[..]The problem comes at a time when inflation and a historic drought are pushing the costs of production and water supplies to an all-time high, and the price of almonds has fallen to an all-time low of about $2 per pound.
It’s a sharp reversal for the industry after four decades of relentless expansion across 1.6 million acres in California’s agricultural Central Valley from Tehama County to southern Fresno County.[..]
This is just bad economics and especially during a drought. Export oriented fossil fuel based Ag is the worst thing to engage in right now when we have a drought in high COLA CA.
My favorite stat from a previous drought was that the water used for _exported almonds alone_ is equivalent to the water used for Los Angeles and San Francisco.
It's ludicrous to me that people use the drought to claim that CA is in the process of hitting the limits of its population carrying capacity when we have such a pants-on-head idiotic allocation of water. As a spherical-cow thought experiment, if _banning the export of almonds_ would allow building another LA and SF, "does CA have enough water for its population" is not the right question to be asking.
>if _banning the export of almonds_ would allow building another LA and SF, "does CA have enough water for its population" is not the right question to be asking.
Serious question from someone who lives on the east coast and understands little about almonds. Why doesn't this happen? Is the almond industry a particularly strong lobbying force?
I like almonds just fine, but I see them as more of a luxury food than a staple. Are the places in the world where almonds make up a significant percentage of calorie intake?
I see that the U.S. is the world's biggest exporter of almonds. Is it a thing where if we stopped exporting almonds we'd have nothing to put on the boats leaving California for China and elsewhere?
> Serious question from someone who lives on the east coast and understands little about almonds. Why doesn't this happen?
$21 billion in gross revenue and 100,000 jobs in the state.
Plus, there is a risk that adopting such a ban would be found to be, for at least some affected property owners, a regulatory taking under the 5th Amendment, requiring compensation from the state for the loss imposed on top of the state costs for the reduced tax base and additional costs due to the number of people thrown out of work.
>Serious question from someone who lives on the east coast and understands little about almonds. Why doesn't this happen? Is the almond industry a particularly strong lobbying force?[..]
Blue Diamond Growers who are the largest co-op outfit growing and processing almonds in CA does have a lot of clout.
Their lobby is connected to the Climate Lobby. Others who are part of Climate Lobby include Campbell Soup company, many Silicon Valley tech companies and of course, the heaviest hitter of them all..Oil and Gas.
Ag in California is intimately close with the fossil fuel/oil and gas sector. We convert fossil fuels to calories. Why do you think we still run tractors on diesel and we still haven’t gotten autonomous electric ag robots tending our fields.
And it’s actually worth a lot more(value added products) because it’s a co-op that purchases and processes a lot of almonds and takes care of over 80% of worlds supply of almonds.
The stat I've seen is that each almond takes about 1 gallon of water to grow. I still haven't found a compelling answer to this question:
Where does that water actually go? An individual almond is tiny, even if it's 100% made out of water, you can't actually fit a whole gallon of water in a single almond. So 99.9% of that water must be going somewhere else, like transpiration or back into the water table. If the vast majority that water is getting cycled through the same area (e.g. transpiration comes back down as rain, water in the soil goes into the water table and gets pumped back up), the 1 gallon cost isn't such a big deal, it's not like the entire gallon of water is being shipped to another country.
The air is dry in California so it has a huge capacity to absorb moisture from transpiration or evaporation. The prevailing winds will carry the water hundreds of miles or more before it precipitates. They water crops year round, but there is almost no rain in the dry season, so that water is definitely going somewhere else.
The other thing is photosynthesis. The oxygen is released into the air, and the retained hydrogen only accounts for 11% of the mass (although if you assume the O was replaced with ~1 C, then it's 77%). This often becomes part of the crop that's shipped off, but even if it sticks around to combust or decompose, the vapor can still blow away.
If LA wants more water, I think they need to desalinate rather than diverting more and more long distances to populate the desert. I know that's not easy. And of course cutting way down on almonds is a great idea and needed, but still the central valley is already poor as hell and the water you want is all their little wealth. You have to think about how making these poor communities poorer and LA richer will effect people and places. There's only a few million less people in the valley than LA country. And about almonds, the enormous factory farms just north of LA need to be the ones taken out, not family ranches. But the thing is, LA will only ever want and demand more.
LA needs to figure something out to not be completely reliant on other places as they continue to expand. You talk about population carrying capacity, I'd say LA has already hit it then, very naturally. Use all that wealth to make some of your own. They just like to take with their might. We saw what happened when they created the largest ecological disaster in California history diverting water. I think we need to see they are serious, and they need to put up and make big investments instead of always taking. For every gallon we give them, they should have to create a gallon of their own. It's fine and true to say almonds are wasteful, but that doesn't mean it should be LA's water.
I agree, desalinization is another counterargument to the carrying capacity argument. An effectively inexhaustible source of water means that the tradeoff is primarily against economic activity, which sharply cuts against doomerist claims of land that simply can't sustain 40 million people. There are environmental costs to consider, but that's also (more?) true of temperature control in the 99% of the US that's less temperate than CA's primary population centers.
