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Comment by _aavaa_ | Hacker News Reader

Agriculture uses 80% of the water used for non-environmental reasons[0], with nuts and alfalfa being large culprits. Instead of limiting those, we're going to focus on the what, 10%, of people flushing toilets and watering their lawns?

[0]: https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...

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Someone somewhere is going to do a study on the effectiveness of this propaganda. I think it must be cognitive dissonance. Animal agriculture uses almost ten times the amount of water and land usage than plant agriculture on average. No, almonds aren't the problem. Cows are. They use more land. They use more water. The emit more green house gases.

This is a coordinated effort by the beef/dairy industry to blame anyone but themselves and the people who consume their products are happy to pass the blame. If you actually care about water usage, go after the people who are using the most water, not physiologically convenient scapegoats.

>This is a coordinated effort by the beef/dairy...

Is that true? I had not heard about this. Are there records of campaign donations or the like? Is this just speculation?

?? Can you link to anywhere where they accept blame for their emissions?

Not accepting blame and colluding with competitors to sew disinformation is a false equivalence.

The material effects are identical. I don't understand why it matters if they collude or not. Maybe we should just fix the law.

https://www.desertsun.com/story/opinion/contributors/valley-...

Alfalfa is used to feed farm animals like pigs and cows. But we export 70% of what we grow in California to Japan and China. The Japanese raise Kobe beef with it and send it back to us for $200 per pound. The Chinese use it to raise pigs to meet their rapidly expanding demand for pork as they become more affluent and eat more meat.

Why don’t they grow their own alfalfa? Because they are short of water and it is so much cheaper to buy ours. In fact, alfalfa has become an instrument for exporting subsidized water.

>Why don’t they grow their own alfalfa? Because they are short of water

In Japan's case it's because they are short on land owing to the fact they're on small islands, of which the inland areas are mostly mountains. They have limitless water.

Last time I checked you can't irrigate with salt water and the process of desalination is expensive at scale. I don't know how much fresh water their climate has, but it's definitely not "limitless"

Japan has about 10x the amount of freshwater as California, California is a desert with very little freshwater, most places has way more, even islands like Japan.

That doesn't really negate my point, but it does mean it's less relevant to the discussion. Northern California is not really a desert though, which is where the majority of the agriculture is, no?

There is a huge amount of agriculture in the California desert in the south around the Salton Sea. The "sea" itself was created by accident when the Colorado River irrigation channel broke and the river was diverted into the Salton Sink over 100 years ago. It has shrank in size but agricultural runoff keeps it from completely drying. It is also full of pesticide and fertilizer residue.

Take a look at the google satellite view

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Nc1Pno74iYmQBERKA

The Central Valley extends north to Sacramento and there are crops grown through the entire area but the far south is so warm even in winter that they can grow crops year round. A large amount of vegetables that people in the US eat in winter come from this area.

A running joke in Japan, as a country with practically no natural resources (read: oil, minerals, precious metals), is that the one natural resource they do have tons of is fresh water.

Consider that the Japanese find water so mundane they think nothing of using it disposably to make instant yakisoba (chow mein).

Industrial feed lots are the problem to be more specific. We can't lump together all ways animals can be raised and say cows are the problem when the real culprit is one method of raising cattle.

I raise cattle on pasture and 95% of the time they're drinking from our ponds that are filled by a combination of rainwater and natural springs.

Cows aren't the problem. Industrial cattle production based on feedlots and an insanely centralized infrastructure is.

The stat GP is alluding to isn’t even about drinking water, it’s mostly about the water required to grow feed.

Thanks, I may have just misread that. I have the same argument though. For our cattle we give very little feed, depending on the time of year their diet will only have 5-10% supplemental feed, and that's just enough to keep them trained to come when called.

We've kept stock density at a rate that our cattle can eat almost entirely from our pastures and woods. If we absolutely do have to buy hay, we buy it from a local guy who has a field he doesn't spray or irrigate. Its effectively a field behind his house that he otherwise doesn't use for hay, most people around here want sprayed and fertilized fields that are monocropped fescue or bahia.

We aren't doing everything right by any means, but cows absolutely can be raised without causing so many of the problems that industrial lots cause. Its too easy to see those problems and demonize everything about raising cattle.

Totally, I think we're making the same point. The average water intensity of livestock does not matter; what does matter is how much of that demand is met by water that could otherwise be withdrawn for human use.

