This feels like a complete farce. Farmers abandon their crops because it is too hot and their land has poor water retention only to expose the bare soil to the direct sun which makes the problem even worse. They are insane enough to set their mulching material on fire instead of spreading it on the soil to prevent it from drying out.

Californian farming practices have always been extremely paradoxical.

AKA dumb.

Some of these farmers are the same morons who expanded their planted acreage by 20% or more AFTER depleting their groundwater to the point where it's too brackish to use.

Then they line the highway with signs blaming politicians for the lack of water. I kid you not.

Exactly what i was thinking!

In Chile you need to do that, otherwise the good earth is blown away in days, and restore it need's years.

Even in "wet" Switzerland you have to plant some special grass to protect the field when it's "resting".

Obviously they know something about the cost/benefit you do not.

You're right according to the article. Despite this:

> agricultural burning remains a major contributor to pollution, despite a law banning it in 2003.

There's this:

> It costs about $500 an acre to burn crops, but more than $1,000 an acre to chip and shred them.

> In August 2021, the San Joaquin Valley air district accepted $178 million in new state funding to incentivize alternative methods of managing ag waste, including grants to repurpose dead or abandoned crops into mulch.

I bet a lot of that $178MM went into matches and gasoline.

Possibly only that the cost isn't theirs to bear alone but the benefit is.

If you can't get water what value is the land?

Half serious - Wouldn't this be a better use?

https://www.amazon.com/100-Almond-Barbecue-Grilling-Pellets

$40 for 40lbs

100% Pure Almond Wood Barbecue Grilling Pellets

Almond BBQ pellets produce a clean, sweet smoke that is long-lasting and provides an even heat source. These BBQ pellets are 100% Pure Almond Wood with no fillers or additives ever. These pellet are a higher density than most other BBQ cooking pellets which means that the pellets cook both hotter and cleaner allowing for a longer burn time than most other pellets on the market. These Pellets can provide a high heat for a beautiful sear, or it can do low and slow smoking that creates a distinctly mild, nutty, sweet flavor that works great with all meats, seafood, poultry, veggies, and more.

> ... 100% Pure Almond Wood with no fillers or additives ever ...

Go ahead, try and rewrite that marketing copy for what's left over in a vineyard, as described in the article.

I’d smoke meat all summer with this hypothetical source of cheap smoke wood if it became available. And if meat weren’t so expensive right now…

This is madness. The state regulates small gas motors out of existence but farmers can just burn giant piles of garbage because it's cheaper and more convenient?

In the UK burning crop stubble was banned decades ago. Farmers predicted a disaster... that everyone adapted to. Sure trees are harder to manage than straw, but its 2022 and we have machines!

The article says part of the problem is vineyards. Those have a bunch of non-wood products (like wire) embedded in the vines which make it a costly, manual process to disentangle the potential mulch from stuff that would either destroy the mulching machine or embed metal bits in the mulch itself.

California seems like it needs a dose of self awareness

Why burn? Won't they die on their own?

> Why burn? Won't they die on their own?

"San Joaquin Valley air regulators have struggled for nearly 20 years to outlaw the practice of agricultural burning, encouraging farmers instead to grind up forsaken crops in wood chippers and spread them as mulch. But amid a third year of drought, some fear a resurgence in large-scale burning because it’s cheaper than grinding, and because so many acres are being abandoned due to drought."

Yep, read that in TFA as well. Doesn't answer the question "why" does it?

The "crops" are not wheat or corn or something that the rotted remains can be plowed into the ground next year - they're apparently orchards, trees basically, that need to be ground up or burnt (or left to rot over periods of years).

Sugar cane crops are burned every year, it returns micronutrients to the soil and allows for mycchorizae to re-establish before the next season. Tilling and decomposing not only take longer, but it reduces yield and the tillings can add other fungi that outcompete the natural mycchorizae, making your next crop a season late and less able to intake nutrients efficiently, which increases the cost of fertilizer.

Fertilizer runoff is what causes the yellow/green algae blooms in runoff ditches and holding ponds. That high of a concentration of nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, etc are bad for the environment in that concentration, on a similar level to the waste holding areas of a pig farm. It's a net negative for plant and animal life, including humans in the vicinity.

