California has plenty of water for it's people. If you add up ALL residential, commercial and industrial use, including all outdoor landscape watering, baseball fields, golf courses, etc - it all adds up to around 10-20% of the water used (depending on rainfall).
Where does the rest (80-90%) of California's water go? Agriculture. Half the produce of which is exported to other states and countries. Did you know CA grows a LOT of rice near it's capitol, which is naturally almost a desert? And about half of that rice is exported, much to Asia (!!)
California is rather like Saudi Arabia, with the farmers pumping out all the water and selling it in the form of agricultural produce.
But take a shorter shower please! And you don't really NEED to flush that toilet.
Rice benefits from flooding for weed control (because it is unusually flood resistant), but doesn't consume a lot of water (the water from flooding is available for downstream use.)
If you want to complain about water-intenaive crops in CA, the issue is almonds, not rice.
Also, while there are parts of CA that are desert or “almost desert” (desert or semi-arid climate), the area around Sacramento is hot-summer Mediterranean.
For example cow milk uses more water in absolute terms, and more water per calorie, than almond milk.
https://milkyplant.com/en-us/blogs/the-latest/environmental-...
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/05/ditch-the-almon...
These were just two of the several sources I found, at each extreme. There was similar variation for cow milk.
Considering that it takes roughly 1 gallon of water to produce 1 almond, and that 23 almonds wouldn't fill even an 8oz cup, I'm guessing that the higher end of the spectrum is probably more accurate for almond milk.
It also looks like almond milk has half the calories per gallon of skim milk and 1/4 that of whole milk.
Soy milk splits when mixed with coffee though, and doesn't really have a neutral enough taste, for that I find oat milk works great.
I can't tell if it's a change in cultivar or transcontinental transport, but something bad happened with almonds in Europe.
A more reputable source would be https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks which lists almond milk as half the freshwater volume of dairy milk, and far better at every other metric (land use, greenhouse gas emissions, and eutrophication).
So you'd have to stretch things much farther than you did in your post for dairy milk to have an edge over almond milk. And even if you somehow did it, then dairy milk would have to then beat out soy milk which is even better than almond milk in all of these metrics, which it won't. If you care about environmental impact, dairy milk just isn't going to be in the cards. Let it take the L.
On the other hand, almonds are a very niche crop, grown for a select few types of customers, but the sheer concentration of their agriculture in California - that too by a single farming billionaire family, the Resnicks - has caused the situation to become dire to such an extent never seen before in any other place.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
It is always more efficient to grow and eat plant protein directly like tofu. And even if it were true that you absorb fewer nutrients from something like tofu, then aren't you lucky, you get to eat more food.
The only downside to alfalfa and feeding cows with it is the water usage, but for large parts of the country that aren't California and get decent rainfall, growing alfalfa takes no irrigation. You could maybe also consider the land area needed for it, but US cropland utilization has been dropping for decade after decade and isn't really a concern.
Sure some cows eat more alfalfa than me but most of them never taste a bit of that and only knows corn, soy and friends.
Some other superplants in the soy/quinoa category to consider: buckwheat and lupinus. Yummy.
> but doesn't consume a lot of water
That said, rice consumes a lot of irrigation water:
"In California, there is very little to no rainfall during the rice growing season, so this is not usually considered in water budgets. On average, about 5 acre feet/acre (AF/ac) of irrigation water is applied to a rice field during the growing"
https://ucanr.edu/sites/RiceTestSite/files/328501.pdf
Also, rice is not a particularly big water consumer compared to other crops - it's just one that came to mind. You could pick from dozens of others - Almonds, pistachios, etc.
California simply uses a LOT of water to produce a LOT of food, about half of it being exported.
But central valley agriculture only makes $37 billion a year.
That's not really accurate. Much of California is Mediterranean climate, including all of Sacramento county. Yes, there's some desert in California, but most of the agriculture happens elsewhere; but it depends on what you mean by 'almost a desert', a lot of the central valley is classified as arid and that's where a lot of the agriculture happens. A lot of people also live in (different) arid parts of California though, maybe they should move to where fresh water is easier to access :P
Also, the terrain means it's relatively easy to move water from the north around the central valley, but difficult to move it from the north or central valley to the greater LA area. Elsewhere in the thread, people claim water is fungible, and it mostly is, but location is important, and moving water in Bakersfield to Los Angeles is non trivial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_California#/media/F...
That's fine if it's a place for, say, children to play, but most of them do not get used that way.
The lawns get wrapped up in that residential water usage figure mentioned further up the chain, so it isn't a whole lot compared to Big Ag.
Also fun fact, a lot of farm managers in Saudi Arabia are either Scottish or Australian.
