But one thing we can and should do immediately is stop (effectively) exporting huge amounts of water from Arizona to Saudi Arabia for free. That's very low-hanging fruit.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-company-fondomonte-arizon...
The problem with almonds isn't so much that the trees require water (like anything else). It's that they're inevitably planted where water is a particular problem. Like, needing to pump and deplete groundwater.
IIUC, it takes more water to produce a single almond (~7 calories) than an orange (~45 calories).
Almonds are a great source of protein. Oranges are negligible by comparison.
Almonds are a good source of vitamin E. Oranges contain none by comparison.
Almonds are high in healthy monounsaturated fats. Oranges contain none by comparison.
So now compare water per the above metrics and see where Almonds stand.
Almonds and Oranges are both unique and valuable in their own way.
A ag product should be priced to reflect their 'externalities', and that includes things like water use, but perhaps we should be subsidizing healthy stuff like produce over field corn and soybeans
Biggest problem with soy is that 77% is consumed by animal agriculture, which is causing much harm in the world (deforestation, pesticides/herbicides, runoff, biodiversity loss, co2 emissions, ...).
Almonds are closer to 1 gallon per ~6 calories - or almost 4 times worse.
It's almost as if there's reason almonds are expensive and tomatoes and oranges and lemons and limes aren't.
From what I can gather a single tomato uses on average 3.3 gallons of water and a single almond is 1.1 gallons. That is 35 calories vs 7 calories. It comes out to 10 calories per gallon vs 6 calories per gallon which is not nearly as bad as your example. I'm not saying these numbers are 100% accurate, but I'm very skeptical it is 4 times as much water.
You could feed many more people with higher yielding trees, like apples or even citruses. But then again, the almond is such an integral part of the upper middle class suburbia which makes up so much of California that we literally have expression around it: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=almond%20mom
I'd like your assistance in classifying other items, such as
1: upholstered furniture 2: refridgerator 3: wheat mixed with water, non-baked 4: bread
Its true, planting them in deserts (the central valley of california) is a bad idea. I only point out that there's nothing particularly bad about an almond tree vis-a-vis any other tree. Planted elsewhere, there would likely be no issue.
Except the context is very important here. California is routinely struggling with water availability. Planting trees, of any kind, in a Californian desert in this environment and climate is stupid and self defeating, no matter how much profit it brings into some farming company's hands, and there's not really a reason to defend that. Plenty of places in the US have enough water to support massive tree planting efforts, and also cheaper labor than California and fewer environmental regulations to work through. There's zero reason to plant a tree in a Californian desert.
Corn has commercial uses too. In fact it's largely used for that - sugar, starch, protein, roughage are used in all sorts of processes. Touch nearly anything near you right now, corn was involved in it's manufacture.
Hard to say what impact cutting back on corn would have. A big one.
Edit: in the US
One fun factor is that corn is drought sensitive (esp during certain stages of growth) and only about a fifth of our corn is irrigated or something like that. As climate change heats up, we may experience more crop loss.
Gradually shift agricultural activity to states that do not experience drought. There's plenty of arable land in the US.
It’s a catch 22: the more wet a place is, the less micronutrients there are available due to constant run off. As it turns out, historically it has been easier to bring water to a region than to replenish micronutrients in the soil to support industrial farming.
You're absolutely right.
Yet, much like the "No Farms No Food" bumper-sticker slogan, there's some rhetorical sleight of hand going on here. Those stickers are correct in a general sense, but the slogan is rarely deployed in a general sense. It's generally used to defend uneconomical farming in environmentally questionable places.
Similarly, you're completely correct in every single way that we need agriculture and banning it is not a solution. However, there's perhaps a substantial difference between banning all agriculture everywhere and matching the agriculture in a location to the resources available to support it. If there's inadequate water or sun to grow crops that need lots of both, perhaps that location is not the best for those crops.
