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Comment by cracker_jacks | Hacker News Reader

Has one of the fundamental components (water) for farming changed at all in recent years? Perhaps there hasn't been enough of a market force for innovation after the advent of irrigation.

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well just increased globalization in the last couple of decades. California produces lots of crops and most of it isn't even consumed by Californians. The California water crisis is basically just a product of a globalized economy. Non-Californians are getting their food using California's water.

Having grown up in the California central valley (the Ag capital of the country), it's really sad to see the state flora and fauna suffer so that people who live on the other side of the planet can get almonds.

Farmers in many areas have long been pumping out groundwater from wells at unsustainable rates. In recent years some of those wells have started running dry, or governments have imposed restrictions.

A lot of farmers in the US pay heavily subsidized prices for water, this market inefficiency is just going to lead to sadness down the line - either farmers are getting a really good deal or residential customers are being heavily exploited (or, most likely, both).

The Isreali's have done fairly incredible things with drip irrigation as a way of farming the same amount of food with much less water.

They've been using that expertise to help out the Indians.

Didn't much of Spain switch to drip irrigation / greenhouse farming? That would be innovation, right?

Drip irrigation is not foolproof. If there isn’t enough water the salinity of the soil increases until eventually it can’t support plants anymore and you end up with something that looks more like Iraq. I’m not sure what that means for greenhouses.

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