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Comment by IdiotSavage | Hacker News Reader

Certainly the vast majority of water is not absorbed by plants, but evaporates from the ground or drains off without being used. You can't just ignore that.

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> without being used.

If it cools the plants and the ground through evaporation, it's used as effectively as a datacenter.

What do you think happens to data center water? (It either evaporates or is recycled)

Water pumped into a field only to drain back into the soil cannot be equated with "recycled". If the crop wasn't there, would it have been sensible to pump the water there for "recycling" purposes? Are we regularly pumping water into the middle of dry areas for no reason? Of course not. Almost all of that water is being effectively discarded and it's a huge waste, which, no, you do not see at data centres.

Because aquifers and water tables don't exist

Yeah you’re right, feeding people is just a huge waste.

Something like 1% of corn grown in the U.S. is used to feed people directly. The majority of it is used to inefficiently make gasoline (via ethanol) or plastic, because farm subsidies make it profitable.

While ethanol requirements are a hand out to corn farmers, it’s false to say the majority goes into gas and plastic, an equal share (~40%) goes to animal feed.

And growing at that scale makes that 1% super affordable as a food source. all these 'we need AI data centers at crazy huge scales' people suddenly don't understand scale when it comes to feeding the brokies.

Subsidizing ethanol doesn’t seem like an efficient way to subsidize food for poor people- that’s why programs like SNAP exist

I agree. I’m pro-data center (or at least not against), pro-farm, and anti-ethanol. Ethanol is a scam.

I never said that. The comment I replied to seemed to imply that water used to grow crops is used very efficiently, or at least as efficiently as water used for data centers. That is clearly not true so I objected. That is all.

Growing food on a scale that makes it affordable to and reduces hunger for the plebes? That's a waste according to AI bros. Good luck with your crime bots, no jobs, no real music, hunger for the masses propganda. Should be a real winner.

Most farmers are absolute brain dead and will water with aerial systems during heat waves at noon, 90% of the water doesn't even reach the root system

if you think farmers are "absolute brain dead" you haven't spent any time with them.

Yes, they are intelligent in some ways and must be to survive, but just looking at the steady long-term depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer [0] and the actual squandering of water as mentioned by GP, where spraying it in midday results in massive evaporation, they are clearly being stupid about usage [1], time-of-day optimization, etc. and dooming the area to soon become a barren wasteland.

The lack of drip irrigation used in more arid areas, jsut because they have water today, is kind of shocking, and stupid.

[0] https://www.mygeoquest.com/ogallala-aquifer-depletion-map-an...

[1] Unless cooling is somehow critical, or there is a fungus growth problem from watering at less-hot times of day.

This isn't the 50s anymore, it's not mom and pops anymore.

I stand by what I say, 90% are brain dead, have 0 understanding of sustainable practices, only care about their bottom line, use absolutely outdated ways of managing and growing crops. They're basically brute forcing life with technology, destroying their own source of income year after year.

I worked for years in small scale bio farms, I can certify most farmers are clinically retarded

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