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Comment by ajmurmann | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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!”

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Also: our usernames are oddly similar!

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