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Comment by jkyle | Hacker News Reader

About time.

Agriculture is using 80% of the water, but accounts for a mere 2% of the GDP (4% of employment)[1].

There's no reason we should be squeezing our rural and suburban centers that fuel the overwhelming majority of our economy while giving farmer's a free pass to suck the state dry of usable water which is mainly used for exported profits and not sustaining local industries.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/04/03/ag...

edit

For clarification, mentioning the GDP is meant to show that cutting back on agricultural usage will not affect our economy catastrophically even if the industry sinks a bit. Will food prices go up? Perhaps.

Further, if the point is food production and not food profit for the nation then the focus should be on producing the most water efficient foods (per calorie) not the most profitable foods produced under an assumption of free or near free water. So yeah, that might mean less prime rib and more black eyed peas for Americans (figuratively speaking).

The cost of the product should reflect the cost of the resources required to produce. This is not the current case.

View on HN

Why is that a comparison that makes sense? If we doubled the water available to tech companies, that wouldn't make them any more productive.

We're literally running out of water [1]. As in no more.

There are entire counties who get nothing when they turn on their faucets. Nothing. No more.

Not to mention the ground is sinking.

[1] http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-droug...

Which entire counties get nothing when they turn on their faucets?

Tulare ran out not too long ago.

Visalia is the county seat of Tulare county. I cannot find any articles mentioning that people in Visalia get nothing when they turn on their faucets. Can you link me to a source?

I found a link. I wasn't able to reply to the commenter below. http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/04/30/california-a-state...

edit: read that as countries, not counties

India is getting there [1]

[1]http://thewaterproject.org/water-in-crisis-india

Ah, you're concerned about 'entire'. Yes. As of 2014, it's just people without the means or skills to change their situation. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/03/us/california-drought-tula...

It's more accurate to say, municipal water authorities can no longer meet demand.

Quite a bit of the central valley. I attended a recent talk by the director of the CA water board, and she said this was her #1 priority... getting them water. The state is currently trucking in bottled water to these communities.

Why would I be down voted for this?!

Some folks are pretty grumpy. Don't worry, it'll likely be fixed in a little while.

Indeed, we're running out of water. That means that we need to know not only how to reduce overall water consumption, but also to prioritize how that water is consumed. I reckon crops (even the less important non-staple ones) are more important than green lawns right now.

If we instead, e.g., mandate that all showers be painfully low-flow, that hosing down sidewalks is illegal (and thus, they'll often be covered in human poop in the area around Twitter), and other such things that make it less pleasant to live here, workers will be less eager to live here, and thus, it'll be harder to keep the best ones (or even the average ones) from moving to another state or country.

And thus, yes, it would make California's tech and other industries less productive, and less competitive with their counterparts elsewhere.

There are lots of other ways to clean off a sidewalk.

And there are lots of other places to raise cattle or grow almonds than in a desert.

California (specifically, the Central Valley, where most of California's agriculture is centered) is hardly a desert compared to pretty much everywhere surrounding it save for maybe Oregon.

You're right, but nonetheless, we could conserve a lot more by making those cattle ranchers, and the alfalfa farmers who supply the feed, pay market rate for water (and, likely, move their operations to another state) than if we got sidewalk spraying down to zero.

I think you're overestimating how much water cattle ranching actually uses, given USGS data on the subject [0].

Not that I disagree with you; from firsthand experience, I know full well that there's plenty of room for improvement when it comes to water use on cattle ranches. However, that firsthand experience also suggests that alfalfa isn't the only food cows eat (the family ranch I helped out on through my childhood involved a lot more grazing than even grass hay, let alone alfalfa hay, and pretty much all the pastures I remember were watered by rainfall alone), and that cows aren't the only use for alfalfa (a lot of grazing livestock - horses, goats, etc. - also eat it in large quantities, though I'm sure cattle are the dominant consumers). If alfalfa's using a disproportionate amount of water, then I'd target alfalfa specifically instead of incorrectly antagonizing the ranches buying it.

[0]: http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...

I don't think anyone should be specifically antagonized. If agriculture paid market rate for water, instead of pennies on the dollar, the market would do a great job ensuring our scarce water got allocated for maximum utility.

