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Comment by jconley | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

% 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.

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."

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.

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".

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