StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This is the grain of Zizania palustris commonly known as Wild Rice and Indian Rice...

...said plant is native to northern North America. For thousands of years native peoples have exploited it as a food source and in the 20th century it has been domesticated and commercially cultivated. Many people enjoy it, but recently there has been a problem in regards to where it is currently being produced. This is how wild rice has traditionally been harvested.

...A guy with a canoe paddles by, moves the stocks of the the plant over the side with sticks and beats it, which causes the grain to fall into the bottom of the aforesaid canoe. Wild rice is a plant which grows in wetlands and lakes and in water about 15 to 90 cm deep. Now if you are in Canada this is not so much of a problem, we got a lot of lakes. The problem is that someone got the bright idea to grow lots of it in California. Currently there is about 6,500 hectares of wild rice being cultivated in California. Setting up a wild rice farm in California means flooding fields, flooding said fields to a minimal depth of 15cm means those 6,500 hectares require some 9,750,000,000 liters of water, with more being pumped in to replace that which runs off or evaporates in an area of the US which is at the best of times on the dry side of things.

It seems to me if the Californians want to reduce their water consumption axing the cultivation of wild rice would be a good way to go.

Zor

Or... maybe limit swimming pools, grass watering, (switch to more robust low-moisture grasses), mandate grey-water technologies, and so on. I don't think banning 1 particular industry is the best answer...

biostem wrote:Or... maybe limit swimming pools, grass watering, (switch to more robust low-moisture grasses), mandate grey-water technologies, and so on. I don't think banning 1 particular industry is the best answer...

Look at the water use by industry breakdown for California. Banning 1 particular industry (Almonds/Rice ect) can literally fill every swimming pool, fresh lawn, and still have enough left over to fill seventy water parks for the kiddies.

Seriously Rice is 8% of total water use in California. Water usage by all citizens for things like grass watering swimming pools, drinking water and everything else you think of as common water usage is 11%. Or in other words one crop (Rice) if banned would completely negate the water crunch for the average citizen. Heck water to give everyone twice as much water? Ban Almonds and Rice and you instantly get 19% of total water usage in the state to vanish. Yes California a water starved state is so wedded to capitalism as to fund water consumption of incredibly water dependent crops in a drought.

biostem wrote:Or... maybe limit swimming pools, grass watering, (switch to more robust low-moisture grasses), mandate grey-water technologies, and so on. I don't think banning 1 particular industry is the best answer...

One particular industry is the problem. If alfalfa growers are using the most water and are producing a crop worth 93% less than the water is worth, it is stupid to worry about nickel and diming domestic users who use far less water and actually pay for the water they use.

Grumman wrote:

biostem wrote:Or... maybe limit swimming pools, grass watering, (switch to more robust low-moisture grasses), mandate grey-water technologies, and so on. I don't think banning 1 particular industry is the best answer...

One particular industry is the problem. If alfalfa growers are using the most water and are producing a crop worth 93% less than the water is worth, it is stupid to worry about nickel and diming domestic users who use far less water and actually pay for the water they use.

We have 4 issues here:

1) If the farmers are paying for the water they are using, then as long as they aren't doing anything criminal, they have just as much right to it as any other consumer.

2) If this single industry is consuming so much more than they actually bring in, financially, then it is foolish for them to continue operations, overall.

3) If this particular industry is using such a disproportionate amount of the water, then at the very least, the local water authority and/or conservation groups, should work with them to find other solutions, besides outright banning them.

4) Assuming that this is a legitimate business, then if you or the government want to shut them down, you must assume responsibility for all the jobs that will be lost. At a minimum, a system of support and job placement should be incorporated into the shutdown process.

Water usage in California.


Zor

Clearly, not everyone in this thread is familar with the nuances of water utilization in the American West, particularly California.

biostem wrote:1) If the farmers are paying for the water they are using, then as long as they aren't doing anything criminal, they have just as much right to it as any other consumer.

Agricultural water in California is heavily subsidized and there's a bunch of historical, political, and legal idiocy involved. The result is that entire major rivers are bled dry (the Colorado no longer reaches the sea, as just one example) and farmers get water at below actual cost.

2) If this single industry is consuming so much more than they actually bring in, financially, then it is foolish for them to continue operations, overall.

