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A comment on Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up. Parent comment

Re:Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip f... by Jensson on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @12:44PM (#28684798)
California farmers use 40 trillion litres of water per year. At your rate that would be roughly 80 billion dollars a year or so. California's entire agriculture sector is worth around 50 billion a year dollars. So just the cost of water would be way more than all their earnings. And then you have to pay for equipment, pay for workers etc.
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Re:Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip f... by ghshephard on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @07:18PM (#28688588)
Agriculture water != Water you consume in a home. Even Desalinated it's at most 1/10th that price. And there are usually brackish sources that are even cheaper to recycle into farms.

The issue isn't the cost of water, it's that "free" water drives everything else (or imported water - the United States major export often seems to be exporting it's water in the form of crops, food, etc...)

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Re:Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip f... by inglor_cz on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @01:44PM (#28685408)
I think their water privileges are not going away.

After Covid and all the disruption of international trade, self-sufficiency in food production will be considered more important than before.

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Re:Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip f... by plussed_reader on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @02:51PM (#28686112)
With privileges come responsibilities; like forgoing the profit motive for an activity that must be so heavily subsidized by gov't influence.
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Re:Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip f... by rdsnsca on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @08:09PM (#28701672)
In a normal year 40 % of the food the US grows ends up in the garbage, Canada is even higher at 50 %.
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Re:Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip f... by nearbuy on Tuesday September 28, 2021 @03:31PM (#28686496)
Almonds in California are reported to use about 2.6 billion liters of water and the industry is worth about $5 billion. So still not viable at $6.96/CCF, but maybe more viable than the average for Californian crops.
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