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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

This is basically classic arbitrage. Water in the American West is badly mispriced, so ranchers in China, Japan and Saudi Arabia are essentially buying this water for a very low price because their own water price is very high.

I'm hoping there is eventually enough outrage in these areas to change policy. Especially in California, where they are forcing people to rip up their lawns and trying to guilt folks into feeling horrible if they take a shower a minute too long, meanwhile they're doing nothing about what is actually the biggest cause of the problem.

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It drives me absolutely bonkers when I see someone complain about some new apartments "because water". I live in a city in the west where there's a pretty severe housing shortage, and water is also a concern.

But when you dig into the water issue... it's all agriculture, and even there they have so much leeway to eliminate waste. I saw an exhibit at the airport of a "pipe" they dug up less than 5 years ago that was made of wood squeezed together with bailing wire.

The "Total Water Use" chart here is pretty similar throughout much of the West:

https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/update/2021/5/5/droug...

And denser housing tends to use water more efficiently.

Edit: dug up a picture of that pipe I took. https://photos.app.goo.gl/PisNhiA81Rsw45Rx8

It's frustrating that there is no political way to prices water at real cost rather than use archaic water rights. I can't even see a reform to water rights major conflicts in those communities given the very real impact on people's lives and the common "don't tread on me"-attitude.

Yes, it's pretty bad.

Around Bend, where I live, there isn't a ton of 'serious' agriculture. Lots of hobby farms and some alfalfa operations, but the climate isn't really conducive to growing a lot. We're just a bit too high up to reliably grow many things commercially.

Further down the Deschutes river, in Jefferson county, there are a lot of real farms that produce much more important crops ("Approximately 55% of the US domestic market carrot variety seed production is grown in Jefferson County").

Guess who has more water rights?

I like the carrot honey from the carrot seed producers. Pretty unique to eastern Oregon as most places have cross-pollination with varieties to grow carrots for seed and the places that grow carrots for carrots don't get flowers so they don't produce honey.

> ... but the climate isn't really conducive to growing a lot. We're just a bit too high up to reliably grow many things commercially.

Didn't you answer your own question here?

Our water in Central Oregon does help to grow things though. One of our biggest water sources is snow melt, which get transported down a canal to farms in southern Oregon. So even though water locally may be used for any serious farming locally, it does get used for serious farming water down stream.

The canals go around central Oregon, but not to southern Oregon.

Cool to see someone else from Bend here though!

Here in Bend also! There is also a lot of water that gets used up out on the East side of Bend on Old Deschutes Highway for ya, pretty much hobby farms for Horses.

It's because it would effectively kill farming in a lot of these places because the only reason it makes sense there is because land and water was cheap and the water prices haven't updated to match the ever increasing usage.

Don’t ignore what’s downstream from farming - food. Cheap water is subsidizing cheap food.

No, it’s not. The surplus created by cheap water is captured by the hedge funds buying up artificially cheap water rights then selling foods at market rates for a large profit. Growing alfalfa in California for cows in China or Saudi Arabia does not impact the price of California beef in a measurable way.

Yes, it is. Have you quantified this claim? Do you know how little alfalfa is exported?

> Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market.

So 96% of all hay and 93.5% of alfalfa is used domestically.

[0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-of...

Price is set at the margins

Evidently this must vary a lot by state, since the article under discussion says that 70% of California grown alfalfa is exported to Japan and China.

Most hay isn't grown in California, it's in the Midwest.

Sadly, not that simple, few major issues here, we are exporting extremely low value, high water, crops overseas, like alfalfa. We are also growing these low value, high water crops to feed to animals (which also consume a lot of water). We don't need to subsidize these activities, particularly not the former.

Alfalfa is "extremely low value" by what metric? It is a rich food source for livestock. Alfalfa is also one of the most water efficient crops there is due to its deep roots, high yield and perennial nature. [1]

A lot of "studies" on water efficiency of crops ignore yield, which is kind of the whole point of agriculture.

And regarding your export claim:

> Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market.

[0]: https://hayandforage.com/article-4300-hay-exports-in-2022-of... [1]: https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1772...

The final paragraph of the article:

> In the seven Western states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington, hay exports play a much larger role in impacting both markets and prices. Based on USDA export and hay production data for those states, 19% of their alfalfa production was exported in 2022 and 26% of the grass production found its way into shipping containers. As such, hay prices in the Western states play a large role in setting market prices.

There might be other ways of measuring water efficiency of crops, but from a quick google search, most sources seem to consider alfalfa to not be very water efficient. For example:

>...According to an analysis by the conservation non-profit Pacific Institute, alfalfa production in California uses around 5 feet an acre (6167.4 cubic metres) of water, making it one of the most water-intensive crops alongside the likes of almonds, pistachios and rice. Crops such as sugar beets use roughly 3 feet an acre (3,700 cubic metres), and dry beans as little as 1.5 feet each acre (1,850 cubic metres).

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado....

