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Comment by jb510 | Hacker News Reader

80% of water in California is used by agriculture, we’ll stop “stealing” water when you all stop “stealing” Cattle and Dairy, Almonds, Grapes, Lettuce, Strawberries, Tomatoes, and more a that we grow with water. Unless you’d rather buy that all shipped in from South America instead….

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Get Iowa to grow your almonds which alone would solve the water problem. Almonds are by far the top crop in California in terms of both acres harvested and production value. The most recent data shows there were about 1.25 million acres of almond trees, the production value for which is more than $5.6 billion. [0]. Almonds make up almost 13 percent of the California's total irrigated farmland using 9 percent of the state's ag water.

[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Less-rice-more-n...

If only there was some way for the sale price of a bag of almonds to incorporate the costs of the materials required to produce the almonds.

Sure, we'll just grow it in the midwest, ie, the rest of the country. Only reason we grow mostly corn is because of subsidies. That can be easily changed. If you're suggesting CA is the only viable farmland in the country, you are mistaken.

You can't grow any of the mediterranean/mid-east fruit or nut trees in the midwest as they are killed by frost. That rules out most of the stuff that California is famous for exporting - almonds, pistachios, citrus. Many of the ones that do grow won't be commercially competitive - the seasons can be short. And of course, unlike corn, you're going to have to find people to pick all this fruit.

Respectfully disagree. We can engineer the 150k nuts acres to grow just fine. Or Modify the plants to be cold tolerant. We know a lot about Plant genetics and physiology. Just haven’t had the incentive.

California exports $5bn worth of almonds a year. That's plenty of incentive. What you are talking about is science fiction - it literally doesn't exist. Humanity has been growing almonds for 5000 years and they're still killed by frost. The trees take five years to reach maturity - this is research that takes decades, if not lifetimes.

> We know a lot about Plant genetics and physiology.

lol, no we don't. We can't even make grocery store food that doesn't taste like crap. Sometimes fruit trees skip a season - why? Nobody knows. Sure, we've gotten pretty good at messing around with corn, but it's simple, forgiving, not eaten fresh, and planted from seed every year. It's basically a model organism.

Not true. Nuts that can be grown in Iowa include black walnuts, Persian (so-called “English”) walnuts, heartnuts, pecans and other hickory nuts, hazels, almonds, chestnuts, and perhaps a few other minor species. [0]

[0] https://practicalfarmers.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Tom-...

I don't think that's the only reason, and it is not by choice either. California weather is more temperate than the rest of the US and it is more suitable for many types of crops compared to the rest of the US.

We can engineer the crops (plant breeding) or engineer the water (current system). Eastern geographies that are rain fed could replace CA production no problem

No. Firstly because California doesn't grow crops, it grows fruit and nuts, that grow on trees. Secondly because look, flavor and shelf-life all matter for these far more than crops, one cannot simply conjure up the desired properties. It's hard enough to create decent commercial fruit varietals as it is - a vast amount of effort and research has gone into creating the fruit and veg you see in the supermarket and there's already plenty of money to be had if you can, say, improve the self-life of an avocado without making it taste lousy. This work takes decades.

Appreciate your comments but your simply wrong or misunderstanding what biologists can do.

Also, those nuts and fruits and avacados you currently like weren’t bred for taste. Likely bred for transportability and shelf life. That’s why export markets exist is the produce can withstand long journeys with variable parameters and arrive “fresh”.

Thirdly, to another comment you make saying engineering acres is science fiction while building a water canal is less so. We can build retractable roofs and keep heat and light in pretty easy. Glass houses and/or greenhouses can likely be scaled up to replace whatever CA crop you seem to think is untouchable. Those crops can and do grow just fine in other places. Maybe not year round but there exists options to fix that and remove CA from equation

Lastly, i see many people chiding the subsidies of corn and soy and wheat. What do they think the water in the Central Valley is if not a subsidy? Farmers most certainly are not paying a fair market price. Artificially low. But it’s ok. We need food. No point in bashing subsidies without proper context.

But then how would I get all my vegetables out of season ? I don't want to know what season it is. I don't want to have to know what season it is. Don't make me think about cycles of nature or cycles of astrophysics. I live in a timeless, seasonless, natureless intellectual vacuum. I want avocados. Period.

I think we need a come-to-Jesus talk about almonds. The water required per nut is not sustainable.

The water consumed per calorie of almond is well within the range of other crops. And I do think it's important to measure on a per calorie basis rather than weight, because otherwise all you're doing is proxying water.

Yep! 5th largest producer of food in the world.

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