California: Govenor orders historic 25 percent mandatory water use reduction

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unokitty

Diamond Member
Jan 5, 2012
3,346
1
0
Well we are going to have to make drastic steps. Unfortunately for all of you we grow a significant amount of your food.

what makes economic sense to farmers may be becoming an environmental problem.
In the Imperial Valley of California, a region drier than part of the Sahara Desert, farmers have found a lucrative market abroad for a crop they grow with Colorado River water: They export bales of hay to land-poor Japan.

Since the mid-1980s, this arid border region of California has been supplying hay for Japan's dairy cows and black-haired cattle, the kind that get daily massages, are fed beer and produce the most tender Kobe beef....

... the growing state debate over water allocation should take into account the exports of crops such as hay and rice -- two of the most water-intensive crops in the West -- because they take a toll on local rivers and reservoirs.

"This is water that is literally being shipped away," said Patrick Woodall, research director at Food and Water Watch, an international consumer advocacy group with headquarters in Washington, D.C. "There's a kind of insanity about this. Exporting water in the form of crops is giving water away from thirsty communities and infringing on their ability to deal with water scarcity. This is a place where some savings could be made now, and it's just not being discussed."

Now, estimates of hay exports from California range from 1.5 to 7 percent of the state's total hay production. In 2008, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, California exported between 617,000 and 765,000 tons of hay, some of it originally brought in from other western states. Most of it was shipped to Japan. A minimum of 450,000 acre-feet of water was required to grow the exported hay - roughly what the city of San Diego uses in two years.

In 2008, the U.C. Davis data show, California exported 52 percent of its rice production, much of it to Japan. The California Rice Commission, a trade group representing 2,500 rice farmers, estimates that rice uses 2.2 million acre-feet of irrigation water yearly, about 2.6 percent of the state's total water supply. Rice exports, then, soaked up about 1.1 million acre-feet of water in 2008, or enough water to supply the city of Los Angeles for a year and eight months.

By another estimate, with every pound of rice that leaves the U.S., about 250 gallons of "virtual" or "embedded" water used in growing and processing rice leaves along with it,

Exporting all of that to Asia made a lot of California farmers rich...

Growing water intensive crops for export in a desert?
Problematic during a drought?

Who'da thunk it?

Uno
 

JSt0rm

Lifer
Sep 5, 2000
27,399
3,947
126

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,418
1,597
126
what makes economic sense to farmers may be becoming an environmental problem.


Exporting all of that to Asia made a lot of California farmers rich...

Growing water intensive crops for export in a desert?
Problematic during a drought?

Who'da thunk it?

Uno

IIRC all that stuff is grown in the imperial valley down in SD which has tons of water that it's leeching from the CO; it's the central valley farmers that are eating dirt.

related article:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989
 

Angry Irishman

Golden Member
Jan 25, 2010
1,883
1
81
California, where cool coastal fog is perfect for growing standard broccoli, currently produces more than 90 percent of the broccoli grown in the United States.

California produces a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, and nuts: 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots (and the list goes on and on). Some of this is due to climate and soil. No other state, or even a combination of states, can match California’s output per acre. Lemon yields in California, for example, are more than 50 percent higher than in Arizona. California spinach yield per acre is 60 percent higher than the national average. Without California, supply of all these products in the United States and abroad would dip, and in the first few years, a few might be nearly impossible to find. Orchard-based products in particular, such as nuts and some fruits, would take many years to spring back.


We grow a lot.

And a shit ton of bat shit crazy nut jobs....joke, mostly.
 

Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
50,422
14,333
136
Yeah, my wife's parents live outside LA, and I remember looking around at the scenic beauty of nature on display and being shocked that so many things could be such a generic shade of brown. The hills are brown rock and brown dirt with occasional patches of brown grass or brown tumbleweeds blowing past a culvert with a trickle of brown water... even the air is brown. It's like God was painting a gorgeous landscape and then sneezed and blew coffee all over it.

I have family that live in the Sierra foothills NE of Sacramento. Beautiful country. Not a desert at all.
 

Zorba

Lifer
Oct 22, 1999
15,187
10,742
136
what makes economic sense to farmers may be becoming an environmental problem.


