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Comment by jconley | Hacker News Reader

Many farmers are getting no [0] water this year and are relying on ground water to keep trees alive or not planting seasonal crops. Others get a very small fraction of their typical allotment [1]. California water rights are complicated...

[0] http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/environment/article11355200...

[1] http://hanfordsentinel.com/news/in_focus/california_drought/...

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The trees they're trying to keep alive have ridiculously high water consumption, almonds for instance consume 10s of litres of water for each _individual_ almond.

They need to stop growing trees like that in a desert, which is what they're doing.

The wells they are digging are tapping into the underlying aquifers that are the last resort, so they are in fact getting _free_ water while complaining about the cost. In essence they are stealing the water that other californians pay for.

At the same time they are asking for subsidies, to support a business model built on the ridiculously stupid idea of growing high water use crops in a _desert_.

The solution is to actually treat this as a free market (as most HN commenters seem to believe is the solution to everything), everyone pays the same amount for water, including farmers. This would mean farmers would actually make sane use of their water - maybe they can't grow almonds for a profit anymore, and switch to something else. They will probably fairly quickly find some new food stuff that people really want to pay lots of money for, but uses less water.

That's how things work.

I know this is all straw man, but interesting stuff...

Many crops use much more water than Almonds [0], I guess they're just fun to pick on. It'd be interesting to see a calorie/water comparison of many foods.

Also, my family's farm spends more money on well water than the government supplied water due to the high cost of electricity for pumping.

I do agree that a real market for water might help. The root of the problem really is that we are farming in a desert and relying on water from other locations. However, the desert does otherwise provide a great climate for efficiently/consistently producing many crops.

[0] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-gleason-almond-fa...

Do you think if the state gave incentives to use more efficient water usage methods would help. The reality is agriculture is 80% of water consumption while 2% of the state GDP. It would be more efficient for farmers to conserve water and everyone else pitching in to subsidize it.

% of GDP is one lens to look through when thinking about water rights. Having access to affordable/local/healthy food is another.

I think incentives would help, yes. There is also a "use it or lose it" system builtin to many of the water rights contracts that are toxic. Much like big corporate budgets, farmers find a way to use the water just in case they need it the next year.

The reality is it is very expensive to change irrigation systems in established orchards. Incentives to do that would certainly be well received by the tree farmers I know.

Of course you fail to mention how much water in the form of crops (especially alfalfa) are being exported. That wouldn't fit in with the friendly local farmer providing nutritious food narrative, now would it?

My point about the GDP is that it is such a small part of the overall economy that it is feasible to share the burden to improving the irrigation systems across the full population. And perhaps the "use it or lose it" penalties could be put on hold during a prolonged drought situation till hopefully things improve.

Also in your opinion, are the high water usage due to primarily the irrigation methods or that the crops need lot of water? Like almonds for example?

Irrigation methods can significantly reduce water usage for some crops. Others require gobs of water. I don't know the numbers for each crop, though.

The Almond Board of California has some info on this for Almonds. Obviously, take this as you will, given the source: http://www.almonds.com/pdfs/waterfactsheet315.pdf

I would hesitate to call Central Valley "local" to most Californians.

The water restriction measures are mostly bikeshedding (yes, removing public lawns is probably a good thing) on low consumption behaviors on those consitutents viewed to be most accepting and least threatening to the political establishment. It's akin to allowing Diesel trucks older than 1998 in CA to continue spewing particulates into the air because regulation would be "too expensive," and instead highly regulate passenger vehicles. Both are needed, as holistic solutions to diffuse problems tend to be the best, but asking one group to shoulder a collective burden is horse baloney. Yet, the action of the governor is a signal of an ongoing issue but it's token as it doesn't start to address the quagmire of where legacy water rights meets gamification and usage with sensible limitations. If CA doesn't work on the larger structural water allocation issues, water will become more scarce and expensive because a few large, influential farmers will continue to make themselves rich at everyone else's expense. (Carbon emissions need to go down too.)

Maybe CA needs well-informed grassroots picketing against farmer water rights gluttony in Sacramento?

I frequently see water consumption compared to %gdp, but I don't think this is actually very meaningful. Shifting 10% of the water from agriculture to software isn't going to improve software one iota. The water should be where it's going to be doing the most good.

That's not to say that farmers don't need to conserve more - the 80% alone means that's where we should be looking for efficiency wins (whatever portion of gdp), and letting them draw down shared aquifers without paying their neighbors is a clear tragedy of the commons situation.

This article seems to be suggesting that drip irrigation is the norm in California. While it may be for his/her farms, it's still a ways away from being a majority: http://www.mullerranch.com/making_news/sacbee_drip_2_2014.ht...

I live near many strawberry farms. They all use spray irrigation. Additionally they tend to run the sprinklers during the hottest parts of the day (mid-afternoon). I've been told this is intentional because if they did it when cooler then water wouldn't evaporate and parts of the plant/fruit would degrade potentially even rotting. Many locals joke that we export our water in the form of strawberries.

Of course, even if they're taking from their own well they're draining the groundwater just as effectively. It's hard to see how a market based solution wouldn't turn into a tragedy of the commons without enforcing limits on the extraction.

