> At home one can cut showers from 15 mins down to 5 or two. On the farm it means not planting x acres that year.
Urban direct water usage (ie., showers, watering lawns, flushing the toilet, etc) only accounts for 4% of the State water budget. FOUR PERCENT. [0] Cutting your shower from 15 mins to 5 is utterly meaningless compared to agricultural use.
[0] PDF warning: http://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2013/02/ca_ft...
Cutting residential usage is comparatively easy because we don't actually use that much water at home. See the study I linked above if you don't believe me.
You could cut it to zero. We would run out of water in the same amount of time.
Yes, we need water efficient farms (or, perhaps, farms in places that aren't so hostile to agriculture). But it's very hard to make a farm water efficient.
Kind of a sweeping statement. Here's an inexpensive product that reduces water usage by 90%, aimed to farmers and especially good for citrus: http://treetpee.com/ttp-u/
For the record, I've lived in several places with water shortages since I was a teenager. I believe every one placed restrictions on certain activities (no washing car at home, water lawns only on designated days, no water for ornamental ponds, etc.) instead of simply raising the price of water.
I believe California could fix its problem with a lot less trouble by letting the price of water reflect its supply and demand.
Which would force a significant reduction in agricultural water use.
But the people making the decision would be people who know how much water their crops need, what the alternatives are, how profitable their crops will be in six months, etc. I simply don't have much faith in across the board cuts.
That is, I agree that water needs to be conserved. But I think there's a better approach; namely, letting the market work.
There are other places in the world to farm that are not currently suffering droughts.