> Sugar cane crops are burned every year, it returns micronutrients to the soil and allows for mycchorizae to re-establish before the next season

Holy cow, have you hit a nerve in me! I lived years in two Mexican cities adjacent to Texas, and I swear they burn the sugar cane when the winds are southbound, so all the contamination ends up in Mexico. Early winter you can see greyed skies and small amounts of ash and soot everywhere. Burning the cane makes it easier to harvest, but there are machines now that do that job, and as a bonus, you don't dehydrate or sterilize the upper soil.

To be fair, some farmers also burn their crops in this side too, seeing how little environmental regulation there is. December and January are hard for your lungs there.

What chopping the trees down for fuel then? Burn them in a powerplant? Or turn into biogas or something?

I suspect the energy density is low enough that the activity of moving them to a location for processing would be net-energy negative.

Also the idea of getting California to approve a wood-burning powerplant is amusing.

"because it's cheaper than grinding, and because so many acres are being abandoned due to drought"

In a word, cost.

Leaving dying plants in situ would probably attract pests... and in drought conditions it would probably all end up burning eventually anyway.

Chop and mulch and compost.

Tractors run on fuel, which is burned and costs money. It is significantly less negative impact to burn the field so the the nutrients are returned to the soil rather than put fuel in the air to do something that takes longer to break down into a bioavailable form and can lead to fungii that out-compete the natural healthy mycchorizal colony in the soil.

When you burn the crop there goes your nutrients in the cloud of smoke. When you grind it you leave everything there for the living soil to break down. You cited sugarcane further up in the thread. Even with that crop there is a lot of interest to develop better methods that don't require burning, because this leads to lung cancer or other issues in the local community.

https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/SC100

I'm just explaining the logic behind why it happens, I don't live in that region anymore, and am not in agribusiness. Farmers are the min-maxers of the blue collar trades. Your source actually outlines the process I just described in the summation at the end.

"In summary, the soil temperature increases that occurred with burning were higher in sand soil than in muck, and this effect dampened with soil depth. Transient (short-lived) soil temperature increases that occurred during the field burning events were smaller than the naturally occurring diurnal soil temperature swings that occurred throughout the growing season. This observation indicates that burn events likely have minimal impacts on soil microflora and microfauna. Young shoots emerging through the green cane harvest trash blanket during winter months will encounter colder air temperatures. This consistent microclimate effect will either delay growth or, in some cases, lead to frost damage, which translates to a loss in seasonal yield potential. Crop canopy damage by frost is more likely to occur with green cane harvest than with traditional burnt cane harvest. Therefore, switching from traditional burnt cane harvest to green cane harvest may have trade-off value for the growers. In the long term, green cane harvest may add organic matter in the soil (important in sand) and reduce soil loss (important in muck). However, there may be some short-term yield losses through delayed growth and frost damage in young plants.

The proper management of the excessive trash may reduce the negative effects of trash blanket on sugarcane growth and yield.

The ongoing research on trash management includes the evaluation of trash incorporation into the soil through disking, through raking of trash from the row and leaving it in the inter-row space, and through partial removing of trash from the field."

emphasis is mine.

They're not optimizing for benefit to society, mostly just cost.

Optimized for maximum profit, really. That does not not necessarily mean optimized for cost. For example, society willing to pay a sufficient premium for grapes that come with a no-burn guarantee would mean that burning, while less costly than alternatives, is less profitable in the aggregate. The market would trend towards avoiding the practice.

However, you will find no such agreements because society does recognize the practice as being a problem to society.

That may work in a water rich environment but in California you are basically throwing money away by reducing water retention and increasing evaporative losses.

Would it not make sense to let the crops decompose into organic matter for future crops?

Actually, mulching is mostly about preventing soil erosion and increasing water retention. When you consider that the original reason for abandoning the orchards is expensive water you may think that burning your orchard residue is setting money on fire.

It is the same with tillage. Conventional farming sprays synthetic fertilizers, only to do tillage which resets the soil and basically throws all the money they put into their fertilizers away, necessitating even more fertilizer usage.

> Would it not make sense to let the crops decompose into organic matter for future crops?

Orchards don't die and decompose in one year. Presumably they want to put the land to productive use next year.