Agriculture is essential for human survival. It's possible that growing almonds in areas with sharply limited and poorly managed water is less than essential for human survival.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...
Hmm, wouldn’t want to address the elephant in the room though.
If you're missing river and aquifer water, you want to tackle the users of river and aquifer water
And the water needed to produce all of their food, which is way more calories than they end up giving back.
And their daily water need, which comes out as urine, which pollutes the nearby environment.
> If you're missing river and aquifer water, you want to tackle the users of river and aquifer water
Exactly. If that is farmers growing crops to feed livestock, tackle that.
tldr: alfalfa is an unnatural food for unnaturally kept horses
source: have horses on range land.
(Aside: Anybody who wants free horses to break (not to turn into dog food), let me know.)
Second, there is very much a way to manage water while ranching — the main thing is to have the herds help you maintain healthy soil (which retains and regulates surface water), rather than destroying it like in feed lots. You make sure you can move them to a different section of the land.
Third, livestock and crops can co-exist onsite, and there are mutually beneficial processes between the two. Most farmers and ranchers do one or the other. Combined with notill and letting limited grazing on fallow land, what would be toxic runoffs from manure turns into adding fertilizer back into fallow lands.
Fourth, price of meat should reflect the added cost. People keep using feedlots because they want meat factories and cheap meat.
Solutions already exist.
It's only not a solution because people want cheap meat. And just to be clear, I'm not advocating for all plant-based, vegan diet or using vat-grown meat. I think a clearer assessment of what we actually need to thrive, nutritionally speaking, would be of benefit.
This is already available only to rich people at gourmet grocery shops for $13/lb for ground beef, and $30 for 12 oz for a steak
If you are advocating to remove the cheaper options of meat, and leaving only grass-fed and premium meats available on the market - I am not sure this is a good approach.
This is very elitist approach that could come from coastal elite only
I also don't live on the coast. I'm not sure where you got that idea from. I don't know if you can call me an elite.
A friend of mine looking into the Carnivore Diet plans out hunting trips, where taking down big game, plus some smaller game and a share in livestock (such as chickens) would feed the whole family for a year.
He's using the protein for fitness and bodybuilding. And yes, he can totally afford taking time off and having the fitness, skill, and equipment to hunt. There is a virtuous cycle where fitness enables the physical capability to go hunt, which feeds back to fitness. That's not a lifestyle that is accessible to everyone, either by personal interest or capital to get started.
But, the unanswered question is still: how much meat does a family really need? There's been a meat inflation going on since the 80s. We don't really think about the McDonald's Quarter Pounder as a big burger anymore, and yet, when it was introduced, it was considered huge. Now it is supplanted by the Double Quarter Pounder.
How much quality meat do you really need? You need less of those grass-fed gourmet meat to stay fit. Poorer quality meat, such as ones from McDonald's, has net-negative nutritional value. You get this illusion of eating a lot of meat, for cheap, but what you actually get out of it is poorer health.
How much of the craving for large volumes of meat is coming from you, or coming from the gut bacteria that depends on that volume of meat and signals your brain to seek it out?
How much is the meat factory industry incentivized to keep the meat flowing?
So I state it again -- I think clearly assessing what we actually need to thrive, nutritionally speaking, would be beneficial.
although I agree with your overall argument
The real problem, and the real elephant that no one wants to address, is the human population size.
Usually nobody engages this because it's a boring conservative talking point. Do I consume too much? No, it's the world that's overpopulated. And they usually have drastic authoritarian solutions that have no chance of being enacted. But go ahead, you have the floor, what are your proposals?
Well, might want to look those up before you continue down this line of thought.
https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...
Built-up land is 1% of habitable land.
Forests 38% of habitable land.
Agriculture 46% of habitable land.
Of ag (100%), there is
77 % ... livestock (18% calories, 37% proteins)
23 % ... crops for humans (82% calories, 63% protein)
---
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares, and return 35% of habitable earth to wildlife and nature
https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...
