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Comment by socialist_coder | Hacker News Reader

Really great article. I love the weekend reading on HN.

This part of the article really caught my eye:

>>> Current “use it or lose it” water laws don’t allow farmers to sell any surplus allotment, so they end up growing as much alfalfa as they can and selling it on the global market. Peter Culp estimates that 50 billion gallons of water—1.5 pulse flows—is shipped to China each year in the form of alfalfa, and even more to Japan. An open water market would allow both cities and environmental groups to pay farmers far more than they currently make growing alfalfa. <<<

Terrible! The US West has been fighting water scarcity problems for 10+ years and we're exporting billions of gallons of water overseas?

There is also a new documentary out called DamNation which looks quite interesting. http://damnationfilm.com/

View on HN

One of the (supposed) reasons why farmers in the United States get so many privileges, subsidies and water rates at 5% of market rates in some cases, is to promote food security.

The theory is, that by ensuring we have a broad set of food stocks that we can potentially draw on should circumstances dictate, then we are capable of maintaining the basic elements of survival. (Energy Security is another one on the list - it's why we have aircraft carriers in the middle east).

Those farmers might be shipping Alfalfa to China right now, in the face of that thing called "Free Markets", but faced with a food stock collapse in the United States, it would take little more than a few strokes of the pen to require that same alfalfa go to American cattle.

Cattle for food security makes sense only on marginal land, where rain is so scarce that you can't plant crops, and the only thing you can do is extensive cattle ranching. Look at the American West, Australia and so on.

Also, look at Upstate New York and Northern Pennsylvania if you are interested in food security. This used to be the grain basket of the country, but the farmland is all abandoned and reverted to forest, the hilly country is too difficult to farm with large machinery. But it's rain-safe, unlike further out west. I think in the face of climate change, farmland in that area is a most excellent long-term investment.

My fathers specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce.

Couldn't resist. Not often alfalfa comes up in conversation.

You should mention that this is a quote from Catch-22.

I submitted this a few weeks ago and it quickly died, but you might find it also interesting: http://www.azcentral.com/news/wildfires/yarnell/arizona-wild...

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