>>...Based on USDA data for 2022, only 4% of all U.S. dry hay produced and 6.5% of all harvested alfalfa hay entered the export market.

It is misleading to just talk about the entire US production of alfalfa since in many places water is not nearly as limited as it is in California.

>...Government figures compiled by Putnam and fellow researchers William Matthews and Daniel Sumner show about 15 percent of alfalfa and more than 44 percent of other types of hay produced in the West have been exported in recent years.

>The share exported from Southern California farms is significantly higher than the regional average, the researchers said, because the closeness of the port makes trucking costs relatively inexpensive.

That percentage is from an article in 2017 - it sounds like the percentage today is at least that high or higher.

https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2017/09/28/...

Water efficiency by area isn't very useful. Look at calories out or protein out or pounds of dry matter.

Sure, but perhaps there need to be more regulations on who gets that cheap water.

I'm fine with American taxpayers subsidizing water so that American food is cheaper for Americans.

I'm less fine with American taxpayers subsidizing Saudi Arabian food.

Perhaps any water used to grow something that is exported could be priced at market value, while water pricing for products consumed domestically can remain the same.

The problem is more where. Water should be expensive where it is scarce, and cheap (or even subsidized) where it is plentiful. Even in different regions inside the same country.

This also works as a signal to help water-thirsty industries to locate or relocate themselves.

There are good reasons to do things like farming in the desert via irrigation. If water is not an issue, then crops are significantly more productive per acre due to the increased sunlight. Places where water is plentiful tend to be less productive for agriculture due to the increase in cloud cover; a rainy day is a day when the plants get less energy.

There's a balance to be struck between using an unsustainable amount of desert water, and using none of it.

I don't think that the energy cost of irrigating in the desert will ever be sustainable.

If you have a counter-example, I'm interested.

But I do see the possibility of solving the problem by using photovoltaic energy (though maybe not optimally, because not having to move the water would allow to use the electricity for other usages).

Bear in mind that the alternative is to grow crops in countries where it is raining most of the time.

Plants fare really really well in rainy countries, they don't mind at all that the sun is less present.

The only real drawback is the shortened growing period, if the country is too far north or too far south.

Why do you think this water is not priced at market value?

If a farmer could take their water and sell it for more money to somebody who would then treat it, transport it, and resell it to the public, the farmer would do that. It might be counterintuitive to a lot of people, but if you want to stop farmers from using their water to grow crops, raise the price of potable water.

The farmer understands markets very well. They buy and use water based on market values. What you're hearing is a lot of complaining from people who do not understand markets and think that they can dictate market prices just by word alone. Markets don't usually work that way.

> Why do you think this water is not priced at market value?

Because farmers can't take their water and sell it for more money to someone else, and they have no incentive to economize on water usage. Water prices are not set by supply and demand, they are set by government regulation. The "market" that farmers buy water in is not a free market.

Where do you think these Saudi farmers bought the land and water contracts? They bought them from some other farmer.

Governments can absolutely buy out water contracts from farmers on the open market.

In the cases where water is tied to land title, it can be separated, as is common with other natural resources like natural gas and minerals

Where is the market for water rights in the US West?

That's kind of like asking, "Where is the market for eggs in the US West?"

Am noob. Sorry.

ELI5 Where I can buy me some water rights. Imagine I represent a consortium of commercial salmon fishers and we want (need) to buy the water to keep salmon healthy. We'll pay fair market value. Who do we pay? How much?

https://www.spokaneaquifer.org/consolidated-i-d-19/

The salmon require a guaranteed amount of water flow during critical times. For a typical dam, this means an additional 500cms for 2 weeks. This amount will vary with location and season.

How am I supposed to secure this additional unconstrained water flow the entire width and breath of the Columbia Basin water shed by buying water retail in Spokane? If I buy a cubic hectare of water in Spokane, what's to guarantee it'll reach the ocean, vs slurped up by farms along the way?

Apologies for being thick, but this doesn't much seem like buying eggs.

Please explain it so I can understand.

That's exactly right. The farmer is savvy. He knows that the legal mechanism for selling the water is to first spend it on plants and then export the plants.

It's a legal arbitrage. The valuable thing is the water because it can be used to make relatively expensive plants. The only permitted delivery mechanism is plants. So he follows the incentives.

The market for water that you describe does not exist, because that's not how water rights work in the American West, where this is an issue.

> If a farmer could take their water and sell it for more money to somebody who would then treat it, transport it, and resell it to the public, the farmer would do that.

They can't do that. It's not a market issue, it's a water rights issue. The farmer is "entitled" to a quantity of water each year by virtue of owning the land they are on. If they do not spray that quantity of water onto that land, then they lose the right to get any water in future years.

> What you're hearing is a lot of complaining from people who do not understand markets

Thus, it is not markets, but water rights, that are not understood by the people that I hear complaining.

First, let me say that water rights are not usually a use it or lose it right. That might be true in some part of the American West that you are familiar with, but not in the part of the American West where I use water.

