"only a few families used a majority of the water they got to grow food that people eat."
"most use the bulk of their water growing hay to feed livestock"
It's well established that it takes more acres to feed a cow that's going to be turned into hamburgers and steaks than if they just grew food for people.
if you read the article, it notes that a large portion of that hay is shipped out of country.
so, not only does that water not feed Americans, it doesn't feed American cows.
it is much less water-intensive to grow feed-hay where there are not water shortages, let alone to ship that outside of the country that is already dealing with lack of water for major regions.
Do you like having water to drink? Cities are getting squeezed so that these desert farmers (who get the water for free) can feed their cattle or export hay/alfalfa to other countries.
So it is right and proper for a few extended families to determine the fate of an entire region? It's not even one city of millions, it is several we're talking about.
This is about water use, as opposed to land use. Land use matters, but let's try to stay focused for a second, esp. b/c some of the livestock are not local to the feed grows.
The Colorado River has barely touched the Gulf of California for years. There is inherent value as well as economic value in the ecosystem services that result from allowing natural systems to thrive... or even just function at all.
I hope we are not so cynical as to suggest that the over-extraction of the river and the destruction of the reliant ecosystems is an acceptable consequence of human success.
Even if you like hamburgers, is it worth the cost to continue to over-extract for their production from locations that cannot support it just because people have been doing it for a while and have a strong sense of private property rights? Why shouldn't we tell these farmers to pay up for the water or go somewhere to produce that food where it is more abundant?
There are many crops that can be grown in dry area. Historically corn was an important crop in the desert southwest, as were beans and squash. More recently, amaranth. Also agave and other cactus fruit. If you've never had nopalitos, you're missing out.
In short, lots of food crops that require substantially less water. It's a different form of agriculture.
As for hamburgers: we can quibble over the exact figures, but globally, livestock production is responsible for anywhere from 11% to 19% of annual greenhouse gas production. Given that humanity is not going to go all plant-based suddenly, reducing the footprint of cattle production is imperative. Growing hay and shipping it around the world to feed cow is the opposite of sustainable.
It's going to be ok. Pursue beauty, enjoy life, it is too short. There is no guarantee a meteorite does not crash tomorrow and kills 95% of live beings on Earth. Not sure what you mean by sustainable.
Better worry about pollution, which you know, actually hurts currently living people.
There's a difference between misery and limiting ones intake of climate-unsustainable calories. Not eating meat a few days of the week seems a small price to pay for allowing more people to live.
And walk me through how we limit population to allow resource excess, without artificial population controls and managing the economic impacts of a shrinking population, and I'll consider it.
"hay" is USDA regulatory shorthand for grains and grasses fed to farm animals.
most of the "hay" exports to Saudi Arabia from Imperial county in California, and Yuma county in Arizona, of which I have personal and specific knowledge, is alfalfa - most valuable conversion of water rights for export.
"The district and its farmers emphasize that they keep a steady stream of broccoli, lettuce, onions and other produce on American dinner tables, including in the dead of winter. But only a few families used a majority of the water they got to grow food that people eat."
Yes, but in a hideously inefficient way. "Of the calories that cattle eat in feed, humans get a measly 3 percent in the beef we eat."
"livestock-centric U.S. agriculture—viewed by many as the pinnacle of efficiency—actually feeds fewer people per hectare, 5.4, than the less meat-focused Chinese, 8.4, or Indian, 5.9."
Just one of the twenty families using more water than the entirety of Southern Nevada, including Las Vegas, to grow mainly hay is absurd. At some point the fact that the irrigation district has one of the oldest water contracts has to come to terms with the fact that the desert isn't the best place to farm. People in America should have priority over exporting hay to other countries.
> People in America should have priority over exporting hay to other countries.
major callout right here. i don't mind farmers using as much water as needed, but if i need to turn my pool water off so they can grow soybeans to ship to china, then thats a problem.
Edit: Downvote this if you like, but what is your plan for providing water to the people who depend on the Colorado River once the farmers have completely emptied the reservoirs it feeds?