Rapid global phaseout of animal agriculture has the potential to stabilize greenhouse gas levels for 30 years and offset 68 percent of CO2 emissions this century
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding...
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth
https://www.colorado.edu/ecenter/2022/03/15/it-may-be-uncomf...
The animal agriculture industry is the leading cause of most environmental degradation that is currently occurring.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricultu...
Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries
---
We could stay on our 1% of habitable earth, lower our agricultural footprint from 48% of land to 15%, use quarter of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, double forest area and store entire 1.5C carbon budget (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00603-4) in the process, and enable return of wildlife and sealife (also storing a lot of carbon in them https://www.oneearth.org/how-restoring-key-wildlife-species-...).
All of that just by eating plants, something we are perfectly capable of doing and thriving on (https://talkveganto.me/en/facts/suitable-for-all/).
1 almond requires 1 gallon of water 1 egg requires 50 gallons of water 1 8oz steak requires 900 gallons of water
I'm definitely not an expert here. Please correct me if this is all BS.
They are essential, ask any vegan :)
> but because they sell a lot in China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almonds_in_California
"Farmers exported $4.5 billion worth to foreign countries in 2016, about 22% of the state's total agricultural exports. The majority of these exports went to the European Union [37%], China [8%] and India [15%]. While the EU is the largest consumer, the latter two countries are expanding markets ...". Canada, Japan and UAE have 6% each.
> created a circle of increased water consumption
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-wa...
1_049_555 million gallons ... beef, dairy
__125_218 million_gallons ... soy, rice, almonds, potatoes
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado...
"Agriculture – mainly alfalfa – consumes 80% of the Colorado River’s dwindling water supply ... One out of every three farmed acres in the valley is dedicated to growing alfalfa ... used as food for livestock."
"In 2021, nearly 20% of alfalfa produced in the west was shipped abroad."
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/23655640/colorado-river-wa...
"The Colorado River is going dry ... to feed cows."
"That means altering the demand side of the water supply-demand equation and shifting diets globally to foods that use less H2O, which ultimately means less meat and dairy, as well as fewer water-intensive tree nuts like almonds, pistachios, and cashews (nut milks, however, require much less water to produce than cow’s milk)."
https://environment.yale.edu/news/article/the-other-side-of-...
"1 kilogram of almonds produces less than 1 kilogram of carbon emissions. (For comparison, the Environmental Working Group estimated that beef causes more than 20 kilograms of CO2-eq emissions, cheese more than 10, and beans and vegetables around 2.)"
https://foodrevolution.org/blog/almonds-sustainability/
The authors compared the nutrition content of 42 different California food crops. They also ranked the economic value of 44 food crops. They concluded that for the water needed to produce them, almonds ranked among the most valuable foods grown in California for their dietary and economic benefits.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/environmental-footprint-m...
Cow milk is still 2x more water intensive than almods, needs 16x more land, produces 4x more CO2 and 6x more euthropication.
Almonds simply aren't good.
In reality, middle America probably grows an entire magnitude more food calories than california, and most of that is inefficiently turned into beef, or ethanol for cars. America does not need to be worried about starving. We literally throw away like a quarter of the food we purchase, and for incredibly stupid reasons like people swallowing the "Best By" dates as gospel and refusing to eat food with a bruise. This doesn't even consider the massive amount of farmland that we used to use in plenty of rural states across the nation that just aren't as profitable as the factory farms that own the markets nowadays. My state used to produce mountains of potatoes for the entire country but got outcompeted by Idaho and now is stuck growing niche crops and small batches of broccoli for local consumption.
They're not perfect, but to my body, also clearly not meaningless.
Consider that food producers are logically often already under ample pressure to set those dates in reasonable thresholds on both sides by their reputations and their own supply chain lags.
I'm not saying this to be dismissive. These effects can be incredibly strong, I could not eat pork cutlets for years after I had an extremely strong migraine when I ate one. After my body associated the smell and taste with it and noped out every time I got close to one.
