Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

And is the only state with no drought right now. Although they way they figure it is a bit biased -- it's based on how much water there is compared to historical values, so it's easier to be "drought free" if you've been in a drought for a while.

View on HN

Yeah hey but for real. The news is focused on California droughts all the time, but my part of flyover country is very, very dry. Like ponds that have never been empty are dry, sort of thing. It's getting bad. . . And we grow all your food.

Between this and all the political nonsense that's happening right now, I feel like a passenger that's noticed the car is out of control while the driver is still opening his beer.

California actually produced the most food of any state. :). But I know what you mean, the water is just as critical in the middle of the country as it is on the edges. Water is critical everywhere, and this problem is just going to get worse and worse.

California leads in the value of goods sold, because it produces a lot of relatively expensive agricultural products like almonds, avocados, tomatoes, etc. Additionally, it’s a larger state, so it naturally will inflate the totals. If you look at food staples, and at the amount produced by square mile, the Midwest is definitely the main food producer of the US.

A 1 square mile state that produced nothing but wheat would beat any other state in terms of “amount of staples produced per square mile,” but it wouldn’t be able to sustain a population. That’s not a useful metric.

The point is that it’s equally dumb to base comparisons on the arbitrary measure of state lines. Of course California produces more than Iowa, it has significantly more area. Lump a couple more Midwestern states in with Iowa to be a more comparably sized region, and California is no longer the top producer or the nations food.

And it’s even dumber to assess the importance to the nations food supply based on dollar values. California makes a lot of money off of almonds and avocados, which are high priced luxury foods. Of course it will have high revenues attached to it. That doesn’t make it more important to the nation’s food supply than states that produce the staple foods of wheat, corn, beans, chicken, and beef.

> And we grow all your food

Well, not all of it, California leads IIRC.

yeh, my natural pond in Michigan has lost about 15 feet, the snow we're getting now won't be enough to regain it

Reply on news.ycombinator.com