.
Read over link [2] below in it's entirety, it has great data and really provides some excellent perspective on the state's water issues.
[1] http://www.pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/n...
[2] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...
that's interesting - you could say that if you can convince just 10% of people in california (4mil people) to donate $20 bucks, they can reduce the drought problem by half. I'd say that should be agreeable for most, except for the alfalfa related industries...
Do what? Please do tell us what will fix the problem and we'll do it.
The problem is that there is nothing that the average consumer can now do that will materially affect the situation.
Southern California is building desalinization plants. That's something that local communities near the ocean will do. That can solve the water problem for many people.
However, the only real way to solve the water problem in California is to shut down agriculture in the Central Valley. There is no other option.
http://ttv.mit.edu/videos/31839-california-water-2015-felici...
I'm pretty sure we could tell the almonds to take a hike and not even notice.
Based on what? Are you just making up numbers? By round numbers, it seems to be around 10% of agriculture. This report states that it is 15%, but the report is funded by the Almond Board and is probably making generous assumptions [1].
[1] http://aic.ucdavis.edu/almonds/Economic%20Impacts%20of%20Cal...
The Water Knife is interesting to the extent that it creates a new sort of dystopian world, but then it doesn't do anything with it.
I wanted to see characters evolve, the balance of power shift, or a meaningful escape. Instead it was just competing actors chasing a shiny object, a silly miscommunication, and then everything goes back to normal.
For probably over a century in fact. And California has pioneered environmental laws for decades as well, going back to about (or "at least"?) the 1960's.
Salt Dreams is a fascinating book about the history of water usage, the Colorado River and the Salton Sea going back hundreds of years, to before the existence of the Salton Sea. I also recently read a history of another water use district in the Central Valley. I cannot recall the name of that book, but the history of water usage and water law in California is rich and fascinating and a lot of pioneering things have happened out here.
I'm growing food in the backyard with it and it is awesome.
It uses much less water and is much less of a hassle. Better yields too.
(Btw: don't buy products which contain palm oil due to the prevalence of "green washed" intermediaries lying to downsteam suppliers, which in turn leads to persistent forest -clearing fires and land theft in places like Borneo and Indonesia to grow massive palm oil plantations to make cheap, Western consumer goods.)
So California had water shortage and they decided to use the resource wisely? Everyone except federal government knows that you can spend the resource you dont have.
I would like to know why California as a state and other cities have not invested in increasing number of reservoirs, not allowed desalination and other things despite the population of California has doubled in last 30 years. Part of this is the bone headed environmentalists who would rather save few trouts than saving human beings but I think the the local bodies arent putting up a fight either.
What's described is a large polluted source of water and presumably it's being filtered with microscopic screen filters. While I'm sure if I were aware of the engineering behind it, that I would agree that it was potable and sanitary, just reading it sounds kind of iffy.