Secondly, where there exist rights there is usually a market for those rights. For instance, people buy and sell publishing rights or the right to first refusal. So it is with water rights. If I need more water than I have the right to use, I talk to my neighbor to see if I can buy her rights. If she won't sell them, maybe she'll let them. I can tell you exactly what the market price is for a share of water (a water right) where I live in the American West. I can tell you what it was last year and what it was 20 years ago. And there is a very active market to buy or lease water. My local municipal water company can require somebody wanting a new meter to sign over an irrigation water share to the company. The company pumps water from a well, processes the water and delivers it to the meter for a fee.

Where I live (Central Oregon) the irrigation districts literally fly planes over the fields of people with water rights and send them warning letters if their fields are insufficiently green. If you're wondering how that affects people who try to use water-saving methods such as hoop houses or greenhouses, they also get these warning letters.

It sounds like where you are, the irrigation water and the municipal supply is also co-mingled in pipes? Where I am the systems are entirely separate, there's the potable municipal supply, and separately a series of surface canals operated by irrigation districts that bring water directly from the Deschutes river to fields.

For this reason (canals delivering irrigation water from source to destination via gravity), irrigation rights are fully tied to the land as they require adjacency to these canals. Properties may not sell their rights, even to other users of the same canal. Either they use it themselves, or they lose it and the rights revert back to the management of the irrigation district who may sell those acre-feet to a different user of the same canal.

It's not a great system, but unfortunately as the irrigation districts here are privately owned rather than public, the people required to change this are those currently benefiting from the status quo.

Where I live, irrigation and municipal supply are two completely different systems managed by completely different entities. But the municipal provider can still say, "We don't have any more water than we are currently providing. If you want us to provide you with water, you have to sign over your water rights. Then we can use those rights to provide you with water."

Just give people money to buy food.

You know the rest of the world subsides pretty much everything except food for Americans via cheap manufacturing labor, right? Why shouldn't the rest of the world get its due?

People agreeing to work for lower wages than they do in the US is not a subsidy.

Then neither is water being sold at less than full, free market value. You can't logically have it both ways.

The overseas are selling their labor at full market value. Not sure what you’re implying.

I'm saying I don't give a damn if or whether they're "selling their labor at full market value." If that "full market value" is $2/hour or something, then, yes, they absolutely are subsidizing the product they're making.

And you know there's a huge power imbalance between employer and employee that's at work here as well. Magnify that times a bunch when that employer is a rich, overseas company that can offer what would be starvation wages at home, but princely wages for the folks in Asia, South America, or Africa.

Water prices are subsidized by the california government for agriculture.

Labor prices are not subsidized by china.

The whole point that this pricing needs to achieve is that those particular places should abandon certain types of water-intensive farming.

Can a state impose a tax on certain crop or product production within its jurisdiction?

Yes, but if doing so substantially adversely impacts the value of existing property, they should at least expect litigation against it as a regulatory taking if they aren't compensating for the calie of that impact.

Marijuana says yes and yes.

And what politician wants to commit something akin to economic suicide?

Those “Congress-created dust bowl” signs on I5 should say “Thank you taxpayers for you subsidizing our desert farming industry!”

Any solution is going to be very painful to a large section of the area. It's going to get a lot worse before there is any chance of a resolution.

There's a simple political way that's been successful several times. The political decision is made to buy the water light rates and then the state owns it.

Why is that the only solution here? If the problem is exactly one crop (or hell, even 2 or 3), can't we just stack a gigantic export tax on it? It wouldn't even have to affect domestic use.

Levying a tax on international consumers might be an easier fix than completely rewriting water rights legislation.

Also: our usernames are oddly similar!

Their great grandpappy, who immigrated from Eastern Europe, stole that land from the Native Americans fair and square!

Be careful what you wish for. The existence of places like Los Angeles, itself, effectively exist because of these same water rights.

Why do you think LA is allowed to just pump an entire major river all the way from near Mammoth Lakes to the coast? Out of the goodness of the folks on the Owen's River's hearts? Fuck no. Los Angeles lied, cheated, and stole to get those water rights, and if you think Los Angeles isn't going to have to pay through the nose if we reset water rights, you're sorely mistaken.

You look at the history of water in the American West, and you'll see that everyone has done everything wrong since the 1920's, when water rights were designed to prevent migration west. Then you'll understand why this mess is much, much bigger than we can imagine.

I'm sorry but the 10M people of Los Angeles County with 3.5% of the GDP of the United States which if a country would put it between Poland and Switzerland would, on an open market for water, absolutely crush the ~100x fewer people who live around Mammoth Lakes, Owen's River, etc. We import ~800k (in 2018 it as ~750k, latest number I found) acre-feet of water a year to LA County via MWD, or 0.08 per person per year, or ~100m^3 per person. That's used to generate ~$72k of economic activity.