The problem is that a lot of farms and ranches get their water from wells on the farms/ranches themselves. For those that have to pump in their water from elsewhere, then yeah, let's get water prices restructured. For those pumping their own water from their own property, however, we'd need some major rejiggering of property rights in order to justify charging land owners for the use of what's arguably their own property, and I'm not sure if that rejiggering would be a net good. I suppose a property depth could be enforced much in the same way that a property height is already enforced (in order to prevent landowners from restricting air traffic, for example), but that's going to have some huge backlash, I'd reckon, seeing as how much of an investment is required to build wells / water tanks, run power lines, etc. Perhaps mandatory metering of electric wells combined with water usage limits ("this is how much water we've detected to exist underneath your property; we'll charge if you use more than that, and credit if you use less than that") would be a good solution/compromise?

> For those pumping their own water from their own property, however, we'd need some major rejiggering of property rights in order to justify charging land owners for the use of what's arguably their own property

This is doable. "California is the only western state that doesn’t really monitor or regulate how much groundwater farmers and residents are using."

http://ww2.kqed.org/science/2014/06/02/drought-drives-drilli...

Water is a scarce resource in this case. You don't exactly let the "wealthy" buy off everything they can just because. Scarce resources need to be regulated my friend.

Regulation is where scarce resources go to die. Why not find a way to produce more?

Do you seriously think the answer isn't "produce more, and stop using so much until we do"?

I seriously have no faith that a group of people can regulate things efficiently. It sounds hopeful of course. I have more faith in desalination or some other engineering solution.

So you are advocating the continued unsustainable use of a scarce common resource, in a way not provably necessary to the good of that commons, because we might be able to efficiently create more of that resource at an unspecified point in time.

Well, I'm convinced. I'll burn my house down this winter to keep warm, too.

Read "The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future" and learn why this sort of thinking has been shown to be wrong again and again.

Or you could actually back up your post instead of a blind cite. But to save you the trouble of formulating an argument--because I looked through your recent posting history, it's mostly two-sentence talking-points stumping, I'm reasonably sure I won't actually get one--I happen to already know about Ehrlich and Simon's bet, even without Sabin's book, and I also know that that the lessons generally drawn from that by conservative thinkers--and ones not without merit on a sufficiently long time horizon--has remarkably little relevance to a literally incipient disaster scenario. There is simply no time left for human ingenuity to pull one out of our collective posterior. We have ignored the warning signs and we have committed probably irreparable damage, right now. It would be stupid to assert that water use reduction in California is not a solution, which is why it's very fortunate that I didn't make that assertion. Water limits exist to buy time for solutions to be formulated. And I'd bet against long odds that those solutions can be formulated. But not by next Wednesday.

Your black-and-white thinking--and the assumption that mine is as black-and-white as yours--kind of sucks, as does your cite-and-run dismissal. Can you please try to do better?

Well the regulations only need to be a little wrong for things to continue to be just as bad as they are now. Isn't California already teaming with ineffective regulations?

If no one waters their lawn will you be happy? Is solving the problem your goal or is this just a thrilling political device? That would really suck.

The "and stop using so much" part is misplaced if you're really looking to the agricultural industry, of all things, to do that stopping. We need food and drinking water. We don't need green lawns and golf courses.

Not to say that water efficiency improvements in the agricultural space wouldn't be welcome, but rather that landscaping is arguably less important than even the relatively-unimportant foods, let alone the important ones.

Landscaping should be the first to go, but it's also a relatively minor part of the problem. Agriculture is the primary cause of water depletion--not just use, but depletion.

If the tradeoff is unsustainable and as-we-currently-know-it-irreparable biosphere destruction and more expensive almonds and beef (through higher alfalfa prices), I'm really okay with that trade-off and I think if you dig into the situation you probably will be too. People aren't gonna starve because dead cow costs more--because beef is already nearing "too expensive" for Americans in situations of food insecurity as is.

Scarce resources need to be exposed to market forces. The purpose of markets is to allocate scarce resources and price them appropriately.

Even when those resources could be bought by someone who will waste them? We're not talking about something like gold here, we're talking about a resource that is essential for human life. Would you really want someone who's wealthier than you to buy all the water around you just because they can?

No, I certainly wouldn't! Still, the drought is on my mind, and while I recognize the need to conserve, I am frustrated by my government's response to the problem so far.

So far, we've been responding to the crisis in a way that doesn't really allow people to make good trade-offs. For instance, I went to my parents house in a nice warm place, after a week in the fog, and my kids kind of wanted to play in the inflatable pool. My parents were bummed but asked us not to, because they're under mandates to cut back.