The thing that surprises me the most is that one tiny almond takes about 4kg of water to grow. That means that maximally about 0.04% of the water gets used (almond = 1.5g, water = 4000g, 1.5 / 4000 * 100). Avocados, for comparison, are at about 0.5% water usage (1 / 2000 * 100). Apples are at about 0.2% (0.25 / 125 * 100).
Have since found out there's a unified measure, called 'WUE' (Water Use Efficiency), measured in (kg m^-3) water. Some examples include: Almonds, 0.4; Legumes 0.42; Cereals 2.4; Rice 0.73.
Almond fruits are essentially peaches. If you crack open a peach or nectarine seed, you'll see an almond-like kernel inside.
Almond trees have been bred to improve the kernel at the expense of the rest of the fruit, but that rest of the fruit is a substantial portion of biomass which requires water.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 43.1 ms ] threadIt’s a sharp reversal for the industry after four decades of relentless expansion across 1.6 million acres in California’s agricultural Central Valley from Tehama County to southern Fresno County.[..]
This is just bad economics and especially during a drought. Export oriented fossil fuel based Ag is the worst thing to engage in right now when we have a drought in high COLA CA.
It's ludicrous to me that people use the drought to claim that CA is in the process of hitting the limits of its population carrying capacity when we have such a pants-on-head idiotic allocation of water. As a spherical-cow thought experiment, if _banning the export of almonds_ would allow building another LA and SF, "does CA have enough water for its population" is not the right question to be asking.
Serious question from someone who lives on the east coast and understands little about almonds. Why doesn't this happen? Is the almond industry a particularly strong lobbying force?
I like almonds just fine, but I see them as more of a luxury food than a staple. Are the places in the world where almonds make up a significant percentage of calorie intake?
I see that the U.S. is the world's biggest exporter of almonds. Is it a thing where if we stopped exporting almonds we'd have nothing to put on the boats leaving California for China and elsewhere?
$21 billion in gross revenue and 100,000 jobs in the state.
Plus, there is a risk that adopting such a ban would be found to be, for at least some affected property owners, a regulatory taking under the 5th Amendment, requiring compensation from the state for the loss imposed on top of the state costs for the reduced tax base and additional costs due to the number of people thrown out of work.
Blue Diamond Growers who are the largest co-op outfit growing and processing almonds in CA does have a lot of clout.
Their lobby is connected to the Climate Lobby. Others who are part of Climate Lobby include Campbell Soup company, many Silicon Valley tech companies and of course, the heaviest hitter of them all..Oil and Gas.
Ag in California is intimately close with the fossil fuel/oil and gas sector. We convert fossil fuels to calories. Why do you think we still run tractors on diesel and we still haven’t gotten autonomous electric ag robots tending our fields.
Also: https://slate.com/business/2010/10/what-a-california-almond-... : this is a good read and 12 years old. In 2020, Blue Diamond growers had 1.59 billion dollars in revenue.
And it’s actually worth a lot more(value added products) because it’s a co-op that purchases and processes a lot of almonds and takes care of over 80% of worlds supply of almonds.
Where does that water actually go? An individual almond is tiny, even if it's 100% made out of water, you can't actually fit a whole gallon of water in a single almond. So 99.9% of that water must be going somewhere else, like transpiration or back into the water table. If the vast majority that water is getting cycled through the same area (e.g. transpiration comes back down as rain, water in the soil goes into the water table and gets pumped back up), the 1 gallon cost isn't such a big deal, it's not like the entire gallon of water is being shipped to another country.
The other thing is photosynthesis. The oxygen is released into the air, and the retained hydrogen only accounts for 11% of the mass (although if you assume the O was replaced with ~1 C, then it's 77%). This often becomes part of the crop that's shipped off, but even if it sticks around to combust or decompose, the vapor can still blow away.
LA needs to figure something out to not be completely reliant on other places as they continue to expand. You talk about population carrying capacity, I'd say LA has already hit it then, very naturally. Use all that wealth to make some of your own. They just like to take with their might. We saw what happened when they created the largest ecological disaster in California history diverting water. I think we need to see they are serious, and they need to put up and make big investments instead of always taking. For every gallon we give them, they should have to create a gallon of their own. It's fine and true to say almonds are wasteful, but that doesn't mean it should be LA's water.
When I look at this pie chart, the obvious place to start cutting is the 10% going to urban use, or which LA makes up less than half.
Have since found out there's a unified measure, called 'WUE' (Water Use Efficiency), measured in (kg m^-3) water. Some examples include: Almonds, 0.4; Legumes 0.42; Cereals 2.4; Rice 0.73.
Almond fruits are essentially peaches. If you crack open a peach or nectarine seed, you'll see an almond-like kernel inside.
Almond trees have been bred to improve the kernel at the expense of the rest of the fruit, but that rest of the fruit is a substantial portion of biomass which requires water.