Alfalfa for instance uses ~0.4acre-feet per ton. Alfalfa prices haven't ever been higher than $300/ton. That means that if water cost more than $750/acre-foot, they'd be out of business on water cost alone. At that price, the average Angeleno would have to pay a shockingly high... $5/mo for all their water. Oh wait, no, that's less than 0.1% of GDP per capita in Los Angeles County.

The fact is urban dwellers don't use much water, and are enormously economically productive, much moreso than rural areas, and so in any kind of open market for water, the urbanites will win handily every time. The city will get it's water, no matter what, and the fairly economically unproductive areas will have to adapt. It's only through political interventions like silly "water rights" designed for the benefit of farmers that a city has to resort to more expensive sources.

https://ourcountyla.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/... https://archive.is/7BNdF https://hayandforage.com/article-4472-Another-drop-for-hay-p...

I agree with you when we’re talking about alfalfa, but what you’re suggesting would probably destroy entire regions that wouldn’t be able to compete for water on economic terms.

It’s exactly what happened in the Owen’s valley last century.

That wooden pipe looks very cool actually :) Do you know when did they make it/installed it? And how did they joined them, more wood?

I don't know anything more about it. My guess is that it's pretty old. The book pictured next to it says 1914, and that broad time frame feels about right.

What's the metal on it? Lead?

Search "wooden water pipes" and "wooden sewer pipes" and you can find a lot of them.

The other issue is that California is taking away jobs of farm workers south of the border and uprooting their lives and causing the influx of migrants to exacerbate. Farm owners here are wealthy and have the politicians in their pockets and it will be very difficult to change the status quo.

Water infrastructure in the west is highly fragmented and locally rate limited -- you can't just reroute water from large swaths of the state like you can with electricity. Additionally, the water consumed by agriculture is often different than the 'treated water' needed to serve residential communities.

So yes, water is major a bottleneck for residential development out west. But to solve this you need new means of transport (pipes / channels), storage (reservoirs), and treatment (plans)... infrastructure that doesn't currently exist, is hard to get approved, and would likely need to be paid for by increasing the cost of living for existing residents.

Agree that we should be smarter about how water is allocated / used out West, but 'taking from ag' isn't going to make it any cheaper for you to buy a home.

As someone who also lives in Central Oregon (and was born and raised here), I will say this: this article is profoundly misleading.

They state that the Upper Deschutes CFS goes from ~1200->~65, and state that is from irrigation. But they don't actually prove that. Much of that CFS decline could be observed out of irrigation season, because that section of the Deschutes dumps a ton of water into lava tubes/back into the ground. You'd have to measure the CFS at the end of that section prior to irrigation getting turned on, then after, and then the difference is what is going to irrigation. And CO Land Watch doesn't do that. Hell, they don't even state where their data is coming from.

You can get a better idea of this drop by instead looking at official US govt data where the Deschutes drops into Lake Billy Chinook: https://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv/?cb_00060=on&for...

That is for the year 2021, when that article was written. You can see the drop in April, which is when irrigation starts. It's about 500CFS,or ~half the river at that point. That is NOT 95% of the river, as CO Land Watch would have you believe. (Side note: CO Land Watch has a bit of a reputation around here. This is a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems like they would gladly end all farming in Central Oregon to save a few salmon.)

The chart I care about is the 'city vs everything else' one, TBH, and that one is broadly accurate.

There's a lot of room to provide more water for both fish and farmers by 1. eliminating waste and 2. fixing some of the weird water rights stuff where people are really just wasting it.

When agriculture uses 70+% of all water in the Colorado River system and California’s Imperial Irrigation District is the largest consumer [0], we should probably start there.

At some point, people need to vote in their own interests.

Farming is important, but it isn't the only thing that's important. Ripping up use-it-or-lose-it and grandfathered water rights (with compensation and phase-out times) should be on the table. It's a vestige of a different world and isn't appropriate for today.

Do we prioritize agriculture or human use, given modern water constraints?

Shifting policy to promote less water-consumptive agriculture and penalize high-consumption agriculture seems like a reasonable bargain.

[0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/colorado-river-water-cut...

> Ripping up use-it-or-lose-it and grandfathered water rights (with compensation and phase-out times) should be on the table.

That is a battle that will be tied up in the courts for 15+ years. What we need to do right now is add a 200% export tax on high water items (alfalfa, almonds, etc) leaving the country. Incentivize farmers to divert water usage to feeding domestic animals or growing crops that feed people domestically.

> That is a battle that will be tied up in the courts for 15+ years.

What makes you say this? Is it already being fought in courts? Or is this just educated speculation?

There's plenty of evidence water rights cases/disputes take a long time.

https://www.justice.gov/enrd/arizona-v-california has been running since 1952.

Cases get caught up in court because for the most part government agencies try to rip up contracts without paying and they often lose. Most Farmers have a price that they willingly pay to give up their Perpetual water rights.

In general, the US legal system legal system does not allow forced taking without appropriate compensation.