Exporting all of that to Asia made a lot of California farmers rich...

Growing water intensive crops for export in a desert?
Problematic during a drought?

Who'da thunk it?

Uno

Irrigating hay just seems crazy to me. In the mid-west hay just grows every where, you'd never waste irrigation on hay. Why not let the mid-west pick up the load for hay production and stop waste irrigation water on that.
 

postmortemIA

Diamond Member
Jul 11, 2006
7,721
40
91
IIRC all that stuff is grown in the imperial valley down in SD which has tons of water that it's leeching from the CO; it's the central valley farmers that are eating dirt.

related article:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26124989

So, how is your best winter working out for you?

Hope ya'll enjoy that drought

Me I'll just fertilize my lawn tomorrow after tonight's thunderstorm.

Not sure I'd trade anything at this point :D
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,418
1,597
126
So, how is your best winter working out for you?

Hope ya'll enjoy that drought

Me I'll just fertilize my lawn tomorrow after tonight's thunderstorm.

Not sure I'd trade anything at this point :D

fantastic! been riding my scooter the whole winter, still got water in my shower. zero f's given about these water restrictions cuz lawns in this environment are stupid as hell anyway.

but once again, once they restrict my showers i'm outta here. THAT is the tipping point.
 

DucatiMonster696

Diamond Member
Aug 13, 2009
4,269
1
71
what makes economic sense to farmers may be becoming an environmental problem.


Exporting all of that to Asia made a lot of California farmers rich...

Growing water intensive crops for export in a desert?
Problematic during a drought?

Who'da thunk it?

Uno

Bingo.

This is ontop of the fact that farmers in the state receive state government subsidized water rates which are heavily discounted.

For which this distortion created by government intervention via subsidized water rates has been the major incentive for the growing of water hungry crops and meat to be mainly exported to Asia and especially China who is a major buyer of California's crops.

Let's not even consider how this mandated 25% cut back for cities and towns in California will not make one dent in the situation because cities and towns and all other industry that is not agricultural in nature only comprise 20% of all water consumption.

In addition, when people do start cutting back in a significant manner on their water usage their water bills will actually start to climb as water municipalities see a decline in revenue. So rates have to increase in order to cover the cost of their infrastructure's maintenance, repair and expansionary projects.
 
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PottedMeat

Lifer
Apr 17, 2002
12,363
475
126
Think somebody in Silicon valley would come up with an economical vertical farming initiative for the state to save water.

i want to see salt water tolerant fruit & vegetable plants. need water? just pipe it in for free. hey maybe it'll kill off those pesky weeds that may choke them off.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,637
3,095
136
Greedy farmers with their pushy, stingy lobbying won't let anyone touch them. They are the problem, not regular people flushing their toilets. I heard it on the radio, therefore I know.
 

schmuckley

Platinum Member
Aug 18, 2011
2,335
1
0
image13-485x283.jpg


Meanwhile,Nestle pumps 80 million gallons a year out of the aquifer there...out of
Sacramento alone..
They have other wells in California

Through 2009, Nestlé Waters, the division that operates the Millard Canyon facility, provided the state with annual reports, but after that, the flow of information has slowed to a trickle. The state has used a rounded estimate of 244 million gallons pumped out per year — roughly the annual usage for 480 area homes, according to calculations used by area newspaper The Desert Sun.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/nestle-continues-stealing-worlds-water-during-drought/203544/


http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/i...own-nestle-water-bottling-plant-in-sacramento

http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/03/05/bottling-water-california-drought/24389417/ This is the one to read.
Last figure I saw was 704 million gallons annually.


nasa_cali-1.si.jpg
 

cabri

Diamond Member
Nov 3, 2012
3,616
1
81
Greedy farmers with their pushy, stingy lobbying won't let anyone touch them. They are the problem, not regular people flushing their toilets. I heard it on the radio, therefore I know.

Farmers are using 80-90% of the water.

Maybe find the waste there if there is some.

If the water is not running off into the ocean from the general population; it is being recycled somehow; but slowly.
 

rudeguy

Lifer
Dec 27, 2001
47,351
14
61