the way forward includes amplifying positive improvements - my understanding here in California is that many farms of varying descriptions absolutely did move to drip irrigation, and continue to do so in large numbers
In other words if I invest in drip irrigation and cut my water use say 80% I not only don't receive help for doing it but I have the same water cut back percentage as my neighbor who is using water less efficiently.
One thing I've heard rumblings about here in California (especially around Sacramento, where I grew up) is running wells in reverse in order to pump floodwater back into the now-depleted aquifers and "recharge" them. This way, restoration of the water tables in the Central Valley can happen over a scale of years or decades rather than centuries or millennia.
That's really the big push around here, I reckon. California's in a relatively-unique position of having very fertile and nutrient-rich farmland (to the point where it's responsible for the vast majority of the world's supply of various fruits and vegetables), but current water use practices run the risk of turning the Central Valley into a barren desert. It's becoming clear that we can't rely on precipitation alone to sustain the current state of agricultural water usage; we need to get way more efficient when it comes to water usage and/or we need to start seriously investigating other water sources (in particular: California's long coastline could be hosting a long line of desalinization plants, bringing our water production v. consumption back into the positive and even paving the way for California to export to more arid states like Nevada and Arizona).
In other words: it's not that we need more farms, at least here. It's that we need to make those farms more water-efficient and/or produce more water for those farms to use.
At least people are starting to discuss this, which is an important improvement over the past situation. These are the first articles I've seen coming across my news feeds which are daring to bruise the sacred cow of California agriculture -- and I've bumped into a couple of people now who unprompted mentioned the 80% statistic for statewide agricultural water use. So word's getting around.
Drip irrigation won't help, because the boost in productivity means because farmers will just use more water?
Flood irrigation isn't wasteful, it's just polluting?
Farmer's are 'forced' to flood irrigate because they're not allowed to sell all their water rights to cities and ship it out.
Farmer's don't use all the water, the river and fish do?
We can't tell farmers what to do (because they'd sue us).
We can't limit farmers water, because they'll just pump out groundwater instead.
Put it all together and it's still the agriculture industry to blame because they're not regulated enough (though California has tried and made some progress).
Maybe that's too "top down and centralized", but maybe it's just a fact?
This is part of what is needed. Water rights in California are as old as the state and extremely convoluted. Those with the older water rights have a practically guaranteed supply and generally irrigate in remarkably wasteful ways. Breaking the old water rights and increasing the price of water would push farmers to move to Israeli style computer controlled drip irrigation rather than current methods of just spraying tons of water over the field. Gov Brown was talking about bring that technology over and pushing it hard into farming...
One major problem that needs to be tackled is that much of California (and the world) is still using flood irrigation[1], which wastes massive amounts of water to runoff and evaporation. Fortunately this is starting to be tackled due to higher water costs and government subsidies. (But of course it's only part of the problem, and these subsidies carry some moral hazard[2]. Also, it's interesting to note that not all of the water "wasted" in less efficient methods of irrigation is actually wasted.[3])
I honestly can't speak on the Californian mindset since my experience living there was only a few months so I can't say for sure it would work. I think it would give leverage to the people trying to enact agriculture changes though.
Once people can't water their lawns you can quite easily say "You can't water your lawns but look at this footage of MegaAgriCorp flooding this near desert field for days on end(I saw this near Delhi where a maybe 10 acre field that was rock hard was covered in plastic and flooded for a week then planted) just to get an extra few acres of land." and you will have a lot more advocates for change even if most people just go 'Meh'.
Disagree that the statistics I cited have water availability as a prerequisite to improvement. California can simultaneously have water problems and graduate more seniors. They are not mutually exclusive.
Agree in the need to ramp up water availability. Though certainly simple solutions like reducing the number of water intensive crops would provide enough water for decades of population growth without new sources. The key is to allow people to imagine a slightly different California and not panic that there just aren't as many almond growers as there used to be.
Growing cows you mean. Half of California's water usage is growing alfalfa to feed to cattle. Not half of agricultural usage, half of total usage.
The almond thing is basically a meme in comparison. Not that the almond farms shouldn't also be made to deal with this. Someone else in this thread mentioned Israeli almond farms that use 1/20 of the water the Californian ones do because they have smarter methods of irrigation.
I think you need to consider the long game. California was very forward thinking in investments in academic agriculture resource... The state is the Silicon Valley of produce. That's a miracle, but it only works if key assumptions like that awesome climate remain there.
If we are in fact driving into an era of climate change, doing things like permanently depleting groundwater may irreparably affect the ability to continue the current model. That really worries me... I've never lived in an era or place where food wasn't available. That would be a great shock to the US if it were to happen.
So that water supply becomes a workable business model, increasing supply, and so that uneconomic water usage is discouraged. Such as almond farming in Southern California during the summer
"Here’s a shocking statistic that doesn’t get enough attention: nearly one-half of California’s farms still use 'flood irrigation'"
This should be the incredible, head-lining statistic. It turns out that CA does have enough water, but much of it is squandered on flood irrigation and the political will to do anything about it just doesn't exist, for now.
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