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klk
Trad climber
cali
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I grew up on a farm in Central California. I know water and know it well.
You continue to make the mistake of mixing up "Water available for use" and "water that is legally allowed to be used."
Most of the folks who generate these figures are using water deliveries as measured in acre/feet, although it is important to look at the method of calculation. Others use different methods. But they all arrive at the same ballpark figure, and that's why most experts in the field accept the claim that 3/4 or more of the state's water is delivered to/used by agriculture.
The blurriest figure is groundwater since unlike the other western states, California doesn't enforce groundwater monitoring, thus allowing business to receive publicly-subsidized water, and then pump out the groundwater from underneath the business/farm and sell it on the gray or black market to other farmers (typically smaller and poorer ones).
I, too, grew up on a farm. I have a lot of sympathy for small family farmers. As I've said before, I think there's a good case for public subsidy-- including continued public subsidy of water --for small family farms and ranches. I think that there are good historical, cultural, environmental, and even economic rationale for that sort of policy, if it was done well.
But as you obviously know, most of the water is going to the biggest, most heavily-subsidized corporate empires that are sucking the rest of us dry.
I haven't seen the bills yet, so it's not entirely clear how many earmarks got spread around where, in order to pull together the votes. But it's got to be a really ugly bit of sausage at a time we can't afford it.
California simply can't keep doing business as usual.
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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I almost stopped read and I'm calling bullshit on this statement "Take water. My friend Derek Hitchcock, a biologist working to restore the Yuba River, likes to say that California is still a place of abundance. He recently showed me a Pacific Institute report and other documents to bolster his point. They show that about 80% of the state's water goes to agriculture, not to people, and half of that goes to four crops -- cotton, rice, alfalfa and pasturage (irrigated grazing land) -- that produce less than 1% of the state's wealth. Forty percent of the state's water. Less than 1% of its income.
Meanwhile, we Californians are told the drought means that ordinary households should cut back -- and probably most should -- but the lion's share of water never went to us in the first place, and we should know it."
As someone who eats Californian rice (Calrose brand), wears cotton clothes and eats beef that ate Californian raided alfalfa and were then rotated to irrigated California pasturage in the spring, that's a total screwed up thinking upside down statement you'd expect from someone who has never ever created anything of substance or importance in the real world.
Where the hell does she think all those crops go? Into a massive garbage can someplace? They go to us people, and the massive industrial scale that they are grown keeps the costs dirt cheap for us all. I eat all kinds of produce from California: olives, almonds, Californian Tomatoes all winter long and the nights are often spent drinking Californian wines. I BENEFIT! YOU BENEFIT! The millions who's lives depend on selling the fertilizers, pesticides, farm equipment, to those who pick or pack the crops and drive the trucks. That water goes to a few huge Ag. producers no doubt, and it's a massive amount of water, but lets tell the whole damn truth here. Lets start there!
I BENEFIT! YOU BENEFIT!
Californians deficit of common sense is clearly seen in the writers work and her mind.
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dirtbag
climber
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Couchmaster, many of those crops grow well in other places where there is plenty of water.
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dirtbag
climber
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Let the water go to the farmers that need it. If you need more build damns and go and get it.
Yes, it is that simple.
I guess of you're hobby is permanently wrecking rivers than yeah, it is that simple.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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I have a friend who is working on her Ph.D. in hydrology at Davis, and I will try to get data and sourcing from her on estimates of comparative water use. I, too, remember a consensus figure of approximately 75-85% of water use for agriculture, but what I don't remember is if those figures accounted for water flowing to the sea to insure the maintenance of ecosystems. Most of us consider that an important use of water and, in any case, I would argue that it is as much a use of water as irrigation.
I also don't remember if this is just surface water, or it includes pumping of ground water. Again, I'll try to get the data and sources. Unfortunately, I have some urgent, paying, projects today so I hope my info will still be relevant once I receive it.
John
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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Where the hell does she think all those crops go? Into a massive garbage can someplace? They go to us people, and the massive industrial scale that they are grown keeps the costs dirt cheap for us all. . . . The millions who's lives depend on selling the fertilizers, pesticides, farm equipment, to those who pick or pack the crops and drive the trucks. That water goes to a few huge Ag. producers no doubt, and it's a massive amount of water, but lets tell the whole damn truth here. Lets start there!
Heh. At least this opens up something like a rational political discussion. And I appreciate the concession that we're no longer talking about free markets, since a free market in water would essentially end agriculture as we know it in the state.
We all benefit from all sorts of public investments. But we don't have the money to continue each and every one of them. Since everyone is determined to avoid tax increases by eliminating waste and fraud from the state budget, it's the height of foolishness to continue to reward one of the single largest sources of waste and fraud. And the associated costs are brutal-- salinization, petsticide accumulation, smog, and the importation of 3rd world labor.
With all the slash and burning of major public institutions in California, using tax-payer money to subsidize luxury crops (i.e. almonds)doesn't seem like the best use of the limited revenue. Especially if much of that money is going into corporate bank accounts in the Bahamas, helping to pay bonuses on Wall Street, and importing 3rd world labor.
