[OPED] Cali has about 1 years worth of water left

[Dominus Atheos]

Colorado is insane. Oregon has prior appropriation, but it doesn't apply to rainwater, only surface and groundwater.

[Irbis]

Again, I was simply pointing out that the logic you now are happy to use regarding California and water is the exact logic you argued against when it was Greece and money.

Except the comparison is 100% wrong. Money, and to large degree economy, is entirely social construct, an imaginary medium of exchange that exists only due to social agreement. Since that social agreement is the only thing that supports it, we can very much talk if current allocation is optimal and if it shouldn't change if flows are wrong.

Water, on the other hand, as the whole environment, is very much concrete, physical, finite substance that has better uses than golf courses and urban sprawl vomit laws. If you take even 10% of it from an area, you might ruin the whole thing as it will no longer be able to support what it once did. Moreover, it's easy to save it - use drip irrigation, look how people do things in middle east, the works. But flooding grass at noon is much easier, then shouting you don't have enough and demanding more.

And the current situation in USA isn't even that bad. Look up Ogallala Aquifer - it took hundreds of thousands of years for it to fill up. Now, mindless idiots pissing all that plentiful water away in most wasteful ways possible are risking drying it up completely. Once it does, most of Great Plains agriculture will basically die, but hey, who cares, drill baby drill. Dust bowl years taught them nothing.

They complain when people talk about making it legal to collect rainwater. Seriously. I ran into this piece on the Washington Post recently explaining the whole mess around water rights

Actually, seeing collecting rainfall would put Ogallala Aquifer on additional strain, denying it water replacement on top of drilling it out, such a law might make much more sense than the reasons stated in article. Sadly, the article doesn't bother to look at the other side of the coin.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

If agricultural growers were allowed to option rights on a month-to-month basis at fractions down to the acre-foot to public and private water suppliers the problem would largely be alleviated in the short term, but it doesn't well address the absolute limit on supply, since farmers can and do foolishly ignore conservation to make as much money as possible, and save as much as possible, while imperiling long term agriculture in a region.

[Simon_Jester]

Theoretically a market could fix this by letting the farmers sell water to the highest bidder. Since it's grossly unprofitable to use water as lavishly as they do, presumably someone can find a way to offer them a higher profit margin for just selling the water and letting the land go back to scrub- as discussed in the case of the rice farmers.

Of course, this basically turns the farmers into a hereditary population of rent-seeking landholders who make money off their water rights and not off cultivation of the land, but it's a less ridiculous outcome than the entire state drying up because farmers can't be bothered to think straight.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Theoretically a market could fix this by letting the farmers sell water to the highest bidder. Since it's grossly unprofitable to use water as lavishly as they do, presumably someone can find a way to offer them a higher profit margin for just selling the water and letting the land go back to scrub- as discussed in the case of the rice farmers.

Of course, this basically turns the farmers into a hereditary population of rent-seeking landholders who make money off their water rights and not off cultivation of the land, but it's a less ridiculous outcome than the entire state drying up because farmers can't be bothered to think straight.

There are plenty of ways to derive useful income from unwatered land. Plenty of crops to grow, plenty of herds to graze. This can be done sustainably, the problem is one of education.

Of course this will cause further hardship for poor people because while they won't be facing water restrictions, the cost of food will go up substantially.

[Simon_Jester]

There are plenty of ways to derive useful income from unwatered land. Plenty of crops to grow, plenty of herds to graze. This can be done sustainably, the problem is one of education.

I would fondly imagine that the California farmers in the Central Valley are using their existing cropland to grow what is, if not the most profitable thing they could be growing, something close to the most profitable choice.

If that is not so, of course, they might well be vastly better off growing a less thirsty crop and selling the extra water.

if it so, then while they still could be better off that way, it'd hinge more on the ability to sell off access to the water rights their ancestors picked up a hundred years ago or so...

In other words, rent-seeking.

But realistically, we could do a lot worse than having a class of hereditary water-rights-auctioneers who call themselves farmers. It's not a problem.

Of course this will cause further hardship for poor people because while they won't be facing water restrictions, the cost of food will go up substantially.

Unless I'm badly mistaken, the Central Valley and other California farmers aren't really in the business of producing bulk calories. Fresh produce will be more expensive, though- and poor people already have trouble affording that as it is.

[Irbis]

I would fondly imagine that the California farmers in the Central Valley are using their existing cropland to grow what is, if not the most profitable thing they could be growing, something close to the most profitable choice.

Would you call say prime meat cows fed grain and mix of herbs an efficient choice? Because that devours tons of water per 100 calories produced, far more than even normal animal herding, I'd imagine though there are enough billionaires in California to buy all of that up. This is sadly issue with state housing some of the most expensive industries in the world along with richest men - you can't exactly outcompete them and economic stimuli like free market water price will never work at all.

[Simon_Jester]

Er, when I say 'profitable' I mean profitable, not an efficient use of water.

Even with a handful of farmers producing stupidly water-intensive luxury goods, the majority of the agricultural water use is inevitably going to normal crops that are intended for bulk consumption by the other 99% of the population.

So it doesn't matter if said handful of farmers continue to use water (profitably for them, inefficiently for society at large) on hand-fed cows. Not if everyone else is deciding to stop growing rice and brussels sprouts for mass consumption because it's more cost-effective to grow, oh, sunflowers and sell off all the excess water they don't need in order to grow sunflowers.

Not everyone can be a manufacturer of ludicrously expensive luxury goods in a free market, any more than all shipbuilders can be yacht builders for billionaires.

[His Divine Shadow]

If agricultural growers were allowed to option rights on a month-to-month basis at fractions down to the acre-foot to public and private water suppliers the problem would largely be alleviated in the short term, but it doesn't well address the absolute limit on supply, since farmers can and do foolishly ignore conservation to make as much money as possible, and save as much as possible, while imperiling long term agriculture in a region.

I'm just wondering, isn't calling them farmers giving the wrong image, as if the responsible people are your stereotypical family sized farmers? Aren't most food producers in the US already absorbed into large soulless corporations already? In which case this type of behavior is perfectly normal and expected. One would think smaller farmers working their own lands, rather than being employees would have more concern for things like these.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'm just wondering, isn't calling them farmers giving the wrong image, as if the responsible people are your stereotypical family sized farmers? Aren't most food producers in the US already absorbed into large soulless corporations already?

No. That is a myth largely spread by Californian types who want to rave about how awesome the organic food they grow in a borderline desert is.

All of 5% of US farmland is owned by corporations. Corporations play a far larger role in raising livestock though. The size of the farm has little impact on how sustainable its operation is, and small time farmers seldom have the resources to make major changes in how they operate, such as shifting to much lower value crops that don't need watering. You get a very strong attitude too that 'since it worked for my dad for 150 years' I'm going to keep doing it. And what else can do you? Dry farming is far less productive, we don't use shitloads of water for fun. Since farmers now cannot simply plow up more land to compensate, at least not most spots, because all land is already in use, shifting to much less productive methods will mean bankruptcy.

Frankly I'd suspect corporate farming would work out much better if it comes down to dry farming, for the same reason bigger anything tends to be more stable. A corporate farming operation can buy land all over the world to shield itself from drought, a family farm simply cannot even begin to try this.