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Comment by glitcher | Hacker News Reader

Yes, and the media is very guilty of pushing this narrative that households need to be held responsible for rationing water, when the Arizona Department of Water Resources openly shares this data:

"Irrigated agriculture is the largest user of water in Arizona, consuming about 74 percent of the available water supply." https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture

"In Arizona, approximately 15 percent of the water supply is for commercial, industrial and institutional uses." https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/commercial-industrial

So it's on us to do everything we can to optimize the last 10% of all the available water.

To be clear I think we all should do our part, but there are so many misleading news stories that fail to even acknowledge the reality of our water distribution.

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Well hey, what else are you expecting those farms in the middle of the desert to use? I mean, my great great great grandpappy put this farm here and it's basically communism to take away our unlimited free and nearly-free water.

Speaking of desert farms: California feeds the US. https://stacker.com/stories/3183/states-biggest-agriculture-...

So, not exactly. California just shows up as #1 because of the total value of the crop. Look at the moneymaker: “Fruit, Tree nuts”. That’s Grapes (for wine) and Almonds. Both crops are non-essential (speaking scientifically). Others are important, but also fall lower on the spectrum of key essentials.

California is important but remove Grapes and Almonds and some of the other non essentials (like avocados, sweet potatoes, etc) and California is somewhere at the bottom of the top 10.

Compare that to #2 on the list, Iowa. If Iowa didn’t produce the $17bn of “grains, oilseeds, dry beans, etc”, then large swaths of the Americas experience severe nutrition issues.

I love California and live here, but let’s not kid ourselves - the Midwest feeds the US

Yes, the do produce and the midwest isn't a state. https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2020_Exports_Publica...

Thanks for posting that. It simply proves my point. Add up the non-essential products (almonds, grapes, etc) and remove that from the total. You will see the total output of CA agriculture drops significantly.

You know what I meant when I said “Midwest”.

Again, the point of the article was that drought conditions are occurring and, in CA, 75% of the water consumption is due to “agriculture” as has been stated above, and after removing commercial uses, only 11% is residential.

My insinuation is that (1) Agriculture is the key impactor of drought conditions, (2) when policy makers and those with your opinions talk about the problem being irrigated water uses, it’s always deflected as “CA feeds the US, we have to protect it” giving the industry a free pass, (3) If we put in policy, like paying fairly for water, the industry would be impacted negatively, but as your document proves - it wouldn’t substantially impact core nutrition of the US - just the convenience of a bunch of rich wine and charcuterie consumers.

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