And I like beef, and I'd happily have some of my tax dollars go to subsidizing small producers like Table Mountain or Montezuma, but let's face it: Americans are fat f*#ks, and the last thing we ought to be doing is subsidizing their diets of Whoppers and frozen Wal-Mart corn dogs. If the price of beef (and of corn, not so much a Cali issue) was actually set by a free market, we'd have a lot fewer sclerotics clogging the hospitals and jacking up our insurance rates.
If we're going to have big government, subsidized agriculture, and imported 3rd world labor, then let's at least try to shift the subsidies towards the smaller producers who are practicing healthier and less destructive farming. Let's actually end water mining. Let's at least try to eliminate a taxpayer-subsidized grey and black market in semi- or illegal water deliveries.
Tax payers in Cali want more service and lower taxes. They continue to dream that they can have it all, simply by eliminating "waste and fraud" in government spending. No better place to start than water subsidies.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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This article does nothing to begin a rational discussion. It says it's common sense to have someone else pay, and to have someone else suffer all the cuts. That's what almost all Californians say. That's why we're in trouble.
John
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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This article does nothing to begin a rational discussion. It says it's common sense to have someone else pay, and to have someone else suffer all the cuts. That's what almost all Californians say. That's why we're in trouble.
I was referring to "Couchmaster"'s attempt to justify taxpayer subsidies to corporate agribusiness by appealing to the public benefits of such a policy.
The good parts of the Solnit essay are just the same things everyone in the field has known for decades. The broad outlines just aren't mysterious. I don't have to endorse her facile treatment of the details (and her vague proposed solutions). And my guess is that plenty of the Sierra Clubbers outraged over water subsidies to agribusiness live in neighborhoods stocked with roses, rhodeodendrons, and water-sucking exotic hardwoods of every imaginable kind.
And yes, Californians want something for nothing. They want it now. And they're pissed off each and everytime they vote for someone who promises it, and then can't deliver.
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klk
Trad climber
cali
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And for those not inclined to work trhough the literature, here's a quick one-stop shopping link for current and historical data on water resources in the state:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/WRCA/
This is probably the single most convenient and important research resource currently available. Predictably, it's going to close due to budget cuts.
Then folks really will be free to just make up whatever numbers they prefer.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Sorry for my misunderstanding, klk. I hope more people pursue the link to Berkeley's Water Resources library. I've found it very useful, as I have most of Berkeley's other specialized libraries (particularly, as a climber and person interested in Sierra history, the bancroft Library), which budget cuts also affect.
John
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Homer
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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According to the author, a person who died in 1890 is as much an authority on our economy as anyone? She believes that we haven't made any progress towards understanding our economic dynamics in the last 120 years, and that reality is that those dynamics have not changed? But she's still convinced that if we talk about it we can come up with a better reality, even though we don't understand the one we have? Gotta love the human spirit.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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But I always laugh when people whine about how much water agriculture gets.
Ask them where their food comes from and they'll say the supermarket.
Yea, but given that the central valley is an incredible resourse for growing all different sorts of crops, if there is enough water. Isn't it worth thinking about which crops we should spend our water on?
The author wasn't complaining that water was being used to grow crops. But rather that lower value more intensive water use crops were being grown. Cotton, rice, and irrigating grass to feed cows. You can grow cotton and rice in the Miss. delta. You can ranch cows all over the USA. But you can't grow all the fruits and veggies anywhere in the US. It seems pretty reasonable to me that the water in California that goes to agriculture should go to those higher value crops that can't be grown other places.
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dirtbag
climber
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It is not the responsibility of your fellow citizens to give up their business because other people have decided their water can be put to better use.
It's not "their" water.
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Patrick Sawyer
climber
Originally California now Ireland
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Hey, come to Ireland, there's lots of water here.
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dirtbag
climber
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And beer too, from what I've heard!
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couchmaster
climber
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Dec 19, 2018 - 09:22pm PT
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The new stats are out on education. Calif is near last in education nationally. I'm sure it's been a lot of work to get below Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama and such, but clearly the work you Californians have put in has paid off. It's been a long road, educationally, to get your kids from first to last, but you're there now.
I suspect a brief assessment by any rational person would lead them to the only conclusion that Ca. must now immediately spend close to $100 BILLION (THAT'S $999,999,999 MILLION X A BUNCH) to speed up their rail service. They already have trains on these routes, this is only to speed the service up. Then the edumacation thing will follow.
If you could spend even 1/10 of the proposed money, say $999 million dollars X 9 to get your train service times down, clearly every child will be a much better reader. The money will trickle down, don't question the logic. You have to spend a few billion on the train to join the 21st century or you're facing having a state full of idiots. Or let us just say, more idiots than you have now. Worse even, they may be only morons instead of idiots. Or the reverse, I forget that whole classification thing. Regardless. Train, not education is the point. You're 50th, but can sink further if you try, say, below Nigeria or Benin or some such.
Remember, it's only money.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Dec 19, 2018 - 10:19pm PT
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Pretty bad when yer werse than New Mexico and Texass.
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10b4me
Social climber
Lida Junction
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Dec 19, 2018 - 10:49pm PT
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some of the respondents to this thread complain about California, but still live here.
hmm.
I have an acquaintance who hated California, so he moved to Tennessee. Well, turns out he doesn't like the low wages, humidity, and cold weather. Now he wants to move back, but can't afford too.
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