Similarly, it looks unfavorably on taxing someone out of business to avoid buying their property. This is because it's essentially a workaround for the former. If the state want's mike_d's house, They cant impose a 200% property tax on to force him to sell

> In general, the US legal system legal system does not allow forced taking without appropriate compensation.

For the poor: Civil Asset Forfeiture "We'll take what we want, when we want, without trial."

For the rich: "Sorry sir, here's a blank check, how much do you want to get paid to not waste water?"

I don't like civil asset forfeiture either, but it is the exception not the rule.

We should work to get rid of asset forfeiture, not work to normalize arbitrary seizure

No, you're right, CAF is the exception, the rule is that poor people are too poor to own perpetual exclusive property rights so they have to pay the rich people who do own those rights whatever they can get away with asking.

And your solution is CAF for all people and all assets?

What are you trying to say?

Do you think a legal system where the government can simply take anything it wants on a whim will end up better or worse for the poor and powerless?

A system where land can’t be owned by an individual but instead pay an annual rent based on the unimporoved value of that land, acknowledging they commons is owned evenly by every citizen

this is a complete non-sequitur, But even in a gerogist land-value tax system doesnt solve the problem of government seizure.

Somone can be paying the full rent unimproved value of their land, and the government might decide to void their lease and turn over all of their land, improvements, and work to someone else.

The only thing that stops this is if governments respect the contracts they enter into, be they established property rights (in our system), or land lease contracts (in a Georgist system).

Said around bong rips in the dorm. This will never happen unless you’re willing to die for it.

Perhaps you're not yet familiar with the Urban "renewal" effects on ethnic families and the destruction of generational wealth transfer on those same families. Emminent Domain>Apropriate compensation doesn't work as you imply. Tl;dr They were kicked out of the gentry by having to accept below market compensation for the homes they rightfully bought and owned which consigned them to renting thereafter.

[1]https://abcnews.go.com/US/black-residents-discuss-lasting-in...

[lots more]https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=urban+renewal+eminent+domai...

It happened, but primarily in the 1950s-1980s. Thankfully, racist use of eminent domain has drastically decreased since.

Now you have more garden-variety free market development corruption, where "We buy ugly houses" companies transfer ownership en mass to enable gentrification or capture value from unannounced city infrastructure improvements.

Unfortunately, the obvious solution (strengthening property rights) effects its own drag on city improvement by empowering one-asshole-with-the-last-necessary-parcel.

Imposing a protective tariff on goods that are against our interest to sell isn't at all comparable to a 200% property tax

It depends on the interest.

If the interest is "we want their water so that we can use it instead" then it very much similar. This is very different than if the purpose of the alfalfa tarrif was somehow National military security, and cities getting more water was simply an unintended a side effect, not the primary purpose

>willingly pay to give up their Perpetual water rights.

Why would any farmer in California, making bank because they have basically free water, give that up, for ANY single payment?

Why would any farmer in California ever sell their land (to which the water rights are linked) for ANY single payment? Or, really, why would any landowner anywhere, getting money from rent, would give that up for ANY single payment? Of course, there is a price for that.

Even a truly perpetual guaranteed income stream is worth a certain finite single payment, that's how rates of return work given the standard assumption that future money is worth less than cash in hand now.

Because you can offer more money than expected future value.

Say a farmer with free water can make $1m a year from his farm, working hard on it.

So offer him more than $1m a year. Buy it outright for $100m and they'll start to jump on it. Index funds on that would return more than $1m a year with no digging.

> In general, the US legal system legal system does not allow forced taking without appropriate compensation.

Nothing is being taken away. It is closing a loophole.

> If the state want's mike_d's house, They cant impose a 200% property tax on to force him to sell

Because laws can't target individuals, only classes of behavior which a tariff would.

Nothing is being taken away from Mike_D, we are just closing the loophole where he had a house. We're not targeting Mike D the specifically, just the behavior of living at his address.

More generally, these aren't loopholes. They're often clear and explicit laws that specify exactly who has the right to water. They are often explicit contracts signed by the government. Some are as explicit as you have purchased the right to use 100% of the water from this River for all of time, or you are guaranteed x amount of water at y cost for a hundred years.

Sellers remorse is not the same as a loophole.

At some point in the history of Mike D's hypothetical property, the government acknowledge the private land grant. The law has written and interpreted acknowledges the transfer of property from owner to owner overtime. Changing the law to unwind property rights is an example of ex-post recontracting.

The same is true with water rights codified and law and case law

> What we need to do right now is add a 200% export tax on high water items (alfalfa, almonds, etc) leaving the country.

Fun fact:

California grows rice and exports it to Asia. There isn't an export tax; in fact the rice is taxpayer subsidized.

If you drive north of Sacramento on the I5, you'll see the rice paddies all over the place.

Maybe China could do us a solid and file a WTO case?

> That is a battle that will be tied up in the courts for 15+ years.

All the more reason to get started ASAP.

Wouldn't a 200% export tax on high water items incentivize the same foreign investors to purchase more cattle operations in the US, ship their alfalfa to those ranches, then ship the meat abroad?

