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> Are there no better-irrigated places in the US to grow all these crops?

There are plenty of better irrigated places, but none so warm and bright. I think that's a major challenge; the amount of light and heat south and west from Colorado is incredible, and growing a lot of crops without that year-round opportunity and productivity is virtually impossible.

There is also the problem that places with naturally high amounts of rain tend to have more acidic, treed, less arable soils. Around the Colorado river there were of course dry, barely arable, hard-to-farm lands which required extensive conditioning, but a lot of it mostly required water to bring it to life. Some of the ecology was oak meadow or brush, which was far easier to convert to farm land than a cedar and fir forest.

Another thing to consider is that the rest of the USA, including places with more water, are already growing other crops. The centre of the USA from north to south is quite active in agriculture, and actually more so than the east and west. If you wanted to grow more things away from the Colorado River, where would you do it?

We need more arable land, we need to grow more climate-appropriate crops, and... Well, we need to eat more plants. We can get by just fine if we dedicate fewer crops and less water to raising meat. It's a hard solution psychologically, but an extremely effective one technically.

Well remember that 40% of the U.S. corn crop is used to produce ethanol. Ethanol use can be eliminated (electric cars and getting rid of the ethanol subsidies...). Land and climate good enough for corn is good enough for other crops.

Absolutely, corn is a very nutrient, heat, and light intensive crop.

The added buffer would allow for doing crop rotations including more legumes and cover crops to reduce fertilizer usage. If we need to grow less food, we can be less demanding from the soil as well. Perhaps we could build soil rather than destroy it.

Several studies show that these models yield excellent crops with fewer inputs, but it’s hard as hell to compete when you go low and slow with ag.

I suppose as long as we want to export food, we’ll need to continue our insane resource intensive methods, ignoring the externalities, in order to stay competitive.

> Well, we need to eat more plants. We can get by just fine if we dedicate fewer crops and less water to raising meat.

What? People raise meat animals because animals can make use of non-arable land. It has been this way for millennia. (E.g., raising animals is the only way to survive on mountainous rocky slopes.)

Apparently, your solution to scarcity of arable land is to keep using more and more of it? I know hating on meat is the politically correct position right now, but come on!

This hasn’t been true since decades now. 96% of cattle is raised on grain instead of grazing. Merely 4% in the US are allowed to be called „grass fed“ and that doesn’t even mean they are grazing year round.

So fix the laws so that economics aligns with ecology, no?

The solution is to stop wasting strategic reserves of water and fertilizer to make non-arable land into arable land. Grow grass on this land instead and turn it into pasture. (Okay, so meat will be 15% more expensive.)

Making use of non-arable land in a sustainable way is why humans invented livestock in the first place.

Humans aren't herbivores, and growing crops suitable for human consumption requires enormous amounts of resources and engineering. (Essentially, terraforming on a planetary scale.) The planet's ecology can't sustain a herbivore human race.

> The planet's ecology can't sustain a herbivore human race.

quotation needed. All scientific literature (that isn't sponsored by the livestock industry) is claiming the exact opposite.

Do you understand the sheer amount of effort mankind must spend on soil engineering, irrigation, fertilizers and genetic engineering just to make grains that can feed people?

If we were forced to eat only natural plants (not plants genetically engineered though thousands of years of unnatural selection) then 99.9 percent of mankind would starve.

Meanwhile cows eat natural grass on natural pastures.

We need livestock if we want to live in balance with nature without irreversibly changing the structure of the Earth's biosphere.

> We need livestock if we want to live in balance with nature without irreversibly changing the structure of the Earth's biosphere.

We need animals, including ruminants. There’s no requirement that we breed them on a massive scale and eat them.

Before Europeans colonized North America there were 30+ million bison roaming the plains. Today, we have have 30 million beef cattle. People make it out to be like the scale is unnatural but Mother Nature is quite capable of scale herself.

The key thing here is that those bison were eating grasses and leafy greens from the wild, not from extensive grass and grain farming operations (all of which largely exclude other plant, animal, and insect life). 30 million bison roaming and grazing makes sense, but sustaining them largely off of conventional farm outputs isn't the same thing.