Perhaps the key insight required to explain the 20th century.
It has the force of truth: now that I see it put so simply, I struggle to understand why no one has been able to do so before.
More true than you may think: the first two syllables rhyme with “Caliph” and the Spanish Conquistadores always had grand designs on such huge tracts of land, including naming the capital city after the Eucharist.
The Reconquista was accomplished at the same time Columbus sailed, and Reconquista II: Electric Boogalo has been underway for a hundred years...
> It supplies one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts. California is the country’s biggest milk producer, producing nearly 20 percent of the nation’s milk. And of all crops grown in the U.S., 19 of them – including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, raisins, olives, plums and table grapes – are grown only in California.
- https://www.perkins.com/en_GB/campaigns/powernews/features/c...
(Not referring to your comment, I feel often people tend to handwave themselves out the equation).
I don't think that's what people are saying. The question is why is the cost of growing such water intensive crops in such an arid land cheap enough to make financial sense.
The answer, I expect, is essentially that the costs involved in said water are subsidised in such a way as to socialise them? Would be interesting to understand.
Sure it's a balancing act between "save the planet!" and "save the economy!". Guess who's winning so far?
Certainly if you wanna supplant them with other crops that support something other than European style cuisine, go for it, but if you propose to take away nuts, olives, and grapes then you may be a racist or bigot, and we’d sooner die than change in that regard.
Fact: a major component of the Ukrainian conflict is that nation's ability to supply wheat products to the rest of Europe.
I believe that a certain philosophical viewpoint was raised by some sci-fi authors, to the effect that wheat and other staple crops are the most intelligent sentience on Earth, because they successfully domesticated human beings, who give them all the best land, water, and doting TLC to become fruitful and multiply.
This situation came with the territory. By contrast, California's agriculture is 100% dependent on massive hydroengineering projects.
Yeah good luck with this one
Yes. This scale of agriculture in CA is not historical, and is driven by hydro-engineering projects of huge scale throughout the American west that began in the 1940s. The Bureau of Reclamation's fever dreams were fueled by two decades near the turn of the 20th century that were some of the wettest in a thousand years, and this has led to a crazy situation that is not sustainable in the long term (perhaps not even in the medium term).
"Golf courses in the US occupy roughly 2 million acres, which is larger than the state of Delaware but smaller than Connecticut."
"California almond growers use between 4.7 to 5.5 million acre-feet of water annually, representing roughly 14.4% to 16.75% of the state's agricultural water consumption"
WHAT THE H#$%?
Is there some better use for roughly 15% of California's water consumption?
Are you sure?
If you want almonds, grow them elsewhere, or switch to desalination.
There’s other reasons like California’s climate supporting a double growing season for many plants but the fertility is what really makes it so economically competitive. Farmers still have to use tons of NPK fertilizer like everyone else but most of the micronutrients are already in the ground so it’s a lot easier to get high yields with low risk and little micro optimization.
That said... it's not like California is the only place it's possible to grow almonds, or even to grow them profitably. It's just the most profitable place, especially if you're exporting to a US- or Western-centric market. And as with everything related to the environment, that's because the profits are centralized while negative externalities are socialized. We all pay the price of the reservoirs depleting and the aquifers running dry - maybe not monetarily, yet, but in the form of LA needing to ration water in homes, and in the form of possibly causing earthquakes [1] - but only a small handful of people collect the benefits. And because water is available in practically uncapped quantities for such an incredibly cheap price, they have no incentive not to do so.
How much should society value a change in the risk of The Big One happening in the next decade by, say, 1%? Or a similar increased risk of thousands dying of thirst in an increasingly hot summer? Or even just a extra few weeks of water rationing being in place every other year? Probably a lot more than what the almond farms are collectively paying for their water.
I do actually believe that markets can solve a lot of problems - but in order to do so, pricing needs to include the entirety of the transaction. Right now, water - especially bulk use of water - appears cheap, because our future selves or children are unknowingly kicking in part of what's being paid. Non-renewable resources like this need to be a lot more expensive in places where they're scarce, or else they're going to become extremely expensive at some point in the future.
[1] - https://science.nasa.gov/earth/climate-change/can-climate-af...
Exactly. Capitalism is already a contestable proposition, but capitalism with infinite money cheats for some?
Without proper accounting of externalities, capitalism does not work even in theory. This means water and all natural resources, it means pollution, it means harmful products like tobacco or social media, it means big cars... So on so on
Almonds are grown in California and not so much elsewhere, because with California's broken water policies you can grow them there for cheaper than elsewhere.