Do we prioritize agriculture or human use, given modern water constraints?

Aren't those basically the same things just at different stages? Where should the food production move to? I ask because there is a strong movement to re-shore everything so moving it off-shore probably won't get much traction.

It's probably a different topic all together but I would agree that most things we produce are not required for healthy well nourished people but there would probably be a diverse range of opinions on what foods those might be. My personal preference would be to nix anything that is not Paleolithic, i.e. get rid of anything that is not meat or vegetable or does not contribute to that chain so we keep the things that feed livestock and stop producing the rest

Food production should move to where there's sufficient water to grow things economically.

About 20-60% of US agricultural value is exported, mostly in unprocessed form, so there's little danger of the US becoming dependent on food imports. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...

High-water use crops are only economical to grow in the southwest because water is mispriced.

Absent that, farmers would grow something else.

They'd probably make less money, but that's something we address via subsidies (gradually phasing out).

I agree with all of this, but

They'd probably make less money

There is no incentive for farmers that already operate on razor thin margins to make less money. They will produce whatever makes them the most money. How do we incentivize changing behavior without putting farmers out of business? Or I guess another way to put it is, how do we correct the system that got us here without punishing the farmers? AFAIK they are not the bad guys, rather they are the ones feeding us and are subject to operating in the system that was created before they were born. Changing water rights does not feel like it addresses the problem in a way that does not harm innocent people. Maybe that should happen long term when water demands are lower but it feels like the demand should shift first through some incentives.

How do we change incentives without harming people so that we can later change the water rights without as much push-back?

the margin naturally sharpens to fit a razor. Do you think that if we slightly taxed alfalfa more that nobody would grow anything on that land?

No, prices of whatever they switched to would adjust, and farmers would be back to razor thin margins just like anybody else. Thats how a market do. Except this time there would hopefully be a bit less of a massive externality

It's a great point, because farmers are literally tied to their land in ways most of us aren't.

If economic structural changes impact them, they can't pack their bags and move their farm to a different region.

Morally, what feels right to me is "Let no person have their livelihood demolished by that which is completely outside their control".

Sometimes, that's unavoidable, but I think with water use we could fold policies in over 50 years to lessen the velocity of disruption.

And hell, why not bind it to subsidies for building out solar/wind renewables on their land, while we're at it?

I forgot to add that every time we put farmers out of business their land gets snatched up by the likes of Bill Gates or Blackrock. This also needs to stop.

They are the same use, but it seems on the agriculture side there is little incentive to use water efficiently based on rights that were granted 100 or more years ago.

Off and on I’ve been trying to find a video I saw on YouTube several years ago where an ag-ed group had found (and I’m going to get this way wrong) growing lichens along with crops trapped a lot of moisture near crop root systems providing a significant reduction in irrigation requirements. But if water is cheap, why would a farming operation introduce risk or complicate their operation.

I’d personally like to see AZ get some of its water rights to the Colorado river back. Our state government is talking about building and operating desalination plants in Mexico to meet future while CA sits on hundreds of miles of coast, takes about 60% of allocated CO river water, and already operates a desalination plant. For the ongoing cost of a plant and operations, no one is willing to give up an equivalent portion of existing water rights?

I find your idea attractive, but centrally planning agriculture has a hideous track record. Market forces have made a mess too, but in the form of destroying public resources like aquifers, soil, and the climate. Both lead to famine, just on different timelines. "We can do better" makes me think of the weight loss new years resolutions people make. We won't do better, because we haven't changed. The failure isn't a lack of knowledge, but human nature.

I agree that if we are to centrally plan it, we'd want to have things like roots, leaves, and the most sustainable animal proteins we can find. Eggs are great, but allergies are relatively common. Milk is the same. Farmed fish can be done well, but that also has allergies among those who also have shellfish allergies. Plant proteins work well for people who don't have legume allergies, but they aren't that sustainable for rice or soy. Pea is ok... maybe just egg chickens and the old hens go to those allergic to eggs?

I think allergies should also be addressed at the root of the problem rather than trying to side-step it for everyone that has allergies. Rather I would like to see functional medicine focus on finding all the root causes of a persons ailment and cure the root causes not just allergies. There is already a lot of progress being made in this area in big part by understanding the gut, gut health and gut bacteria both beneficial and detrimental. While I am not a fan of fecal transplants as that seems very unscientific to me, I have personally had great success by by-passing the stomach for advanced cultures of probiotics with with MCT oil, several trillion CFU per dose.

I think money will get put into autoimmune research due to long covid, which might help with allergies too, and yeah, gut biome will almost certainly be part of that. We should acknowledge too that different genotypes need different diets.

> Do we prioritize agriculture or human use?

All this water is used by humans. Farmers, and the people who eat the food they make, are all humans.

First it’s not all farmers we’re talking about, changing things would be beneficial for far more farmers than get harmed.