Analyzing the industry is tricky, though - do you sell to a feedlot, or raise on pasture to slaughter? (Most cow/calf operations sell to a feedlot, but you sound like you may be keeping them all the way?)

The drawback to fully pasture-raised is more methane, of course, but.. I've got no idea how to put that on a reasonable comparison to water use.

That's correct, we raise them here from breeding to slaughter. In an ideal world we would slaughter and process on site as well, more for animal welfare and quality of the final meat. Today that is only possible when selling cow shares though, we can't legally process on site and sell cuts of meat locally.

The methane question has always been an interesting one to me. I've honestly never been able to fin compelling research that I felt confident in the unbiased approach to both the study itself and the interpretation of results. Climate change has been a political debate for so long that I really don't know what studies there to trust.

St the end of the day cows do in fact fart. Is that a problem? Is it a problem only under certain conditions, like high stock density? Is the problem that we have outgrown our cage and the planet can't sustain 8 billion humans, regardless of what they eat? I don't know the answer there and doubt anyone who claims to, but I do know that our cattle and pastures are extremely healthy with very little input.

That's cool and rare. (And yes, the centralization of meatpacking is a big challenge. It makes sense economically and simultaneously has some bad effects.)

I think the amount of methane produced on forage is reasonably well-quantified, though there's definitely a question of how you "bill" the methane in terms of contribution to climate change in terms of CO2e given the different breakdown times. In general, it's probably a problem -- but other ruminants burp as well, and if it's not cattle grazing, it was bison. Arguably, we'd be much better off if we reduced our beef consumption to the level we could manage pasture-raised, which would hold pasture methane constant and reduce the feedlot co2 (and nitrogen runoff).

> Arguably, we'd be much better off if we reduced our beef consumption to the level we could manage pasture-raised, which would hold pasture methane constant and reduce the feedlot co2 (and nitrogen runoff).

I'd love to see more locally raised meat, and I assume that would also have a side effect of reduced meat consumption. We've heavily subsidized the industry and so few people are involved at all with the meat industry that we've lost an understanding of what it even takes to raise animals or process them for meat. Farming in general is not a viable business today, anyone doing it to make a living eeks by primarily on government subsidies.

When you can truly know your farmer and can even go see how the animals are raise it changes the whole situation. Its a ton of work no matter how the animals are raised or processed, when done in the centralized feedlot way its also largely a disgusting process that most people would consider immoral and akin to torture.

When you can know your farmer because the meat you do eat is raised primarily on local pasture, I can only assume the risks of methane would be drastically reduced. Lower stocking density, plant life among the animals, and microbial activity decomposing waste in place has to make a huge dent in emissions caused today, from methane gas to fuel emissions used in a larger operation.

A calorie of beef requires more total input water than a calorie of grain, sure, but that input water is mostly embodied in their feed, not their drinking water.

The question for California a what to grow with the water we have, where it is (or where it can be moved). An acre of cows is a much, much less water intensive than an acre of grains. More acres in pasture might produce more water intensive calories, but that input water does not necessarily have to be provided in CA where it’s rivalrous with 50m humans. Feed can be imported/exported with orders of magnitude more ease than the underlying embodied input water. Agricultural water is not a fungible resource at the national/global scale, crops and animal products are.

Also as a matter of policy “turn the world vegan so global ag is less water intensive so CA farms don’t compete with CA people for water as much” is a bit harder to implement than restricting specific water intensive land uses in the Central Valley.

>but that input water is mostly embodied in their feed, not their drinking water.

So? The feed doesn't magically appear. It requires water. That's the entire point.

The point is that the feed crops can be grown in areas with abundant water and shipped elsewhere, so cattle don't have to be a significant contributor to local water shortages.

Crops don’t move themselves, they require trucks and ships. Importing 1 plant to feed a human is less water and energy intensive than importing 10 plants to feed a cow to feed a human.

Irrefutably. The problem is people prefer to eat the cow. And while it's nice to imagine a different world, "everyone should just want different things" is not really a valid policy prescription to solve specific land- and water-use questions.

If the price of water was the same for human and agricultural use then the cost of the beef would increase and more people would stop eating it and eat the cheaper plants instead. This would also decrease energy usage helping with climate change.

When we subsidize the price of water for agriculture then people will do wasteful and stupid things to make more money like growing water rich alfalfa and shipping it to China and Japan to feed their livestock.

See the link I posted in the thread.

Yes. "the price of ag water in CA should be higher to discourage uneconomic uses" is a valid policy prescription; its impact on the price of beef, and consumption thereof is less foreseeable.

