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Comment by hamdingers | Hacker News Reader

There is no water scarcity in California, only misallocation. The vast majority of our water is heavily subsidized and used for agriculture, and a substantial amount of those crops are grown for export, yet agricultural exports makes up an insignificant part of California's economy.

We could end all California water scarcity talk today, with no impact to food availability for Americans, by curtailing the international export of just two California crops: almonds and alfalfa.

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Anecdotally, my friend's grandma was an almond farmer. As they drove past a river in the Central Valley, she exclaimed "Why is there water in that river?! Those could be watering my almond trees!"

In Arizona we grow alfalfa as well -- it's mind boggling to me that in places where water is so scarce we use so much of it on such a low value crop.

That alfalfa gets extensively exported as livestock feed... and alfalfa is literally mostly water by weight. So the arrangement is literally shipping out local groundwater in bulk to other countries.

I hear about the almonds a lot. Are they more water-intensive than other tree nuts? Are they not commonly grown elsewhere in the world? All I really know about them is that they seem kinda nice, but not really worth the cost.

So why hasn’t that been done? Have some representatives and senators set limits on almond exports. Surely they wouldn’t be voted out in the next election given how farmers are outnumbered.

Because farmers are making money off of exporting and have significant lobbying power

Bold of you to assume that ordinary voters matter more than Billionaires like the Resnicks of The Wonderful Company.

Almonds are climate-appropriate product and valuable. Alfalfa can cheaply be grown off rainwater in the Midwest and it alone frees up sufficient water.

The problem is alfalfa is expensive to transport (heavy due to desired moisture content). So while it can be cheaply grown in the Midwest, it can't be cheaply transported from the Midwest to where buyers of alfalfa are (typically overseas).

Alfalfa is also a staple for crop rotation, so any farming operation will still grow some alfalfa to maintain rotation for good soil health (or during bad condition seasons since it's hardier to poor conditions and not a permanent crop).

If alfalfa cannot be exported (through policy or economic conditions), the low price attracts more livestock production in-state (which would be even worse for water use).

Those things makes it a hard crop to target for sustainability and export.

> it can't be cheaply transported from the Midwest to where buyers of alfalfa are

Trains.

Alfalfa isn't the only alternative, and they should switch to higher-value crops anyway. They would if they had to pay for water. We simply need to charge everybody for water usage.

The problem is alfalfa is a high value crop and a water efficient crop relative to value.

So as water/weather gets more unpredictable and beef/dairy rises in price, alfalfa becomes even more attractive to grow.

to put this to numbers... the exports are just about 0.5% of california's GDP. so yeah pretty much a rounding error.

0.5% is a far cry from a rounding error..

0.5% is like the literal definition of a rounding error.

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