To feel better, we all went out for california raised beef burgers and gorged on walnuts. Several dozen inflatable pools of sheer deliciousness, all externalized.

Just kidding (sort of) about that last part, but this is the frustrating thing. Nobody is saying we can't use any water, we just can't use unlimited amounts of it. If someone goes vegan, avoids other water-heavy food sources, and doesn't wash his or her car, well, is it so bad that they might water a small patch of lawn or fill up the inflatable pool now and then?

This is what is so nice about markets, when people have to pay what something actually costs, they are unlikely to use as much of it.

Except, of course, you can now and then end up in a situation where someone rich buys "all" the water. One way to handle this is tiered rates, where it's cheap for the first bit, and perhaps very expensive after that.

http://www.sfwater.org/index.aspx?page=168

Looks like the first 4 units (1 unit = 748 gallons per month) is $5.45, so once you get the tap flowing (sunk cost), I'd say that drinking water is "free". Even showers are pretty cheap.

The problem is that it doesn't go up by much. After those first 4, it's only $7.31. Still pretty cheap for something that we are supposedly in desperate need of.

I suppose we could just crank up that second tier - in theory, that would keep showers, drinking water, and so forth affordable, while properly pricing the use of water to produce burgers, walnuts, swimming pools, lush gardens, golf courses, and clean cars. Now that I think of it, rich people already consume more of that sort of thing anyway...

Tier option sounds smart. I think we have a similar system in place in Germany.

Unfortunately tiered rates in California have been ruled illegal. A bunch of anti-government people got a ballot measure passed which mandates that government services must be priced in line with their costs. Not a terrible idea in thought, but doesn't really help with situations like this.

Honest question: shouldn't the cost of replenishing the aquifers be considered as part of the cost of water? In other words, internalize the cost of externalized costs of water consumption.

Also, it is my understanding that there're already two different rates for water in California depending on whether you get in a tap in your house or you use it to water a field by the acre-foot. I'm guessing that legally it is something different than tiered rates, but it barely makes sense.

    This post is known to the State of California to cause cancer.

That is the beauty of the market: you do stupid things like that and you aren't rich enough to do so much longer.

If it was regulated and you used your buddy connections to appropriate all the water usage rights then you still have your buddy connections once you have taken my water.

There has to be a balance between government regulation/oversight and market forces. Just look at what happened with Wallstreet. You think no intervention at all would have been a good idea there?

It's not about disallowing the other guy from doing stupid things and not being rich anymore, it's about not allowing someone to waste precious resources essential for human life, so as to not make it harder for others in need to have access (at accessible and fair prices) to said resources in the future.

Not unless the cost of water is super, super expensive. Which it won't be.

Up to a point. If the resource is the difference between life or death it should be rationed or regulated if there is a risk to those without the means or resources to acquire it.

EXACTLY. Governments and other non-market forces need to regulate and step-in when market forces fail to regulate themselves.

I disagree completely with your assertion, especially when the market forces are applied to vital natural resources tied to some sort of ridiculous notion like human money.

I'm at the point now mentally where the entire monetary system should be reset to allow a natural relationship between real value and fiat currency to exist. If that means that a bunch of wealthy people are left with nothing, then so be it.

That's great for pricing most commodities, but for necessities it is disastrous.

It works pretty well for food.

No it doesn't. Subsidies, social programs and massive regulations hold up our market for food.

This comment is ridiculous. The horrible water situation in CA is a result of years of water being exposed to market forces. Do you actually feel no sense of cognitive dissonance between your beliefs and this very clear reality or are you just being disingenuous?

No. Markets are not the be-all, end-all of allocation. Especially for scarce resources that are vital for living. The market would simply have the rich get all the water, rather than letting everyone have some.

If anything, that's an argument for cutting off non-essential (read: landscaping) water use entirely and prioritizing drinking water and agricultural irrigation (i.e. the things that actually tangibly benefit wealthy and not-wealthy people alike). We need drinking water and food. We don't need golf courses.

"There is currently a water shortfall of about 6 million acre-feet per year, which is being sustained by exploiting non-renewable groundwater and other sources."

Via: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do... (If you haven't read this, you really, really, really should. It's an accessible, level-headed analysis of California's water situation.)

The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP. What does watering one's lawn contribute to?

> The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP.

The primary value to California of exporting food (which is what most California agriculture is) is the economic activity produced.