You can do that without burning, it just costs more money which is why they prefer burning and polluting local air until regulations inevitably catch up and outlaw the practice for good in the future. Just because its cheaper to do things like burn your waste or dump it into the rivers and oceans than to do something more sustainable, doesn't make it a great idea on the whole.

Others make black-earth with it, why the need for burning?

One ton of Almonds require roughly 3.8 million gallons of water. One ton of Wheat, on the other hand, requires about 250,000 gallons of water.

Overall, almonds and grapes are cash crops - not food crops.

Last time I checked almonds had a lower water use per calorie than most food crops out there. That's the statistic that actually matters in my opinion.

Almonds are also more nutrient-dense than wheat.

I was curious ratios, almonds are more dense but it's not a clear win by water usage. Almonds are about 2x the calories and protein per weight, 10x niacin, 24x vitamin E, but then even or less on things like zinc or folate. TIL.

And AFAIK, people don't eat mostly almonds or wheat anyway.

I'd bet a lot of unused almond and wheat meal goes to animal feed which is far less efficient than either of the inputs.

So the end effect or almonds vs another crop is diminished anyway.

I assumed almonds mostly went to almond milk?

This almond "drink" contains very little of the actual almond meal, it's 90% water, as opposed to the actual nut of the almond.

The pulp that's left after pressing is getting fed to livestock.

What do you suppose the buyers of the grapes and almonds do with them, if you think they aren't food?

They're talking mostly about two water intensive crops; almond trees and grapevines, two crops no one needs to survive. It sucks that I have to breath that stuff all day today when they're asked to grind it up instead.

Seems like prioritizing the common good is in line with big aggro if we don't care about the independent farmers this could impact.

The state should cover the cost of grinding these unwanted plants. It's unrealistic to expect farmers to take a more expensive route to dispose of them, if they have a cheap alternative.

Highly recommend reading The Dreamt Land by Mark Arax if you'd like to learn more about this. The plants should never have been planted. Decades of unregulated groundwater pumping and effectively stolen federal water is feeding what used to be desert. There's no real plan for what happens when the water runs out (which is beginning to happen, evidently); just keep guzzling water while the going's still good.

The current model of farming in California is ultimately doomed; much of the groundwater depleted over the past century cannot be replenished as the ground has subsided and compacted itself after the water was pumped out. Basically the entire Central Valley sank by about 16 feet between 1920-1970 (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/land-subsidence-in-california/s...). Data since then is spotty because we basically stopped monitoring it.

Likewise, the state should pay for my trash pickup, and if they don't, I'll just dump it on my neighbour's lawn. It's unrealistic to expect me to take the more expensive route to dispose of my rubbish.

I believe dumping your trash in your neighbor's lawn is illegal. Burning unwanted agricultural crops apparently isn't. You could make burning the crops illegal too, which would also solve the problem, but that would probably face legislative barriers. Paying the farmers to do the right thing might be the most straight forward solution.

For basic household rubbish? Yeah, state should definitely pay for that since it's in everyone's interest. I'm not sure you'll find much opposition here.

If they’re prohibited from burning, they'll consider that cost when they’re choosing the crop to plant?

The farmers could start a GoFundMe to cover the cost of grinding it up. I'm sure a lot of people in Silicon Valley would gladly pay to keep this smoke out of the air

I think it's fairly obvious that climate change presents a tremendous threat (I assume that's what the parent is on, it's flagged so I can no longer see it), but a _billion_ is a gross overstatement. I'd recommend checking out Climate Feedback[0], a website I like to check on that is a panel of climate scientists basically reviewing claims on climate change. 99% are them reviewing climate denial, but some in there are reviewing claims overstating the impact of climate change.

[0]https://climatefeedback.org

Relatively small disruptions like a pandemic and a localized war have supply chains and food production strained. I think it's plausible that something as serious as global climate change can cause widespread economic collapse, famine, and wars. I'm not sure that climate scientists are best equipped to talk about the fragility of the global economic system.

Sometime around 20 or 25 years ago, we stopped wanting to have an amazing elevation of humanity -- instead, for some reason, a majority of the population of the West was convinced to worship poverty instead.

Twenty years ago was 2002. What exactly happened during the Bush administration to make people worship poverty in the USA? Is the aftermath of the Iraq war so large?

If we were to build new institutions in the wake... what principles would we need? How often would they change?