If California were to implement proper water pricing (eg via water trading), then the production costs of almonds in California would rise. And they might rise above the costs in other places, thus leading to a shift in production.
Have a look at water trading in Australia to see a good example of how that can shape agricultural practices. The Australian water trading system ain't perfect, but it's a lot better than the Californian mess. And it allowed agriculture to grow in dollar terms, despite severe limitations on the amount of available water.
If water were priced by auction, which I support, almond growers would invest in less wasteful irrigation methods, mostly subsurface drip: https://wcngg.com/2018/08/02/subsurface-drip-irrigation-has-...
More to the point, if water had a market-clearing price, California would stop growing so much alfalfa. Alfalfa uses half, half, of California's water, and California has no unique advantages at all in growing alfalfa.
But to reiterate, your first paragraph is absurd and very silly indeed. Lots of places have super cheap water but California still grows four out of five almonds on Earth. It baffles me that you thought cheap water was a plausible explanation for this.
Obviously, there are plenty of places on earth that have essentially free water, and almost none of them grow almonds.
> If water were priced by auction, which I support, almond growers would invest in less wasteful irrigation methods, mostly subsurface drip: [...]
Yes, of course. But that investment costs more money compared to what they are getting away with today, so on the margin we would see less almonds grown in California.
Your suggestion that a reasonably priced water would drop alfalfa production in California a lot more than almond production seems reasonable.
(A slight complication: the fields currently growing alfalfa would presumably grow something else instead of lying fallow. As a second order effect that might lead to more almonds being grown. It would depend on a lot of factors.)
Firstly, the water mostly doesn't leave california. If they're exporting dried rice and almonds and things like that, most of the irrigation water is staying right where it was used, correct? You say water is consumed, as if it goes away or vanishes? Evaporated water or underground water is also water.
Secondly, you're giving jobs and supporting the local economy. Farmers purchase supplies, capital goods, they pay property taxes, and first and foremost they employ people. They employ large workforces. All that revenue they received from selling wherever they sell is stimulating local economies.
Lastly, exporting food is great international relations. What country will attack you when they depend on you for food? What nation will not be grateful for receiving such basic sustenance from overseas? And if we would go to war, and if you want to shut down all this agriculture, what will we eat on the home front? If we can't import food, we'd better have infrastructure to support our own needs. Any nation [state, county, city] that produces excess food is more likely to withstand siege, blockade or attack.
Liquor and soda bottlers can pivot to producing and distributing hand sanitizer or bottled water. If beer or Coke is bad for you, keep drinking it anyway, because you never know when that industry will become indispensable.
Wrong for you individually, perhaps, but please note that "The Good of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few", and as citizens of the Western Empire, we are called to make sacrifice in order that justice be done in the world. My personal private toilet is insignificant and inconsequential compared to the almighty almond.
Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive. There are optimizations you can make with regards to which kind of agriculture is done where.
If the only way you can grow almonds is by mining water out of an aquifer that will deplete in a decade, maybe we should go without almonds. The juice is not worth the squeeze.
Water pricing via water trading would help move these considerations of trade-offs to the private sector.
> Agriculture in general, on the other hand, needs a lot of water, and we need agriculture to stay alive.
Just as a silly nitpick: you can make food without agriculture. And it's not just via wild fishing, but also by directly producing edible substances from minerals, like producing margarine from coal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine#Coal_butter
In general, you are obviously right, though.
Hobby farms with several cows and a shop that sells maple syrup consum eabout 1/10000th a percent of water as for example con-agra suppliers, nestle etc.
There is the constantly rotating story of "this one small family farm in colorado uses more of california's water than LA county". That is a LARGE conglomerate farm which is part of the corporate farm problem, not mom and pop farms.
I assure you;In the USA specifically, your families ability to eat and provide food for the things we eat WILL be more important in the long run than bathing or washing clothes, until we decide that beef proteins aren't the msot sustainable.
"It exemplifies a future that cities worldwide could face if global warming and overpopulation continue."
The city where I live is, I'm sure, very different from Mexico City, but we have reduced our water usage while the population has grown, thanks to things like xeriscaping. I imagine things are more difficult in Mexico City because there is less money, and orders of magnitude more people.
I don't know where you live, but if it is a city like most others, you've likely reduced your per-capita water use, but not total water use. This is certainly true of most cities in the American west. They have made impressive (above 30%) reductions in per-capita water use, but they have (in many cases) grown by more than that.
https://www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/update/2021/5/5/droug... is really informative.
I live in a dry bit of the American west and municipal usage is a small fraction of water usage (about 8%). Agriculture is often not very efficient because of old water rules that give water to things like hobby farms when real farms downstream don't get what they need.