At a base level, the claim that water intensity of livestock is more to blame for CA water issues does not seem to be supported. Water use for livestock, feed, and silage is about ~27% of total applied agricultural water in the state, wheres an outright majority thereof goes to orchards and vineyards[0].

Moreover, water is the least mobile aspect of agriculture. Land can be put to different use, products can be shipped, but water is pretty much where it is; moving it ranges from generationally difficult (e.g. CVP, SWP, ...) to physically impractical (e.g. lifting the Colorado to irrigate upstream). Water supply systems are effectively closed and separate. Any analysis of competing uses has to take place within the context of that closed system. The average water intensity of livestock does not matter; only the fraction of that intensity demanded from CA population-rivalrous sources. As it stands that's "some" (and much more from feed _importers_ than is reasonable, as the other comment notes[1]). Converting more central valley to unirrigated rangeland, and topping up nutritional deficits with imported feed would be hugely beneficial for CA water issues, even though it's a 'water intense' product.

[0]: https://www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-californias-ag... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40915369

A) Pointing out a large problem with one field is not me spreading propaganda. As others have mentioned, look at where the alfalfa goes and we're on the same page.

B) I'm totally fine point the finger at the beef and dairy industry, ultimately the entirety of your comment does not change my point. Agriculture uses 80%, focusing on city use is going after a politically convenient solution which will do little to address much of the issue.

This is all beside the point though. California isn't choosing between agriculture and livestock (at least in the policies discussed in TFA), they're placing restrictions on residential use.

Alfalfa is grown for cows. In this case by Saudi-owned companies that ship it to feed cows in Saudi Arabia, in a form on water-laundering.

In California, domestic water is priced by each hundred cubic feet (HCF). Agricultural water is priced by each acre-foot. Both units sell for about $1. One HCF is about 747 gallons. One acre-foot is more than 325,000 gallons!

Maybe that's what a hundred cubic feet costs to the water company, but at residential retail on my bill it's between $3.50 and $25 per hundred cubic feet, so it's as much as 10,000x as expensive for a residential consumer as an ag one. It's completely beyond the bounds of anything reasonable.

This is true but also hits the core of the problem: many of those agricultural users have old claims on water which were set in an unusually wet period. The state of California can tell a city to use less more easily than a farmer who has a legal right to use a particular water source.

Can the cities just buy water rights from farmers? That seems like the obvious solution - so obvious that, if it's not being done, there must be a reason why not. Does anybody know?

Where does the money come from? They can’t easily raise taxes to pay for it, and farmers are going to charge a lot even if they’re willing to sell because paying market rates for water places them at a significant disadvantage compared to other farmers who are not paying market rates. There are a lot of efficiency issues in agriculture – drive through the Central Valley in the summer and see how much runoff there is - but the solutions tend to increase labor costs.

I’ve wondered whether the angle might be some kind of tax: don’t argue with the guy who has a 4 century-old claim, just charge a waste tax on usage over a certain amount per unit of food and apply it state wide so nobody can benefit by holding out.

Uhh how about that 15% income tax being used for multi-million-dollar public toilets?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/22/san-fr...

I swear, it better have free Wi-Fi and EMP shielding.

Do you think that they’re just sitting on a pile of unspent money? If not, it doesn’t matter what the existing tax rate is since we’re talking about new money which has to come from somewhere.

And while $1.7M is indeed silly, it’s a drop in the bucket for something which would cost billions. A custom building plan is much easier to avoid than a tense negotiation with many parties.

If there was actual political will, it would happen. Heck, the government could use Eminent Domain to simply take those water rights from agriculture, and/or pay a token amount for them. It would be a lot more justifiable than many other recent examples of Eminent Domain use.

The money comes from water bills. These bills are extremely high in California for non-ag customers and are more than enough to purchase water rights.

Non transferable.

Water rights for that farm. Not for a place 250 miles away. We sometimes forget how big California is. It’s not a regular state geographically speaking.

Even if it were legal, how do you move the water 250 miles? Oftentimes uphill?

It is legal, for some types of water rights. Not all. And yes, water moves. Downhill. All by itself.

Rights can be transferred to different owners along its path. It doesn't matter if the new owner is upstream or downstream, as long as you are talking about the same source. So while you are correct that a farmer wouldn't sell their rights to someone hundreds of miles away, they absolutely can sell to someone else in the same community.