Yes, California's historical (lack of) ground water regulation and tracking was/is disturbing. Nobody has any idea how much is there or how much we are actually using.

There are limits on extraction going into effect [0], but it may be too late by the time they are supposed to happen.

[0] https://www.hcn.org/issues/46.19/californias-sweeping-new-gr...

A reality-denying, industry shill politician espouses: "Sinkholes arising from rapidly plummeting aquifers will boost the economy as tourist attractions. Water will be affordably trucked in and desalination is getting cheaper all the time. Problem solved."

Yes, many crops use more water than Almonds, but the main problems with almond trees is that they're slow to grow and you need to water them at all times, even in a severe drought. With seasonal crops, you have the option to switch to maybe less profitable but less demanding crops, or to lie fields fallow.

What we need in California is not necessarily crops that demand less water, because some years we have plenty of water, what we need is adaptability. Almond trees are terrible in that regard.

Here it is for the foods mentioned in the article:

  Watermelon......... 8.2 cal/gal
  Almond............. 7.0
  Head of broccoli... 5.9
  Cantaloupe......... 3.7
  Corn cob........... 1.5

Source: USDA

Do you really mean cal/gal? Corn has fewer calories per gallon of water than watermelon? It's not gal/cal?

Could just mean water melon soak up water very fast and are good at retaining it.

Refers to total water used in the cultivation of said product. Not water retained in the final product

We aren't picking on almonds arbitrarily. 10% of the state's water goes towards almonds alone. That's a significant amount of water! Yeah, sure watermelon is worse, but they don't use 10%. California produces 80% of the world's almonds. That makes no sense.

Cash crops shouldn't be more important than having cheap drinking water for people. Californias now have to cut their personal usage by 25% while these cash crops get a free pass? This is very wrong.

What does "many crops are badder" have to do with anything? California produces and incredible number of almonds, and almonds are incredibly water intensive. That's why they are being "picked on".

Maybe those agricultural business won't be able to grow anything anymore and go out of business. Not to worry, we can always import almonds from other countries which lack any kind of environmental policy. But at least we will be able to continue Building Great Apps (TM).

Almonds originally came out of countries like Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. All of which are members of the EU, which in most cases has stricter environmental policies than just about anywhere else in the world.

The problem with your statement is that, in this case, we are that country lacking suitable environmental policy. If almonds weren't brought to California, they would potentially be more expensive, but they would also be grown in regions where they naturally occur and under laws that are more strict than our own.

The Central Valley is not and has never been a fully arid desert.

While the southern San Joaquin Valley does indeed get very little rainfall, the mountains that drain in to it normally get plenty of water.

Tulare Lake, once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi, was right in the middle of the driest parts of Kern and Tulare counties.

The lake has even reappeared following a period of unusually high precipitation and as recent as 1997.

The Central Valley has never been a fully arid desert as long as there were not farmers there diverting the water. When they created a desert (in the 1800s), the federal government stepped in and diverted water from even further north and east. Of course, the farmers didn't do it all on their own, as lakes were drying up in California before they got here.

This isn't true. There is a natural rain shadow in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

The California Aqueduct takes water from the Sierras and Central Valley and supplies southern cities like San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, LA and Palmdale.

I'm not really sure what you're referring to by "the government stepped in and diverted water" comment. Or by "all the lakes were drying up before they got here".

What are your sources?

The figures I found put it more at 1 gallon per almond. They aren't even the largest culprit, yet they get talked about so much. No one seems to want to mention the biggest spenders in terms of water, meat and dairy. This handy article, http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/from-lettuce-to-beef-wh... puts into comparison water taken up by each food source. Meat and dairy are way up there.

If you want to compare by source in California, animal agriculture takes up 47% of California's water, far more than any crop or other source, http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft... (take a look at page 3 of the pdf).

Lets get our priorities straight here, lets stop talking about almonds (mentioned 24+ times in this thread) and start talking meat and dairy (mentioned twice in this thread...).

The pacinst.org document is great. Thank you for the link. Your point is spot on about animal agriculture, and well-supported by the PDF.

The thing is, the plant agriculture, besides its main products also has byproducts. Let's say you grow corn. Besides the grains there is the rest of the plant that although consumes water to grow, does not have much use in the end but as fodder. You may protest about the meat and dairy when water is consumed on specialized fodder products, but otherwise that meat and dairy can simply contribute to increasing the efficiency of water use.

Ground water is also a limited public resource. In fact, draining an aquifer can have even more dire consequences than draining a surface river.

The fact that California law allows unlimited water withdrawal until 2040 is literally a tragedy of the commons.

The farmers are getting no "Federal" water. I don't know what exactly this means -- presumably the state too supplies water to it's farmers via various water-works projects (your 2nd link indicates that farmers relying on state supplied water will get 20% of their usual quota this year) and farmer's also possibly have other sources of water like wells, bore-wells, etc.

It's much more convoluted than that, unfortunately. There are many layers of rights to water. Farmers will get anywhere from 100% to 0% of water from government sources. For instance, my family's farm is getting 0, so they are forced to rely on well water.

There are two different water systems in California. The Central Valley Project [1] is run by the the federal government, the California State Water Project [2] by the state.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Water_Project

No water from the federal government. Not no water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_in_California#Water_distr...

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