I think you're misinformed. As parent request, you need citations to support your honestly pretty wild claims.

Land used for growing livestock feed would in a very large part be just as suitable for human food production, and we wouldn't even use that much of it. Ruminants are not any kind of necessary part of food security, on the contrary -- without livestock large parts of current farm land could be released back to nature.

Nobody is suggesting to eat "natural plants" as neolithic gatherers might have done.

I need to see the papers you're reading about this. I've never seen anything scientific suggesting this is true, and if anything, it's the complete opposite: we need to eat plants instead, because it would actually reduce burdens on arable land while reducing overall GHG emissions.

In North America the average farm is using massive amounts of inputs from other farms. Whether it's grass or grains, these inputs from from conventional farms using fertilizers and irrigation that we could be putting into human-friendly crops. That's an insane waste of energy and resources.

Sure there are farms using fewer inputs from arable land, and that's great. Perhaps those are the only ones which should raise livestock. The rest should stop, because the inefficiency comes with externalities our countries and the world literally cannot sustain.

Any sources for your claims? I thought most were pasture raised (grass) and finished with grains like corn to fatten them up.

I used this as a source: https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-gr...

I doubt that at current consumption rates that it would even be remotely feasible to have the majority of cattle grass fed.

That article does say that only 4% is "grass-fed", but I don't think that implies 96% of beef cattle never graze, merely that they don't graze enough to meet the "grass-fed" labeling requirements.

I grew up on a small farm and from there and the other beef producers I know the practice is as parent describes. Cattle are raised on pasture then eventually auctioned off to feedlots that fatten them them up with grain a couple months before slaughter.

It's still a tremendous amount of grain.

My understanding is that USDA grass-fed labelling is dubious at best since late 2016. You need to look at trusted 3rd party labels, looking for grass fed, grain finished, or grass finished to get a sense of what was actually fed. Most cows will eat grass at some point in their lives (especially as calfs, from what I've read).

One trouble too is that grass fed NEVER strictly means pastured, and in fact, it rarely does. It can even mean they've been fed grass-based feed, which isn't whole grass but a processed feed containing grass. This is a feed that might be implemented in a feed lot, for example.

That's the next issue. When consumers think of grass fed, they imagine open fields, space, etc. No, this is not how it works; grass is still used in feed lots, and the vast majority of beef in North America comes from feed lots (recent figures indicate 95% or more). Depending on the country and farm, animals may spend the beginning of their lives with pastures, but many don't. They may then spend anywhere from a couple months to over half a year in a feed lot for finishing. These conditions are absolutely brutal, and not worth supporting in my opinion. The externalities of feed lots are absolutely absurd.

> It's still a tremendous amount of grain.

Up to 10lb per day, apparently. Imagine, in a week you could have roughly ten pounds each of 7 nutritious grains and legumes saved for a human being to eat. Lentils, peas, millet, wheat, oats, etc. That would go really far for a human being, and actually provide a lot of nutrition as whole foods. Somehow we've meandered so far from that kind of diet, but science backs it up in spades: we should be eating those things instead of using that land for feeding soy and corn to cattle.

We feed the animals from our arable land.

I used to be in your camp until I did the research. Eating meat makes no sense outside of personal enjoyment.

> Why do we still do so much farming in regions that have such marginal water supplies?

Often farmers don't pay for their water usage. Instead they paid once, long ago, for the right to some portion of the river (not sure how that's measured). As a result the amount that a farmer would save by halving their water usage is often $0, so they don't.

(This is my understanding. I heard it specifically in the context of California but assume it happens elsewhere too. Would be very interested to hear more from someone who knows the details.)

“First in time, first in right.” https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-drought-imper...

> As a result the amount that a farmer would save by halving their water usage is often $0, so they don't.

It’s even worse than that, these rights are on a “use it or lose it” basis, so not only do farmers pay very little for the water, they’re incentivised to use all they can on extremely water-intensive crops and methods, and waste the rest.

The Colorado water compact is complete insanity.

And acquirer management is no better.