If anyone has more information on this I’d be very interested to read it, because it’s landed firmly in the area of … sounds legitimate, but could also be modern “old wives tale” type of stuff where people just say it because it sounds scientific enough to be true and no one has ever researched it because it’s obviously wrong scientifically speaking but is addressed by unrelated fundamental knowledge in a scientific field Im not knowledgeable about such as industrial scale food science or something else.
So yeah would greatly appreciate anything more knowledgeable people on the topic can share, this little throw away line nerd sniped me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histamine_intolerance https://duckduckgo.com/?q=low+histamine+diet&atb=v376-1&ia=w... https://old.reddit.com/r/HistamineIntolerance/comments/cr9pf... https://www.mastzellaktivierung.info/downloads/foodlist/21_F...
Anecdotally, I've had major digestive issues my entire life. It's particularly frustrating because foods that are supposed to be extremely healthy (low fodmap! gluten free! whole 30!) are still bad for me. Following the last list I posted has actually helped.
Although now that I think about it, the original poster's migraines could be caused by chemicals leaching out of the can liner.
This is a pretty thorough paper on histamine intolerance specifically, and it discusses buildup of histamines in certain foods and associated symptoms.
"omg lets just move the farms to where the water is"
like you're not talking about growing plants rooted in the literal ground, some that must be cultivated over multiple years to yield quality product.
like we're not all going to be chasing water on a hotter planet with a chaotic climate.
In fact, if warming occurs, the US and Canada stand to net gain arable land and have increased growing seasons.
Of course the counter to that will always be “… but we’re going to have like SO much climate chaos!” which has become the perfect scary, vague and ultimately unprovable argument.
That certain regions are expected to "win" does not fully grasp the impact on our overall economic stability, the systems that keep necessities like food cheap and accessible. Whether you like it or not, the food market is global[1].
"Climate chaos" is not hyperbole.
1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/global-wheat-prices-jump-...
Calling a flood, hurricane or even several years long drought a “climate related disaster” doesn’t count. These events have occurred since time immemorial.
Every weather measurement deviation from average is not some “disaster” that can be blamed on evil corporations and people driving SUVs.
I'm talking about businesses, yes. Many of which will, as you say, need multiple years to start up elsewhere. I freely and readily acknowledge that this will probably be a difficult process for those businesses. Fortunately, food supply chains are now globe-spanning and de-emphasizing agriculture in drought-prone parts of the US is very unlikely to result in food shortages, much less famine.
We could start more gently by having them pay a fair price for the natural resources they require and are thus not available for everything else that needs water.
If anything, the last few years have shed light on is just how fragile global supply chains are. The war in Ukraine has impacted wheat prices globally.
> de-emphasizing agriculture in drought-prone parts of the US is very unlikely to result in food shortages, much less famine
There's a reason food security is considered a national security issue[1].
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/10/1...
[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-consumer-expendi...
US corn farmers are producing so much corn with subsidies, that they dont know what to do with it.
From here you get more subsidies for ethanol gasoline (ethanol extracted from food - corn), and more subsidies for processed food - HFCS being added generously into everything!
Without corn overproduction, the sugar consumption would be much smaller in the US and diabetes problem would not be as severe as it is
I'm pretty sure mcdonalds and frito lays would still be advertising even if their input resources quadrupled in price.
Everything is made with corn syrup because it is cheap, because it is an easy use for corn. If we made it easier to turn into other products like beef feed and ethanol, or less profitable to use corn syrup like with a tax, then there would be less corn syrup in food, but anything that doesn't provide an easy use for the oversupply will not work, because it just doesn't meet the desire of the US government to keep an obscene oversupply of corn in the market.
It is just historically rural regions in the US farmed corn, and it was enough for the US and little bit of export.