(Given a global food market with largely equivalent substitute goods, one could argue that the same is true of agriculture that is used for local consumption, as well.)

You say GDP contribution to Californianis more important than supplying food to the state/country/world. I say feeding people and keeping food prices low is more important than that particular economic statistic when looking at the value of water consumption.

The point being made here is not that feeding people and keeping food prices low isn't important. The point being made here is that California agriculture isn't required to feed people or keep food prices low.

If this is your honest opinion, you'd be pushing for emergency triage of water allocation for agriculture. Specifically, reducing luxury crops like almonds, beef, and chicken.

We could cut our water usage in 1/2 and still produce enough nutritious food for the entire nation plus some.

This coming from someone who has favorite pass time of smoking brisket, ribs, and grilling steaks. It's just the facts.

> If this is your honest opinion, you'd be pushing for emergency triage of water allocation for agriculture. Specifically, reducing luxury crops like almonds, beef, and chicken.

I'd be fine with agricultural triaging, personally.

However, pinning the blame on almonds and livestock is misplaced (and, in the latter case, characterizing them as "luxury" crops seems misplaced unless you consider basic nutrients like protein a "luxury"). Instead, it would be wiser to focus on things like rice, which consumes absurd amounts of water relative to the amount of resulting food. I don't have any statistics on hand, but I reckon California's rice production alone dwarfs livestock (and possibly even almonds) in terms of water usage, and (I'd argue) would count much more easily as wasted water than livestock or nuts (since, compared livestock and nuts, rice isn't particularly nutritious).

From my research, pound for pound rice takes less than almonds.

Guess what crop California spends almost 50% of its water on? Alfalfa, which is used to feed cattle.

Also, just cutting out beef can make a huge dent. It's water usage is truly wtf level, whereas chicken is closer to almond level.

> Guess what crop California spends almost 50% of its water on? Alfalfa, which is used to feed cattle.

Alfalfa isn't used for just cattle, you know.

Also, do you have a source for that number? I'm having trouble finding one from a U.S. or California government source (USGS, USDA, CDFA, etc.), but at least one article [0] pins that number at closer to 15% (and almonds at 10%).

> Also, just cutting out beef can make a huge dent. It's water usage is truly wtf level

A citation is also needed here. According to the USGS's 2010 data (which admittedly is likely outdated), livestock as a whole (beef, chicken, pork, you name it) takes up around 0.5% of California's water [1]. Whether or not this includes alfalfa is unclear, but if the previous figure is correct, I'd suggest that cattle water usage is nowhere near the "WTF" level.

That figure makes a lot of sense to me, having grown up raising angus cattle (I'm not sure whether or not dairy cattle have higher water requirements due to milk production being their emphasis). Alfalfa was certainly a big part of their feed, but grass hay and grazing were just as important to their diet. Larger commercial operations might have different methods, but I'd reckon that most ranches aren't high-scale commercial operations.

[0]: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...

[1]: http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...

> Also, do you have a source for that number? I'm having trouble finding one from a U.S. or California government source (USGS, USDA, CDFA, etc.), but at least one article [0] pins that number at closer to 15% (and almonds at 10%).

I got my numbers a bit mixed up. According to: http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft...

Meat and dairy uses 47% of California's water. I'm not sure how I transplanted that into Alfalfa alone.

> I'd suggest that cattle water usage is nowhere near the "WTF" level.

Here I'm merely speaking on how much water it takes to produce a pound of the product. From what I can tell chicken is around 500 gallons of water per pound, but beef is more like 1,500+ - I was mostly looking at waterfootprint.org, but other sources seem to back up these estimates.

Chicken is at least close to almonds, which people are freaking out about since its several times other options, but beef is 3x chicken. Hence, WTF level.

Lets do some math. I have some friends who live in San Francisco, which (going off memory) has an average water consumption of 50 gallons of water/day/person.

But some eat steak for dinner every day of the week, probably around 12 ounces. At 1,500 gallons of water per pound, thats 1,125 gallons of water for their meal. If they switched that to chicken, assuming the same number of ounces (not sure if we can do this though - if people need to eat more ounces of chicken than beef) and 500 gallons per pound, thats 375 gallons of water. A savings of 750 gallons of water per day.

They just reduced their personal water footprint by many times what the water utility sees. They could 100% cut out flushing toilets, taking showers, doing the dishes, doing laundry, and not come even close to what eating chicken instead of beef does.