We farm in Central Valley California because it has year round sunshine and good soil. California no doubt uses more water than it is allocated, but about 80% of water usage is in agriculture. And when we say agriculture it’s not just almonds that use a lot of water, it’s also Alfa Alfa and regular pastures that go in cattle feed. And despite having a much smaller percentage of the country’s farms, it produces the most amount of food. A third of the country’s vegetables and two thirds of fresh fruits and nuts are grown in California. If we could farm better elsewhere, we actually would.

Does the central valley use Colorado river water? I was under the impression they get all their water from California (esp northern areas).

> Does the central valley use Colorado river water?

No. Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountain water goes to L.A., Western Sierra water goes to the Central Valley and S.F. The Imperial Valley area of the lowest part of S. California uses Colorado River water.

No. Most Colorado river water is used for farming in the southern deserts of Imperial and Riverside counties.

Do they still have good soil? Somebody told me that Napa valley has killed its soil by using extremely aggressive grow techniques.

Good farmland also kinda turns into cities. I don't think anybody is really into bulldozing Orange County, but I think the humidity is enough that orange trees don't need a whole lot of extra water. Manhattan was also (apparently) pretty great farmland.

It would have been cool if we'd built the cities out in the desert - people need water, but it's just not the same scale. Then we could have left the great farmland for farming. We'd probably find a way to screw it up regardless. Tigris Euphrates was apparently paradise back in the day, same for the Nile. To my modern eye, they're all pretty much known for sand now.

Honestly it's pretty incredible we're, well let me rephrase that. It's incredible _you_ produce so much from a damn near desert. I get it's easier to move water than homes. Shame the good land with plenty of water got built over.

There are also perverse incentives in play here. For example, "use it or lose it" water rights.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtxew5XUVbQ @ around 8:30 mark.

I am not a farmer nor an expert.

My guess: Drier areas have fewer pests, less rain means there is less risk of flooding or crops washing away, and problems like mold or rot are rarer. Also, the sun is always shining. More photosynthesis means happier plants.

I hope someone here can share the details of the economics here. It's probably a very interesting cost-benefit analysis.

Historically these areas supported very low population densities so it wasn’t a problem.

The lab was fertile but arid: enter waterworks and irrigation. Great fecund farmland! For a few adventurous farmers.

And then came the droves upon droves upon droves of people who now live in what is arid but land of mild climate and desert land, but for artificial irrigation.

Add to that: proximity to major ports for international distribution and no tornadoes or hail

> Why do we still do so much farming in regions that have such marginal water supplies?

You know how you can still buy fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store in the middle of winter? Lots of those are grown in the western deserts. If you’re willing to give up year-round fresh produce, we could consider removing farming from these areas. But most people wouldn’t want that.

Agriculture here means mostly feed for livestock. Decreasing meat production and consumption would do an immense amount.

> Why do we still do so much farming in regions that have such marginal water supplies?

If a region has surplus water, and is reasonably flat, it will get used for agriculture until it becomes marginal.

Also global warming is changing the distribution of rainfall and evaporation, so that there may be less water available in the first place.

> Are there no better-irrigated places in the US to grow all these crops?

"There's a great region for agriculture here, but we have nobody to farm it" -- a thing nobody has said in the US since about the foundation of Oklahoma

The sun shines a lot more in California and Arizona (those are yer big Colorado river agricultural states) than it does other places. So, with enough water, the yield per acre of land per year is rather high.

The same sun shines during a lot more of the year in CA and AZ. Folks like their year-round fresh vegetables.

Even with a good hot house in the middle West or the north East, the yield per acre per year won't be as high. Until the water runs out in the Western states, after which I reckon it'll be quite a bit higher.

Not so hypothetical: here's a $11.99 lettuce in Australia last month. (Admittedly 'only' $8.30 in freedom dollars.)

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/jun/03/why-does-this-i...

> Why do we still do so much farming in regions that have such marginal water supplies?

Because they are ideal in other ways (potential growing season, soil, etc.) and people like to eat.

> Are there no better-irrigated places in the US to grow all these crops

Probably not that don't have other disadvantages, if they aren't already being used for agriculture. Note that about 52% of US land area is already used for that purpose.