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Comment by echelon | Hacker News Reader

I get how you would come to believe that if you didn't have one.

Let's ban avocados, too! They're an incredible waste of water and resources. (I can't stand how they taste, so this wouldn't affect me.)

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I grew up in suburban America, and live within a major metropolitan area. I have had lawns. Over the years with what I have learned, I came to the conclusion that lawns as they are generally developed are a big waste, and there are better ways to achieve what I can get out of a lawn.

And yes, avacados use up a lot of water, as do nuts. Our food system is built on top of shipping food far away to where it is consumed rather than growing locally. And yes, growing locally means giving up some things, being more attuned to seasonality, and growing and consuming alternate varieties and foods with equivalent nutrition.

It sounds absurd to say, get rid of all the avacados, but to me, it is absurd we are cloning avacados and wrecking a lot of ecologies in order to ship them far away to people. And I like avacados and giving them up has an effect on me.

Shipping food from where water is to where it isn't is fine.

Dunno why farmers here sell undried, oh sorry, "fresh" corn for a premium when it saves them drying + storage costs.

Shipped food are bred for monocropping and transport. Tomatoes in grocery stores, for example, are chosen for its uniform shape and ability to be stored and transported. They are not bread for taste or nutritional value. That is also leaving aside having to depend on the global supply chain and cheap transport for food. Which is more costly and fragile than developing local food sources and food sovereignty.

Still depends on the food. Even local tomatoes and other “fresh” crops will be the same mono-cropping garbage unless you hunt down niche stuff at a farmer’s market (or in my case, grow your own!)

Yes, the most local food are the ones that are grown at home. When you add seed-saving, there is an opportunity to breed landraces specific to your environment, taste, and nutritional density.

No transport on refrigerated trucks needed. Onsite compost complements the whole setup. Then you add greywater for the perennial food forest.

Growing avocados where your lawn used to be would be a good change. At least you can eat those, it isn't just a decoration

Not necessarily avocados, however, cultivating a perennial food forest in the yard or on municipal land is a thing.

Even growing ornamental native grasses or meadows instead of fescue help the native ecology.

Well, lawns are the worst culprit in the “urban water use” category, so the true comparison is “let’s ban beef cattle” and that will become an increasingly less crazy-sounding idea in the coming years (especially in the US West)

Avocados use an order of magnitude less water than beef.

I happen to be forced by the city to maintain a green lawn. That's why I came to believe this.

There’s a authoritarian law you don’t like, so you hope to seize power and pass the opposite authoritarian law.

How about trying for a truce instead?

American politics in a nutshell.

Apply to be a federally protected wildlife habitat. My daughter did that in a city in Indiana. Ripped out her 'lawn' and replanted with native grasses and things to promote butterfly and bee habitats. The city hates that they can't fine her anymore.

https://www.nwf.org/garden-for-wildlife/certify

Almonds too. They are a terrible use of water and can literally kill people.

Which is nuts (no pun intended), because there are nut trees that can grow well in arid and semi-arid conditions.

The thing is, in order to maximize commercial yields for shipping almonds far away, we end up with agricultural practiced that deplete soil and water resources.

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