But over time agriculture effectiveness has significantly improved due to: fertilizer technology (CF Industries), agricultural equipment (John Deere), seeds technology (Monsanto Bayer Dow Chemical), food processing.
Thanks to that, the yield has significantly improved and amount of corn produced has increased dramatically, even without increasing land
Think of Moore's Law, but applied to food instead of microtransistors
The way it works is that you have a set quantity of water rights, and even in a drought, your entire water right is fulfilled before the next person in line. This means that the farms on the bottom of the totem pole, which is ordered by seniority and 100 year old connections to grifters, not actual need or value or anything possibly meritocratic, gets whatever they can.
In fact, a huge publicized fight about water rights in california was only so the last group in line, a shitty farming company and group of companies in the literal desert, spent millions screaming about "We are letting all the water into the ocean to protect some dumb smelt" ended up with those smelt, which were the food source to lots of valuable fishing communities in the bay area, dying off and going completely extinct, and that farming community hasn't actually gotten anymore water because their original apportionment was not being fulfilled before, because it's a drought and they are last in line. This was a HUGE talking point all over fox news and it was stupid and meaningless.
Banning farming in California isn’t the same as banning farming globally. Across much of the US not only is water plentiful crops get enough rainfall to not actually need irrigation.
And of course banning CA farming is hardly needed, even a 5% drop would free up plenty of water. Cities would be much better off simply buying farmland with water rights and leaving it fallow than implementing severe water conservation methods.
If California is growing a little less stuff that I'm buying in Ohio, Ohio farmers can start selling it at a profitable price point. Then we're not transporting as much across the country, not draining California of water, employing more Ohio farmers, and diversifying our food supply chains.
Maybe there’s a reason we are supposed to be thinking inside of boxes, after all.
The issue isn’t that farming is using 92% of all water, the issue is farming is extracting water from aquifers faster than it can replenish. This reduces not only the amount stored but also the amount that ends up in streams and rivers.
"The market" isn't magic, despite what your Economics 101 youtube channel of choice says.
[1] https://agenciadenoticias.ibge.gov.br/agencia-noticias/2012-...
I think the point is that putting effort into reducing the water waste associated with farming is higher-impact than residential water use.
But we should be putting effort into both.
Which wouldn't be the worst thing. Recognizing that the true cost of farming in the desert makes it uneconomical isn't the same as banning farming in general.
Can’t we just farm in places with abundant natural sources of water and transport it to places without? Or transport the water.
Places without water tend to have more sun, so we could probably work out some kind of energy-for-water trade.
Warm dry places tend to be good because you can grow crops there year round and they get a lot of sunlight. That's not necessarily the case in places with lots of natural water.
Of course, we do farm in places with lots of water too, it's just not the same crops.
If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares
There are other options between doing nothing like now and outright banning agriculture.
You could, for example, not try and farm water intensive crops in a desert.
You could, for example, use the water to grow vegetables rather than animals which need much more water.
You could, for example, farm crops that are meant to be grown in the region where the farm is.
Large scale does not imply efficiency. Soviet union did many things large scale
> cheaply enough to lift millions out of malnutrition
Millions were lifted out of poverty. Rhey lifted themaelves out of malnoutricioun because now they can afford food.
"Better go take a 30 minute shower so I can justify that almond-milk beverage I had yesterday!"
https://www.epa.gov/waterreuse/california-treated-municipal-...
It's not a waste, but it's also not your food, it's sold for profit. Farms in CA literally ship water out of the state in calorie form for profit. I'm glad they do, living in MN, but I hope they can sustain it.
The best thing for this country would be if California axed their agricultural industry because it would both force and encourage Ag development elsewhere. It would simultaneously be the worst thing for Californians and the cost of food production. But why am I arguing with you? It ultimately, brings my food production closer to home and you and your neighbors bear the cost of higher food prices.
Or maybe they believe it, who knows.
Many other things should be grown in California, but you know, be smart about it.