I've seen some maps comparing SoCal water usage vs NorCal. Going off memory, 50 gallons vs 100-150 gallons day/person. The reality is, the gap between 50 and 150 is covered by choosing to eat chicken over beef 4 times a month.

Dietary water footprint is much more significant than what our water utilities show us.

Then the nation needs to view it as a national problem rather than a Californian problem. People don't though, instead they point and laugh as they eat our state dry.

The point is watering your lawn is a drop in the giant reservoir. If only 20% of the water is being used by residents (in reality, it's a bit less) and you pass super aggressive water conservation laws targeting residential use such that it's reduced by 50% then you've conserved a whopping.....

10%

In contrast, a mere 12% increase in agriculture efficiency gets you the same win.

Targeting residents to curb the water crisis in CA is like targeting SNAP benefits as a solution to the deficit.

It just plain won't work.

Well said. Thank you for arguing with facts and numbers.

Sure, but you were touting GDP as the way to target water reduction, which doesn't make sense. I agree water should be priced based on supply, which would bring more efficiency to use in farming, lawns, or whatever.

You misunderstood me. I updated with an edit to clarify in the original post.

GDP is mentioned to show that increased cost of production for agriculture will not have a catastrophic effect on our economy....if you ask most Californians (or others), they often think agriculture is a huge proportion of our economy and requiring water efficiency would have a huge negative impact on our bottom line. Lost jobs, revenue, etc.

While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn. And the response of "cities" like Los Angeles is to subsidize people's servants completely redoing their yards!

Implementing water restrictions is incredibly easy - you declare "no outdoor water usage except on these two days of the week after 5pm" and issue fines to people who don't comply. But it is incompatible with Californian entitlement, because gasp the grass might get a little brown.

I'm sorry, but have you ever been to Los Angeles? Where is this mythical place you're talking about with these mythical people?

I live in Los Angeles proper, and the majority of my neighbors already had low-water lawns to begin with. Those that don't (including me because the owners of the house I rent don't want to change it) are basically just letting the lawn die because we understand the situation and really aren't that vain.

Also, we do have watering restrictions and the city does give out fines if you don't follow them. I'm not sure what you're talking about, frankly.

Actually yes, I'm on the west side right now.

I'm in one of the few buildings without grass. The sidewalk across the street is damp every morning. Walking around, I often see pools of runoff that have persisted throughout the day. Most all the lawns are still being trimmed every single week. Maybe this neighborhood is just terrible.

Are there actually any restrictions besides http://www.lawaterrestrictions.net/current-water-restriction... ? To someone used to the Northeast's late-summer restrictions those are laughable - you can still water your lawn every day of the week!

Good on you for letting your lawn wither, but I assure you that the out of touch culture is alive and well.

It's not just about the grass. When trees die, they become hazards and must be removed. That's expensive. Without trees, there are fewer birds. There is no shade. The sound of leaves is absent from the wind. Obviously, there are more important things for a society to worry about, but my point is that this issue is not just about grass.

People seek out natural things such as plants. They put them in their homes, they hang paintings of them on their walls, and they decorate their cubicles with them. I don't think it is surprising that people want green lawns. It is depressing to live in a brown world.

The answer seems to be to design _better_ lawns: plant grasses, shrubs, and trees which grow naturally in the area, do not require huge amounts of water, and are drought-resistant. I don't know about LA, but, in my area, this transition has been underway for years.

Mountain View, and probably many other cities in California, have already made that declaration, and other restrictions.

"While this is true for the big picture, it's still fucked up that the status quo is for most everyone to have a well-watered lawn."

Why? Why should we not focus on what actually matters?

Note that california's per-person water consumption (including lawn watering) has declined over the past 20 years.

So people are doing a good job.

Note also that parts of LA and other places you are complaining about, have the lowest per-capita water use in california (though nearby have some of the largest) Here are some figures:

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1105-californi...

Yes, I think the only real solution is to properly price water and build desalinization plants for areas along the coast. And yes, individuals conserving water will not prevent whatever outcome awaits, only slow it down slightly.

But personally wasting water is still insanity. It demonstrates an attitude of being someone else's problem, which ties right in to the general California philosophy of outsourcing personal judgment/responsibility.

I've seen much better conservation efforts during New England droughts, which only ever last a few months and are then followed by an inundation of precipitation.

Except those regulations are in place in a lot of places. It just happens to be incredibly hard to enforce.

