Think about what you just wrote, and try again.
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Not that there aren’t problems, but the Salton Sea was artificially created by a dam failure.
The NYTimes had a large article on this issue last year, and said the nut industry is primarily for export, so we are essentially exporting the water in such great shortage. Defenders of CA agriculture say “where will your vegetables come from if you change the system?!!!” But it’s a diversion.
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“The Wonderful Company” sounds exactly like the name of an evil, all-controlling corporation in a near-future dystopia.
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Buy me a beer and I’ll show you in ten minutes.
Why would the U.S. (the other 49 states) pay a red cent to help California continue an unsustainable operation? I’m sure people in those states would be happy to pick up the slack from California growers by letting those growers pay the same rate for water as residents.
In fact, why doesn’t California charge growers a reasonable rate and use that income for a new water project?
Or, to put it another way, no.
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Agreed. But the sediment at the bottom of the Salton Sea is now highly toxic and carcinogenic. By reducing the flow of water into the “sea” using water saving measures, the “sea” has shrunk and the dust from the bottom is blowing into the atmosphere. The dust contains god knows how many years accumulation of pesticides and fertilizers. Im not saying the Salton Sea must be preserved. Rather that the costs of the agriculture fall on the local population and the enormous profits accrue to the land owners. Perhaps allowing the locals to sue the farmers for their asthma, cancers etc might help.
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You make a fine point and I dont have a very good answer for it. I was just thinking that 12 feet of top soil was exceptional but I think you are probably right. It doesn’t matter if you have 12 ft of top soil if you dont have any water. And it will be incredibly expensive to move water from somewhere where it is more plentiful.
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You’re right. But it’s too bad they share a severe congenital cheek-palm adhesions (SCCPA). I hope they don’t have kids, especially since their offspring might get both palms attached.
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The Wrath of Grapes
Don’t throw tomatoes; I’m allergic.
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I don’t understand the continuing obsessive focus on how it takes a gallon of water to make one almond or what have you. In terms of amount of water expended vs. return on investment, almonds are actually one of the most resource-efficient crops on the market. The real wrath should be saved for the California alfalfa market, which is water-intensive, low-margin, and largely exported to China and the UAE as cattle feed.
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Very true. The counter is that efficient crop rotation makes alfalfa a good thing to grow about 1 crop cycle in 12 for soil management. I don’t think they would grow it without that soil management advantage cos the highest margin is fresh produce. I guess the question boils down to whether you should allocate water rights to settlers based on that first come first served basis. One might argue that there is an eminent domain type reason to reallocate water rights with some democratically agreed level of compensation. Sadly that level of compensation cant really match the economic value of the water cos the value of the water rights in perpetuity is enormous. But I guess you could argue that all that land was originally native “owned” so easy come easy go?
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Oh good, I’m glad it wasn’t just me. I took one look at that picture and started having Dynasty flashbacks.
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This Mini Series is an overlooked gem, and also sets a record for ‘drinks tossed in faces’
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Yes. Cattle ranching and associated crops that take far more water than the almond orchards… We should be reducing our consumption of beef for health and environmental reasons.
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You know Baldric water, yes?
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Would everyone in this comment section PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE quit pretending that you have more than the vaguest comprehension of the complex, tangled web of history, infrastructure, and policy that controls water in California, and quit repeating the same two dozen factoids that have been making the rounds of every Daily Outrage-a-Thon blog in the world ever since the current drought started?
Alfalfa. Almonds. Evil Agribusiness! UNFAIRNESS!
If you can’t do better than that, just STFU and quit pretending. It’s tiresome and there’s way the f*ck too many layers of bullshit to unpack in a blog comment.
(Though, yes, Fiji Water is a social and ecological nightmare that makes it - deservedly - the poster child for all New Secular Moralist bottled-water haters. The water’n’agriculture thing here in CA is considerably more nuanced, but nobody gives a rat’s ass about nuance.).
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And yet “everyone shut the fuck up” is not helpful either.
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True. Wasn’t trying to be.
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Are you under the impression that growers buy their water from the State of California? That the State gets to decide what to charge? And that the State could then finance new water projects by hiking the rates?
You are mistaken on all counts.
You don’t understand how the system works, so your suggestions for how to fix it make no sense.
Are you sure about that? I thought that was the Central Valley that had such amazing soil. The Colorado River doesn’t actually flow through the Imperial Valley, at least not where the agriculture is. The water is brought in via the All-American Canal.
I have limited knowledge of this subject, though. I don’t really know what kind of soil you need for nut trees, but I think they’re pretty hardy. It is a desert.
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