Subsidies distort the bottom line figures. If California agriculture paid actual market prices for their water it would render at least some crops no longer profitable. It's subsidies that make them profitable.

3) If this particular industry is using such a disproportionate amount of the water, then at the very least, the local water authority and/or conservation groups, should work with them to find other solutions, besides outright banning them.

The problem is that the laws governing water usage in California heavily favor the farmers to a ridiculous degree. There isn't a legal way to stop them using the water in a profligate manner. This is the same region that keeps floating the idea of draining the Great Lakes to feed their thirst for water.

As for growing rice - there IS NO "solution" that doesn't involve a LOT of water. It's the nature of rice growing. Ditto for several other crops grown in places like the Central Valley of California, a place that is by nature arid yet is being used for growing rice of all things.

4) Assuming that this is a legitimate business, then if you or the government want to shut them down, you must assume responsibility for all the jobs that will be lost. At a minimum, a system of support and job placement should be incorporated into the shutdown process.

The California Central Valley is also one of the largest employers of illegal immigrants who come north to work crops - another practice that drives down production costs. If the farmers were forced to use legal labor and pay actual minimum wage again many of their crops would cost a lot more to produce.

In other words, you're talking about growing a water-based crop in a heavily irrigated desert importing water from across a mountain range as well as soaking up one third of the natural water in the state, tended by people who are paid less than the legal minimum (or even not paid at all, because they're unlikely to go to the courts over it and risk arrest and deportation as illegal border-crossers). It's stupid all around.

Grow the goddamned rice in the northern lake regions of North America, where it's native and there's more than enough water naturally available for the purpose. Growing it in California is just goddamned fucking stupid.

It also is a way around the treaties with the Natives - in Michigan (at least when I lived there, not sure it's still true) production and sale of wild rice was restricted to Natives, as a source of income and in part compensation for land loss. But, oh geez, the Natives actually want to be paid for their labor, omigosh, can't have that, so let's grow it in California with illegal labor that can be abused.

I was unaware that the subsidies were to the degree described, so I'll concede that point. Still, it seems that reforming the laws would be a better option than simply banning that field of agriculture, altogether...

Agreed that the laws need reform - but doing so would be immensely difficult.

Disagree about forbidding that crop from the Central Valley - wild rice has no place in the desert. But if the subsidies were eliminated and intelligent incentives applied it wouldn't need to be banned, it would simply be completely unprofitable.

Oh, don't worry if things get really bad you could always resort to things like the North American Water and Power Alliance... aka wreck the Canadian landscape to build canals and reservoirs, dam the Canadian rivers and send all the water to the US.

biostem wrote:I was unaware that the subsidies were to the degree described, so I'll concede that point. Still, it seems that reforming the laws would be a better option than simply banning that field of agriculture, altogether...

By reforming the laws, I'm assuming you mean reduce/remove the subsidy. Which means it's a choice between:
- Ban one crop. Stop people farming it. Destroy the jobs associated with it.
- Reduce the subsidies. Make multiple crops unprofitable. Destroy the jobs associated with all those crops.

Sure, a good portion of the jobs destroyed will be replaced with jobs involving other crops being grown on the same land. But I wouldn't to destroy too many jobs in one go, I'd want a gradual transition. Which means only stopping the farming of one or two crops at a time.

It's not quite as bad as this thread makes it seem. Rice can be farmed with drip irrigation, granting small gains over flood irrigation per unit yield and significantly reduced pollution, since there aren't acres and acres of fertilizer and pesticide filled flood water returning to the water supply after every harvest. But make no mistake, it's still an incredibly water-hungry crop no matter how you irrigate. Drip is hands down better for the environment, but it still won't let you grow marsh plants in a desert without draining a thousand year water supply over a couple decades.

Banning certain crops won't do a damn thing, though, at least not without a battery of additional laws and regulations. If all your infrastructure is set up to do flood irrigation, and a particular crop is banned, you're just going to find another crop that uses flood irrigation.

"Wild rice" as mentioned in the OP is not rice. It is a seed that resembles rice, Oryza sativa or Oryza glaberrima. "Wild rice" is, as the OP states, Zizania palustris, a completely different genus of plant. Z. palustris can not be grown by drip irrigation, it's even more water-loving than the Oryza species.

Thanks for the correction.