Its only been 2 years since they started actually controlling the pumping of groundwater, and that fight took well over a decade. [1]
[0] https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article4215302.html
[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019483661/without-enough-wat...
My understanding is that prior to the Iranian revolution, there were Israeli experts working in Iran on drip irrigation methods. Of course, they had to get out pretty quickly.
There’s no individual incentive to do those things, at least on a year-to-year basis which is how people make decisions. You think about this year, within the boundaries of your own property.
But the benefits are largely for the region, not the individual.
So, it need to be done by government, or it won’t be done at all (at scale).
Of course some small individual farms will do (and are doing) it on principle because it’s the right thing to do. But we can’t rely on ethics to drive behavior at the economic level.
The main thing with agriculture is managing ground water onsite with rainwater harvesting. By that, I specifically do not mean holding it in tanks. I’m talking about things like on-contour swales to slow down water so some of it recharges groundwater, or use of percolation ponds upland from the crop area.
These work in arid climates. You have to use a different set of patterns for wet places that can receive too much water. Many of the patterns can be found in how beavers instinctually manage water.
Also I don't want to know how much we'd have to spend to buy out even a quarter of the farms in the Central Valley.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/houston-will-be-drinking-d...
"We re handling right now about 135-140 million gallons [of raw sewage] per day, said Bill Tatum, manager of TRA Central Regional Wastewater System."
"This city needs almost a half billion gallons of water a day during the peak usage of the summer months, said Alvin Wright, spokesman for the City of Houston Public Works and Engineering Department."
That's a pretty big dent in the overall demand - though, amusingly, somewhat at risk because the cities in north Texas are going to start using more of their own sewage themselves.
Between things like this and capturing more storm runoff there's a ton for California cities to do to make them less dependent on other geographical areas and phenomenons beyond just "make people farm less." And especially if the climate patterns shift, closing the loop is just as important as getting rid of upstream consumers.
Water's a reusable resource, why are we still in the habit of polluting it and not cleaning up after ourselves?
There are a lot of big reforms that need to happen, but they’re big, often involving several states, international treaties, and long standing expectations.
It’s not a “why don’t you just” situation but a complex system of varied interests that have to renegotiate.
The core problem is that people, voters, need to understand the complexities. “Saving water is good, let’s do that” is hard enough to agree on right now… balancing the needs of many is very very difficult with a poorly informed and motivated electorate.
Some irrigated farms in the Central Valley will be withdrawing from aqueducts, but part of the reason why the valley is dry is because we built these aqueducts, harming agricultural land for the benefit of SoCal cities, with the promise that the farmers would be able to use that water. So not sure it's fair for us to claim the moral high ground.
Much of the California water crisis is manufactured too. There's no shortage of freshwater for the foreseeable future, but we're not building new dams, aqueducts, etc, essentially relying on the infrastructure built in the 1960s and before, for a population only fraction of what we have right now. Climate change plays a role, but the bulk of the pain is self-inflicted and has little to do with growing rice or watering our lawns.
Citation needed.
Counter-citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_land_subsidence
The most egregious examples are the desert areas that are made to look "tropical." Many of the desert cities require water waste by law- you can be fined for, e.g. not having a bright green lawn. Many of the residents don't even know they live in a desert. It seems crazy to talk about limiting water to agriculture when this is still going on.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/22/climate/color...
The reality is slightly different than this. Water has already been allocated. The current price to reallocate is high, and residential users don't want to pay to purchase more allocation from a current owners.
Urban areas, faced with the choice between purchasing those rights to increase their allocation, or spending on increasing urban efficiency, have largely chosen the latter because it is cheaper.
Agriculture is outright wasteful of water. California agriculture consumes 80% of the state's water.
https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/Agric...
Its an environmental equivalent of Amdahl's law - spending so much effort to make a small portion of the water use efficient when we can work far less to make agriculture more efficient. Of course its all because of lobbying.