I'll copy what I said above because it's relevant to your point as well: The problem, though, is that the water taken up by agriculture and the water taken up by people in cities does not come from the same big bucket. A drop of water saved by Ag doesn't equate to a drop of water that can be used in my shower. Infrastructure changes will have to happen and the 20% users will also have to make cuts.

Most water used by cities isn't used for watering lawns. This is a red herring fallacy anyway because no one is proposing loosening up restrictions on lawn watering at the expense of waterin crops.

Homeowner's Association rules or even town planning/zoning may actually prohibit someone from using arid-friendly grasses or perhaps replacements like artificial turf or pavement.

There's a decent movement going to make restrictions like that from HOA's null and void if they conflict with state conservation interests.

Then HOAs need to die off already, simple as that.

>The primary contribution of agriculture is feeding people, not GDP.

Feeding people can be done in many areas. Why should one area sacrifice a limited resource when another area can do the same but with more of that resource? If they aren't compensated for the sacrifice of that resource, there is no reason for that resource to be sacrificed. Charity to big business will lead to being left destitute.

GDP is simply a measure of the value of this product which is "feeding people". Similarly, parks and landscaping, the cost of upkeep and the resulting increase in property values, are also accounted for in the notion of GDP.

Is it? A significant proportion of that agriculture consists of luxury crops for export. Nobody's going to starve if the price of water-intensive foods like avocado and almonds increase a little.

If you care about feeding the poor, give them money to buy their food. Don't wreck the environment and distort the market with supply-side meddling.

Why avocados? It takes 74.1 gallons to produce 1 pound. Much less than most calorie-dense foods.

Don't forget raising animals for meat, growing food to feed animals, and growing food for export to feed animals. This accounts for more water than almonds that seem to always be the scapegoat.

Another interesting fact about almonds. They're actually the most cost effective use of water from the volume to profit ratio.

So, yes, it takes more water the produce a bushel of almonds then it does to produce a bushel of <whatever>. However, that bushel of almonds earns more profit per gallon.

What does this mean? It means if you start charging farmers for water usage (rather than access) then almonds are a more attractive crop then others crops from a profit perspective.

Counter to what most believe, restricting farmer's water access or charging more for water might actually increase the shift to certain water intensive luxury crops like almonds.

> If you care about feeding the poor, give them money to buy their food.

Yep. Let's make the poor people dependent on the rich people for basic sustenance instead of allowing food to actually be affordable. Let's also marginalize the people who are just barely not poor enough to qualify for such a thing, because "well, sorry that you're barely keeping your family above the poverty line, but you know, gotta blame the farmers for being inconvenient to the cityfolk, and you're not quite as poor as this family over here so why should we care about your problems?".

Any system that depends on the arbitrarily-defined concept of "poverty" v. "not-poverty" is a non-answer to many lower and lower-middle class households.

> Further, if the point is food production and not food profit for the nation then the focus should be on producing the most water efficient foods (per calorie) not the most profitable foods produced under an assumption of free or near free water.

Wait, why are we measuring this per calorie? That's a terrible way to measure what should be produced.

The US is still the fattest country in the world[1]. We don't need more calories, we need more nutrients. There are several measures of nutrient density[2]. Fats/sugars/proteins/alcohol (the things that contain calories) are macronutrients, so they are a component of nutrient density, but Americans are getting plenty of these.

Optimizing incentives for calories would drive prices in a direction such that Americans will get even fatter. Let's not make this mistake.

[1] http://www.worldobesity.org/site_media/library/resource_imag...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_density

EDIT: The popular discussion on this subject often centers around almonds, the comparison being that beef has a much higher calorie efficiency per water. If you look at nutrient density, almonds fare much better.

EDIT 2: Australia has a standard for calculating nutrient density, which has been codified in the Nutrient Profiling Scoring Calculator (NPSC)[3].

[3] http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/industry/labelling/pages/nut...

Not one comment about water infrastructure? The great water technologies of the past fifty years have been completely ignored by the tech elite. Where does San Francisco get its water? It is crazy to me that we are proposing cutting back on water use when the real problem is a huge portion of the water we have is not being used effectively. We would not be having this discussion about power, sewer, gas or any other utility, but for some reason we see no value in capturing and retaining this resource. Why?

EDIT - I am mainly talking about Dams and water storage.

I assume you're talking about water leakage? If you are, we're not talking about that because it's such a tiny number as to be irrelevant.