I did that when I lived out west. It was Utah, not CA, but I did sell my water rights to the city. There were a few catches to the process: I had to not want the water anymore, and the city had to have the funding available to make the purchase. While simple, those two things can certainly be large blockers to cities buying rights.

The core problem is the treatment of water rights as property rights rather than government grants. Which is a relatively new problem, as the management of irrigation was one of the things governments were originally invented for.

Water rights are full of gray area though. Should I have the right to capture and use rain that falls on my land, or does the government own that somehow? If I drill a well on my land, is that my water or the government's? If a river naturally flows through my land, is it my right to use that water or does the government regulate that as well?

The early government projects for irrigation weren't quite the same. Building aqueducts is about moving water to a place that it doesn't naturally exist. Water rights are about saying who can use water that is already there.

Aqueducts are closer to present day than to early governments.

Traditional agricultural societies were dense villages and towns. The entire community typically shared the same water source. In areas that relied on rivers and wells, distributing the water fairly while ensuring community welfare was one of the primary functions of the town/village government.

Modern issues arise from two concepts you mention in your second sentence: "the right" and "my land".

I assumed the parent comment was referring to early water projects as in Roman aqueducts.

The entire US system is based fundamentally on property rights. We absolutely could change that, but today we have property rights. That isn't really modern either, unless you are extending modernity back centuries to include feudal states with lords and kings owning all the land.

Land rights come with very real problems, though I don't see how you get rid of them and still have anything resembling today's governments. If individuals didn't own land today the government would claim ownership over all of it, which they kind of do with property taxes and eminent domain but that's a whole different problem.

If we just had a normally functioning market, this wouldn’t be a problem. There will always be a “shortage” of water in California, because the sunny weather in the valley lets you grow so many profitable, water hungry crops. Picking on one particular crop is just squeezing a water balloon.

The problem is that most water in CA is a property right that’s only partially tradable, so ag water is effectively thousands of times cheaper than city water to the point where it’s mostly not even metered in the valley, but in the city, I’m supposed to worry about using an extra quarter gallon to flush my toilet, or five gallons to do a load of laundry.

That depends if you think flushing toilets and watering their lawns is more important than growing nuts an alfalfa.

I'm sympathetic to your views but neither thing seems great. What about compulsory water tanks for the flushing toilets and lawn mowing?

My point is indifferent to how one important is versus the other. It's a pragmatic point; if you're running out of water, focus on changing the 80% and not the 20% long tail. Even if you remove the entirety of the 20% it still won't solve your issue.

Pretty much! I find it ironic that since 1988 California is run by Democrat “liberals” and “progressives” that associate Republicans with some kind of robber baron tycoon-level capitalism and yet it’s all a show:

1) They have the highest rates of gentrification and relative inequality and poverty (among the highest gini index), the help staff commute 2 hours each way because they can’t afford to live in the city

2) Worst homelessness rates in the country, the cities are positively overrun with homelessness and crime. I was in LA recently and it’s the opposite of NYC. In NYC, rich people want to live in Manhattan. In LA, rich people want to live as far from Downtown LA as possible. The buildings are delapidated, almost no new skyscrapers have gone up for decades and the streets honestly remind me of NYC in the 80s. Skid row is just the start. And don’t get me started on San Francisco…

3) I’ve been to Dubai, and other cities, and California is like 40 years behind at this point. Signs are from the 70s. Skyline is stuck in the 80s. Heck even Poland has leapfrogged California with its skyline. There are so many rich people in California, 20% of the US population lives there, and yet they don’t seem to invest in their cities, only their mansions and their galas…

4) There are rich and famous tycoons living in manshions insulated from the rifraff, and unlike NYC there is no hustle and bustle, it is a car culture so you don’t get to mingle with the commoners (eg I ran into Charlie Rose on the street randomly the other week in NYC and now I’m making an app for him).

5) And worst of all… the government itself is captured by special interests to divert water! This is water regulatory capture on the levels of Flynt, Michigan or Honduras water privatization… all for what, pistachios? You can watch this documentary to see the scope of corruption in California.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GE_2cg4jIk

I’m not a Democrat or a Republican, but I am shocked by how the masses allow Democrats for decades to openly do to them the very thing they claim Republicans would do to them if they ever got elected.

Yes, I know there are environmental issues in deserts, the mountains block the clouds and the Colorado river is drying up etc. I know that Vegas and other cities have it worse and are facing “day zero”. But maybe don’t divert the last remaining water to water-intensive agricultural projects there then? Or focus on investing in new water infrastructure?

Same as with plastic pollution it seems.

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