Anyway, for farmers in CA and you get different results than optimizing for say everyone in the CA or even better everyone in the US. Cheap land + old water rights is profitable for individuals but extremely wasteful or water and results in massive and unneeded infrastructure to move water around. The amount of water wasted due to evaporation is a direct result of subsidizing wasteful use.

Such inefficiency is bad for humanity but profitable for a few individuals.

> Not quite, the problem is water isn’t being used efficiently. Agriculture wastes a great deal of water to evaporation because it’s cheaper not because it’s required.

The water evaporates because of the sun. Have you solved the growing crops without a sun problem?

Everyone wants to make one of the most efficient crops (alfalfa) the enemy. But alfalfa growers are not subsidized by the government at all.

Do you know which crop is? Corn. Corn wastes many times more water per acre than alfalfa, but is rarely mentioned in such HN threads. Gotta keep that "clean" ethanol flowing.

I am not specifically talking about crop choice here.

Center pivot irrigation requires very little infrastructure for a farmer, but spraying a light mist is a great way to evaporate water before it even reaches any plants.

Similarly, water pooling on the surface evaporates faster than water sitting just an inch below the soil. Alpha doesn’t directly care about this difference, but one is far cheaper than the other if and only if you price that water at close to 0$.

Of course if farmers needed to price in water then things like crop choice would change, but that’s simply the market reacting to price signals. Aka the vary basis of our economy.

> Corn wastes many times more water per acre than alfalfa, but is rarely mentioned in such HN threads.

Because nobody gives a fuck about wasting water in Kansas, because most of the places where significant amount of crops are grown don't have water problems like california

The issue at stake is wasting water in california and your attempted pivot to pretend this has anything to do with "crop water efficiency" outside of that context is nonsense.

California produces 11 million tons of corn a year [0] and only 7 million tons of alfalfa [1].

[0]: http://www.seecalifornia.com/farms/california-corn.html [1]: https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/FertilizerResearch/docs/Alfalfa_Pr...

There’s several kinds of corn, but if we’re comparing silage it’s 26 tons / acre vs 7 tons / acre for alfalfa. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverv... Corn yields are normally measured in terms of grain, but it’s worth remembering the rest of the plant still has value when considering efficiency.

But, the reality is completely eliminating California’s water problems is easy on a legal and technical level but not a political one. There is little incentive to let water flow into the ocean so CA is always going to sit right on the edge of a significant issue.

> At some point, people need to vote in their own interests.

By not eating? Because starvation is what is going to happen when the price of food increases by 10X or 50X. Visit your local food bank and see how many people can't afford food now.

You might say, "well, the U.S. will just have to import more food". One problem with that: the U.S. is the largest producer of food by a wide margin. What country is going to pick up the slack?

> Do we prioritize agriculture or human use, given modern water constraints?

These are one and the same. Almost all agriculture is either directly or indirectly for human use (food).

Seems easy to fix:

* take those water thirsty crops in California and start growing them in places like Iowa, where water is plentiful and labor costs are lower

* use that freed up land to build more housing, lowering the cost of living in CA

win-win

A nuclear power plant + desalination plant would fix this situation almost completely. California has the resources (money), and knowhow (tons of engineers) to make this happen if they want.

Israel gets 55% of their water this way and California can too.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the...

That’s really interesting, I didn’t know desalinization was so far along. I’m sure there are downsides, but if we’re going to insist on turning deserts into cities, this seems like a no-brainer.

As I remember it from the California water crises some years back, a LOT of California water rights are owned by the original farms that first started using the water, and they pay very close to zero for using it.

Thus we have rice farms in the desert and other such madness.

This would actually be fine if "better" water users could buy those water rights from the rice farmer. The farmer would make a lot more money than growing rice could yield, and (say) LA could ease up on the lawn shaming.

But for some ungodly reason, such trades are not legally possible, and the madness will continue.

Why would the rice farmer ever give up free water that all legal documents say they are entitled to? Why would the rice farmer ever sell?

Because in this scenario selling the water rights to someone else would bring more money than not selling and using those water rights themselves for e.g. farming rice on that land.

It's simple:

He'll sell when he's offered more money that the free water is worth to him.

> I'm hoping there is eventually enough outrage in these areas to change policy. Especially in California, where they are forcing people to rip up their lawns and trying to guilt folks into feeling horrible if they take a shower a minute too long, meanwhile they're doing nothing about what is actually the biggest cause of the problem.

A classic.

1. Problem is too obvious to ignore

2. Get in front of people finding the root causes by blaming individual citizen/consumer choices

3. Less of a need to actively run propaganda on behalf of the actual entities that are making the problems (e.g. apparently alfalfa agriculture in this case)

Yeah, this also reminded me of plastic recycling: Convince people that recycling is actually a good solution for dealing with waste, to the point of shaming people who only have a single garbage can. Then have plastic companies claim their products are recyclable, to the point of putting those 3-arrow-triangle symbols on their packaging, so people will dutifully sort out their waste into different bins. And then promptly take all those bins and dump them into the landfill anyway[1]. When the real problem is that there is too much single-use plastic created in the first place.