"California receives a total of 80 million acre-feet of water per year. Of those, 23 million are stuck in wild rivers ...

All urban water consumption totals 9 million acre-feet. Of those, 2.4 million are for commercial and industrial institutions, 3.8 million are for lawns, and 2.8 million are personal water use by average citizens in their houses. In case you’re wondering about this latter group, by my calculations all water faucets use 0.5 million, all toilets use 0.9 million, all showers use 0.5 million, leaks lose 0.3 million, and the remaining 0.6 million covers everything else – washing machines, dishwashers, et cetera."

Via: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do... which is a really good read.

To reply to your edit:

Have you looked around to see what professional water management people have been saying about that very thing? I bet you a dollar that they've talked about that very thing several times. If you read that Slate Star Codex post (if you haven't, you should), you'll see that already we capture and use most of the water that we receive.

But, for the heck of it, what water sources do you want to see captured, why, how much water do you expect to get out of that source, and what will be its impact on the rest of the ecosystem?

Some 30-80% (depending on the precipitation that year) of that 80% is pumped out of aquifers beneath the Central Valley and is not really available for urban use anyways. And it's not like urban users are blameless here. I mean, have you driven around Southern California? It shouldn't be the case that LA more closely resembles Miami than Phoenix.

Cutting agricultural water usage doesn't just affect California.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2...

The problem, though, is that the water taken up by agriculture and the water taken up by people in cities does not come from the same big bucket. A drop of water save by Ag doesn't equate to a drop of water that can be used in my shower. Infrastructure changes will have to happen and the 20% users will also have to make cuts.

[citation needed]

strawberries produced in CA are cheaper to buy on markets in NY [1]

[1] source, personal experience

4% of reported employment

Sorry, but your comment is nonsense. I don't disagree with your conclusion (at least not entirely), but there are some facts that are in serious need of clarifying here.

> Agriculture is using 80% of the water, but accounts for a mere 2% of the GDP (4% of employment)

Even disregarding the fact that California's agricultural workforce is a smidge below half of California's total population [0] (which indicates that your "4% of employment" figure is incredibly misleading; I'm guessing you're comparing to national rather than state figures?), the article you cited actually agrees with my observation that a green lawn is far less important than, you know, food on tables, and concludes that the "80%" figure isn't going to be true for much longer as urban sprawl continues throughout California.

(EDIT: it's also not clear that agriculture really does account for 80% of California's water use; while the data is probably outdated, California's agricultural water use was actually around 60% as of 2010 per the USGS [3].)

> There's no reason we should be squeezing our rural and suburban centers that fuel the overwhelming majority of our economy

It's pretty hard to fuel that economy without food. This isn't Star Trek; we don't have food replicators, and you're severely understating the sheer quantities of food that California's agricultural industry produces. Per the California Department of Food and Agriculture [1], California produces around half of all American fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Along with this, California (as of 2013; the CDFA hasn't published newer data yet AFAIK) is the sole producer (99% or more) in the nation of 14 crops (including almonds, olives, raisin grapes, and walnuts) and is the leading national producer of several dozen more [2, page 2]. Sure, Hollywood and Silicon Valley make a lot more money, but you're grossly underestimating how vital Californian agriculture is to the national and state economy, and money isn't everything here.

So yeah, we can be more aggressive about cutting off agricultural water if you're willing to go without a lot of types of food (either due to being entirely nonexistent from domestic production or - more realistically - much more expensive).

I agree with this, and hopefully farmers will continue to make crop selections based on water consumption.

However, profitability is a pretty big economic motivator. Rice, despite being among the heaviest users of water, still netted California nearly $790 million with 25% of American rice having been grown in California [2, page 11], though these figures are apparently on the decline, probably because of the drought.

Also, it's not quite accurate to say that the water is free. Even if the water itself is entirely free (which isn't always the case), a lot of farmers and ranchers (and other inhabitants of rural areas) are facing the prospect of having to redrill wells, which - if you're not aware - isn't cheap. The well at my old house was drilled with this possibility in mind: deep enough that, even with a drop in water, it can still pump.

> The cost of the product should reflect the cost of the resources required to produce. This is not the current case.

I take it you're not poor? Having grown up in a low-income household, I have a very hard time agreeing with this sort of attitude knowing that putting food on the table was hard enough as it was.