Imperial Valley farmers are paying a trivial $20/acre-foot of water and are primarily growing hay to feed domestic and foreign livestock. Looks like 685K acre-feet per year to feed livestock out of a total water extraction of 1188K acre-feet (had to add up the totals from their graph to get that). So that means ~58% of the water is for cows.
Given how politically impossible it seems to be to increase rates or re-litigate water rights, I think I have to agree with the conclusion of the article: we got to stop eating the meat they're producing.
The health of the Colorado River Basin affects tons of people very directly in the U.S. and Mexico. We have been over-extracting it for ages. I am in favor of wise water usage in non-agricultural settings, but it's time we took action to mitigate the increasingly detrimental impacts of legacy water users from a legacy social and environmental climate.
The article states that 50% of hay grown in Southern California is exported to China, and another 10% is exported to Saudi Arabia. If American meat consumption decreases, the portion of hay that gets exported will likely just increase. I think water intensity should be taken into account when determining export policies. Every time I read an article about water usage in an industry, the biggest or one of the biggest users ends up being the export market. We're shipping one of our most precious resources away.
NIMBYs where I live in the western US are always off about "but we can't build APARTMENTS because THE WATER!"
This is of course BS, because it's almost always agriculture that takes up the vast majority of the water, and of that agriculture, it's not like it's growing food that directly feeds people. Lots of waste and lots of crops that aren't directly for people.
Most of California's water is used to grow almonds that are primarily sold to Japan. I don't think most in California should have grass in their yards, but to consider desalination plants and stuff like that is insane when we'd have enough if not for the above.
> consider desalination plants and stuff like that is insane when we'd have enough if not for the above.
Desalination powered by renewables (offshore wind is one option) is a good choice in California, as it doesn't get nearly as much water as it should (think forest fires). As for the desert, just by installing solar panels (that could feed the grid where desalination operates) you reduce loss of water by evaporation and make agriculture a lot easier while still getting energy for free.
And even when the solar panels get so old and inefficient they don't produce much power, they still produce something that's very scarce in a desert: shade.
By then, I would expect the desert to be a lot less desertified.
> The irrigation district has offered to conserve another 250,000 acre-feet a year, or about 10% of its current usage, for the next three years, mostly by having federal taxpayers foot the bill. In May, the Imperial Irrigation District proposed that it be paid $840 for each acre-foot it and its farmer customers conserve — adding up to nearly $700 million. By comparison, the value of alfalfa in the valley is about $300 per acre-foot of water. The federal government is weighing the offer.
This is nuts. They're getting the water for free (which is an unbelievable handout all by itself), but on top of that they want to be paid to not waste water on growing fodder crops in a fucking desert?
I'm guessing these family farms don't count as parts of the States they're parts of for the purposes of this article.
Which makes it wildly misleading and propagandistic. Those families are selling the products to someone who is paying them. Do those purchasers count as users of this water also?
I can understand complaints that they have anticompetitive ancient water rights that should be renegotiated, that the river is being over depleted and their use of it is a heavy contributor, but to single them out as 1) not part of the states, 2) not doing it on behalf of other people for a paycheck, that's disingenuous.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 82.2 ms ] thread"only a few families used a majority of the water they got to grow food that people eat."
"most use the bulk of their water growing hay to feed livestock"
It's well established that it takes more acres to feed a cow that's going to be turned into hamburgers and steaks than if they just grew food for people.
so, not only does that water not feed Americans, it doesn't feed American cows.
it is much less water-intensive to grow feed-hay where there are not water shortages, let alone to ship that outside of the country that is already dealing with lack of water for major regions.
so what?
Do you like having water to drink? Cities are getting squeezed so that these desert farmers (who get the water for free) can feed their cattle or export hay/alfalfa to other countries.
The Colorado River has barely touched the Gulf of California for years. There is inherent value as well as economic value in the ecosystem services that result from allowing natural systems to thrive... or even just function at all.
Here is a nice summary of the state and characters in Colorado River ecology: https://www.coloradocollege.edu/dotAsset/cbb78858-d078-4a7c-...
I hope we are not so cynical as to suggest that the over-extraction of the river and the destruction of the reliant ecosystems is an acceptable consequence of human success.