1. To clarify, some recycling definitely is a great idea and makes sense, like recycling of aluminum cans. But it rarely makes sense when there is not a positive economic outcome to do so.

It's even worse with electricity in California. No I am not going to save energy or install solar+batteries to help cover for PG&E's negligence. We live in a calm climate where there should be no problem transporting energy and no need to subsidize inefficient home power plants. Don't let them shove their problems onto us.

This largely comes down to "land" ownership. Water rights are real property like owning a piece of land, and just as with a vacant lot in a city in the midst of a severe housing shortage, the land owner pays no cost for hoarding a very valuable resource that many other people could make far far better use of.

Natural resources, when "owned" in this way, should also have very high taxes associated with them so that they are not squandered and instead used much more efficiently.

At least the farmers have to pay something. At least one company gets all the water it can for free in California.[0] Not a bad deal for a bottled water company!

[0]https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/la-times-today/2022/02/...

It's mispriced in a lot of places I think; more and more countries and regions will face water shortages soon, but the prices towards industry isn't going up yet. If anything will make the large consumers finally reduce, it's going to be increasing the cost.

But the government doesn't want that, because they would just add it to the price of the agricultural produce. And governments want to keep that value low, so that one the one side, people can afford to eat, but on the other side because else the local markets will be out-competed by importing it from places that don't do as much water management.

It's protectionism at the cost of the water supply. In my neck of the wood (west Europe) we've already had instances of water pressure being reduced so that the reservoirs have a chance to refill overnight; in other places, tap water has already become unavailable.

In 10 years that will be commonplace, water will be rationed. While meanwhile, there's datacenters using tens of millions of liters of drinking water for cooling: https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/drought-stricken-...

From what I'm reading, the problem appears to be growing water hungry crops and then shipping them overseas. I think we can accomplish keeping the price of US produce down by granting lower water prices for farmers to grow crops intended for domestic use while not doing the same for farmers shipping alfalfa to China?

Especially in California, where they are forcing people to rip up their lawns

Lowkey though…it’s high time for the cult of lawnship to pass. I don’t want to stop people from having lawns if they really want them but we’re to the point where people have lawns just because everyone else does or their HOA forces them into one regardless of whether it makes aesthetic sense or sense with their weather patterns.

Nothing offends me more than the billboards of a young girl watering a houseplant saying “just a sip.”

Of all the water use cases to go after, they want to make children think water is so scarce that spilling one can of it is somehow a problem?

Meanwhile, eat whatever produce you want at any time of year, as long as you can’t see the water being wasted, it’s fine right?

It's because they own "water rights", but instead of buying it out, why can we not tax it? Of I barter eggs for cheese, I'm legally supposed to pay tax, so why can't we just tax water use period? Just conveniently make it high enough to make water rights net-zero value, then buy then for nothing.

Oh, right, Saudis would lose money.

They do get taxed. It is called property tax. Land with water rights is worth a lot more than land without water rights in the same area. In my area water righted land is worth ~10x what land without water rights is worth for the same acreage.

It is the farmer's version of beachfront property.

That's not anywhere near sufficient.

If your objective is to tax farmers out of existence, then yes.

Only if they need a water subsidy.

Almond farmers have margin to pay for water. Alfalfa should be grown where water is cheap.

I went to the Nea York Farm Show this winter and there were representatives of a group in Ontario that sells hay internationally that had brochures printed in Chinese and Arabic. At least in Ontario they have water.

Meanwhile, a drive down I5 will show many farms with political signs complaining about how water is too expensive and advocating for conservative viewpoints while they shamelessly employ underpaid illegal immigrants while enjoying the spoils of corporate welfare.

Who in the US profits the most from Alfafa exports to these countries?

The farmers who get this water cheap?

Probably the governments that grant the permits and collect the taxes for these foreign farming operations

It's illegal to grow alfalfa in Saudi Arabia. That's why Fondomonte Arizona was created by the Saudis to grow alfalfa in the unregulated and easily paid off state of Arizona.[0]

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/07/16/fondomont...

> meanwhile they're doing nothing about what is actually the biggest cause of the problem.

That's because the actual problem is intractable. Urban metropolises shouldn't be built where profitable farming can make better use of the water.

But good luck evacuating the greater Los Angeles area. Or getting people to move to areas better suited for living, in general.

That is not the actual problem. The actual problem is a badly mismanaged regulatory system for water pricing.

As noted in the linked article, people in urban areas are paying many times the price for water that farmers are. If farmers had to pay municipal water prices, it's much less clear whether their farming would be profitable.

> Urban metropolises shouldn't be built where profitable farming can make better use of the water.

You have it exactly backwards: planting crops that are only profitable (and MUCH less profitable than comparable urban uses would be), and which make a horrible use of water, due to outdated legal ownership theories of water.

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