This isn't to say that I disagree with you entirely here. I think there's room for something along the lines of a tax on crops that require large amounts of water or a tax break on crops that are less water-dependent, which would achieve what I'm guessing to be your intention without having such a broad negative impact on those in lower income brackets.

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[0]: http://www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/?PAGEID=158

[1]: http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/

[2]: http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/California/Publ...

[3]: http://ca.water.usgs.gov/water_use/2010-california-water-use...

What an inane comparison. You can't eat apps.

Well, actually we can, in the same way we can "grow cars in Iowa" (to borrow an example from economist Steven Landsburg). But do we want to?

It's not inane. Look up how much of California's water is exported to other countries in the form of agriculture products.

See: China's consumption of the California almond crop.

CA is a major exporter of agriculture. It can grow enough food to supply itself even with aggressive curtailing of agricultural output.

If CA cities start running out of water supply, businesses will be affected. The ones that carry our GDP.

If you're implying that cutting back CA Ag production would be a national harm, then the nation needs to pull it together and help CA support the industry.

But in the end, this is just simple math. You can't solve CA's water crisis by only targeting residential usage. It's simply not a big enough slice of the pie.

It's not a bigger slice of the pie than agriculture, true, but it's a slice that's much easier to fix.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't try to fix agricultural water consumption. Just that the calls to cut off agricultural water because "oh no they use 80% of the water" seem to reflect misplaced priorities.

> usable water which is mainly used for exported profits and not sustaining local industries.

When you say "exported" and "local" are you referring to California, or the United States?

States need to be responsible for different resources, but as a whole, the United States must be self sufficient. No reasonable geopolitical strategy would require importing vital resources like food and wter.

When the Indian government implemented the strategy you suggest, it consigned the country to years of economic backwardness. "Self-sufficiency" is the road to poverty.

> States need to be responsible for different resources, but as a whole, the United States must be self sufficient.

"Must be"? No. Perhaps it would be nice, but even that is questionable.

> No reasonable geopolitical strategy would require importing vital resources like food and wter.

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." More to the point, a reasonable geopolitical strategy would do so if self-sufficiency was either unattainable, or merely had an opportunity costs that exceeded the strategic value. Anyhow, the US is a massive net food exporter; and if California cuts backs due to drought, that will make production elsewhere in the world -- including elsewhere in the US -- that would otherwise be economically marginal more viable. Even if self-sufficiency in food was essential, these cutbacks wouldn't threaten it.

Anyway, these cutbacks are because there literally isn't water in the systems in which they hold rights to deliver to senior rights holders, not because farmers (which don't account for all the affected senior rights holders) are being politically targeted. Even if food self-sufficiency was a geopolitical strategic necessity, and even if curtailment would impact it, you can't deliver water that doesn't exist.

Well, so long migrant workers. Thanks for your labor, but, having low skills, and no jobs in the fields because water is cut, time to face reality!

There are lots of farm hands who'd be negatively affected. They are at the margins of society as it is.

Ideally, farmer's should be charged for water usage instead of water access. Many of the water rights mentioned in the article are access rights. Meaning they can pump and use as much as they want. Make inefficiency come with a cost and watch an entire new industry spring up around water efficiency.

Water is a limited and precious resource. Prices should reflect that. Anything less is a subsidy padding the profits of industrial agriculture.

Agreed. The whole system needs to be updated and optimized differently, at least optimized towards efficient water usage, relative to the crop. My objection is the vilification of farmers. I.e. Farmers use 80%! Yet we urbanites are the ones first asked to conserve! The framing is very questionable.

Why make it relative to the crop ? If California is no longer the best place to grow particular things then grow them elsewhere.

No vilification of farmers here. The reason it's absurd to squeeze urbanites is their a minor user of the resource. You simply can't solve the problem by reducing urban water usage.

You should always look at inefficiencies in the 80% before you squeeze the 20%. And if the industry contracts a bit, it's not the end of the world or even a significant impact on the economy.

> You simply can't solve the problem by reducing urban water usage.

You simply can't solve the problem by reducing rural water usage, either.

The most feasible solution would be to build desalinization plants. California is a coastal state, and the majority of its population lives in cities located along said coast; pushing those urban centers to oceanic water will immediately free up that 20% of inland water usage, even more of which could be freed up by farms using oceanic water as well.

Protecting inefficient industries from their own inefficiencies to save jobs is not a viable long term strategy. Besides, its not within the power of the government to create rain. Job training and relocation programs can help.

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