Even if you like hamburgers, is it worth the cost to continue to over-extract for their production from locations that cannot support it just because people have been doing it for a while and have a strong sense of private property rights? Why shouldn't we tell these farmers to pay up for the water or go somewhere to produce that food where it is more abundant?
In short, lots of food crops that require substantially less water. It's a different form of agriculture.
As for hamburgers: we can quibble over the exact figures, but globally, livestock production is responsible for anywhere from 11% to 19% of annual greenhouse gas production. Given that humanity is not going to go all plant-based suddenly, reducing the footprint of cattle production is imperative. Growing hay and shipping it around the world to feed cow is the opposite of sustainable.
Better worry about pollution, which you know, actually hurts currently living people.
Would you rather live in a world of 100 billion on efficient food only or 1 billion that can actually eat meat and other tasty things?
Or, you know, spread to space while we're at a local resource maximum.
In other words, you'd rather live in Bangladesh than the US you're apparently in? Why haven't you moved yet?
And walk me through how we limit population to allow resource excess, without artificial population controls and managing the economic impacts of a shrinking population, and I'll consider it.
Life on soylent in a dorm is not worth living.
Distracting people from fucking isn't a feasible sustainability target when applied to the whole world.
This is an argument against overpopulation, not for lowering living standards.
most of the "hay" exports to Saudi Arabia from Imperial county in California, and Yuma county in Arizona, of which I have personal and specific knowledge, is alfalfa - most valuable conversion of water rights for export.
It's mostly used to make hay to feed livestock
Yes, but in a hideously inefficient way. "Of the calories that cattle eat in feed, humans get a measly 3 percent in the beef we eat."
"livestock-centric U.S. agriculture—viewed by many as the pinnacle of efficiency—actually feeds fewer people per hectare, 5.4, than the less meat-focused Chinese, 8.4, or Indian, 5.9."
https://www.smallplanet.org/single-post/2016/11/10/meat-madn...
major callout right here. i don't mind farmers using as much water as needed, but if i need to turn my pool water off so they can grow soybeans to ship to china, then thats a problem.
also it never really occurs to me as a thought to downvote comments i disagree with. (nongolfer) i usually only do it when its trolling or spam.
Edit: Downvote this if you like, but what is your plan for providing water to the people who depend on the Colorado River once the farmers have completely emptied the reservoirs it feeds?
"Aquifer depletion" is worth searching if you want to read in detail.
Given how politically impossible it seems to be to increase rates or re-litigate water rights, I think I have to agree with the conclusion of the article: we got to stop eating the meat they're producing.
The health of the Colorado River Basin affects tons of people very directly in the U.S. and Mexico. We have been over-extracting it for ages. I am in favor of wise water usage in non-agricultural settings, but it's time we took action to mitigate the increasingly detrimental impacts of legacy water users from a legacy social and environmental climate.
>> No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/full-text
So it'd need to be a water-consumption-based income tax adjustment.
This is of course BS, because it's almost always agriculture that takes up the vast majority of the water, and of that agriculture, it's not like it's growing food that directly feeds people. Lots of waste and lots of crops that aren't directly for people.
Desalination powered by renewables (offshore wind is one option) is a good choice in California, as it doesn't get nearly as much water as it should (think forest fires). As for the desert, just by installing solar panels (that could feed the grid where desalination operates) you reduce loss of water by evaporation and make agriculture a lot easier while still getting energy for free.
And even when the solar panels get so old and inefficient they don't produce much power, they still produce something that's very scarce in a desert: shade.
By then, I would expect the desert to be a lot less desertified.
This is nuts. They're getting the water for free (which is an unbelievable handout all by itself), but on top of that they want to be paid to not waste water on growing fodder crops in a fucking desert?
Which makes it wildly misleading and propagandistic. Those families are selling the products to someone who is paying them. Do those purchasers count as users of this water also?
I can understand complaints that they have anticompetitive ancient water rights that should be renegotiated, that the river is being over depleted and their use of it is a heavy contributor, but to single them out as 1) not part of the states, 2) not doing it on behalf of other people for a paycheck, that's disingenuous.