California Seems Ending the Year With About 3 Billion Dollars Surplus

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by Mr5150

Idea!

Let's kill a business sector of CA that produces income and jobs (not to mention feeds the world) so folks in LA can have grass lawns and full swimming pools!

If that business sector is ridiculously wasteful, to the point of endangering the supply of the most precious natural resource we have, then yes, kill it. Merely existing does not alone justify a business' existence. (Not exactly the most lucrative jobs in that one, either)

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by Mr5150

Idea!

Let's kill a business sector of CA that produces income and jobs (not to mention feeds the world) so folks in LA can have grass lawns and full swimming pools!

Except that much of the agriculture commented on here is not of significance to "feeding the world". It is luxury. (Almonds.) And that industry produces such attractive profit that it has grown exponentially by tearing out other actually valuable food crops to create these new, water-intensive orchards. So if you are concerned with feeding people, you'd be better served by the old crops. Which crops also employed workers and produced income.

Thus it is common greed and avarice that sucks up more water than ever before to create greater profit for the barons while producing less food.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Tulemutt

Except that much of the agriculture commented on here is not of significance to "feeding the world". It is luxury. (Almonds.) And that industry produces such attractive profit that it has grown exponentially by tearing out other actually valuable food crops to create these new, water-intensive orchards. So if you are concerned with feeding people, you'd be better served by the old crops. Which crops also employed workers and produced income.

Thus it is common greed and avarice that sucks up more water than ever before to create greater profit for the barons while producing less food.

Ta-daa. This pretty well sums up the situation.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by 04kL4nD

Desal has nothing to do with nuclear energy....

It has everything to do with nuked ocean water, though.

[janellen]

I don't know how the almond groves up around the Modesto way are, but down here in my area Tulare/Kings/Kern, the almond groves are mostly irrigated with drip irrigation. It's the walnut groves that are flood irrigated and there aren't many of them around anymore. Also, the last five or so years I've been seeing the almond groves being replaced with pistachios which are much more drought tolerant than almonds. I hardly see orchards of any type that aren't irrigated by drip irrigation...olives, citrus,avocados, peaches, nectarines...mostly drip. Cotten, corn, alfalfa, wheat. oats, and barley are flood irrigation.

[nslander]

Originally Posted by Mr5150

Idea!

Let's kill a business sector of CA that produces income and jobs (not to mention feeds the world) so folks in LA can have grass lawns and full swimming pools!

You're not very good at this.

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by janellen

I don't know how the almond groves up around the Modesto way are, but down here in my area Tulare/Kings/Kern, the almond groves are mostly irrigated with drip irrigation. It's the walnut groves that are flood irrigated and there aren't many of them around anymore. Also, the last five or so years I've been seeing the almond groves being replaced with pistachios which are much more drought tolerant than almonds. I hardly see orchards of any type that aren't irrigated by drip irrigation...olives, citrus,avocados, peaches, nectarines...mostly drip. Cotten, corn, alfalfa, wheat. oats, and barley are flood irrigation.

Regardless of the method of irrigation:

10 percent of California’s water goes to almond farming.

The Dark Side of Almond Use - The Atlantic

It Takes How Much Water to Grow an Almond?! | Mother Jones

[janellen]

That Slate article was good reading, thanks. It did say though, that drip irrigation was a short term answer to the water crisis with a resulting problem of less groundwater recharge.

From the article:
"California will never solve its water crisis if the aquifer keeps getting more and more holes to extract groundwater. But in dry years like this one, the state’s agriculture would almost cease to be without groundwater. One short-term answer is more efficient methods, like drip irrigation. The problem is, irrigation technology has gotten so good that typically the end result is increased yields. And the more efficient the irrigation, the less water gets into the soil for groundwater recharge".

However there is way less loss to evapotranspiration with the drip irrigation as compared to flooding.

But yeah, we are definitely mining the ground water around here, and mines all eventually peter out.

[Tulemutt]

Originally Posted by janellen

That Slate article was good reading, thanks. It did say though, that drip irrigation was a short term answer to the water crisis with a resulting problem of less groundwater recharge.

From the article:
"California will never solve its water crisis if the aquifer keeps getting more and more holes to extract groundwater. But in dry years like this one, the state’s agriculture would almost cease to be without groundwater. One short-term answer is more efficient methods, like drip irrigation. The problem is, irrigation technology has gotten so good that typically the end result is increased yields. And the more efficient the irrigation, the less water gets into the soil for groundwater recharge".

However there is way less loss to evapotranspiration with the drip irrigation as compared to flooding.

But yeah, we are definitely mining the ground water around here, and mines all eventually peter out.

Yes, all that But I also find it disturbing that almond, and most recent nut orcharding, is displacing so much other critical variety of important produce. It's the nature of our economic system that producers go for the highest profit. What happens as a result, though, is we export our water - and increase our reliance on importing produce from other countries.

Two mentions in spirit of disclosure:
1) I am addicted to almonds, myself.

2) though I am posting in response to comments made by Mr5150, I almost always find 5150's posts to be first rate and accurately so.