It requires an inordinate amount of water because it’s in the desert. Water is kind of valuable, but they’d rather piss it away on thirsty crops, golf courses, and cooling ai datacenters. Just grow fuckin beans and leave grass farming to the central and eastern states.
The vast majority of California is not a desert and there are ways to irrigate without significant environmental harms. I think we’re moving towards such a system, but the highly seasonal climate here makes agriculture without irrigation fairly difficult, and we are an agricultural society so…
I just imagine a guy in a suit made of money saying “we’re moving towards a sustainable system” while giving a golf course a money-shot with a giant water hose between his legs.
I’m definitely anti-golf course but the reality is that California grows a huge proportion of the food people in the US actually eat. Most of the Midwest is growing corn and soy for industrial purposes, not food.
If you want us to stop irrigating it won’t be the fat cats who suffer the worst when food prices double. I agree we need change and it needs to come quickly but it’s not going to happen overnight.
38% of California is desert. That’s a non arguable fact. source
78% of California is arid or semi arid for at least half the year. source
Water in California is just as valuable as food and we are far from water sustainability statewide. San Diego is probably the most water sustainable city in the state, but they also don’t grow much.
Most of the desert is not under cultivation, excepting the imperial valley. I should have said the vast majority of cultivated and inhabited land. Semi-arid is not the same as desert. Much of California gets multiple times the precipitation of a true desert like Phoenix. We have water to work with and we don’t need to adopt the same strategies as desert cities.
There is a lot of work to be done, no doubt, but the law passed in 2014 requires each water district to come up with a plan to stop depleting ground water in the next few years.
There are solutions but I think we should focus on better infrastructure, higher efficiency, more desalination, groundwater recharge, etc. over water austerity. Water is a requirement of all life and pretending we aren’t going to need any is a fantasy.
It requires an inordinate amount of water because it’s in the desert. Water is kind of valuable, but they’d rather piss it away on thirsty crops, golf courses, and cooling ai datacenters. Just grow fuckin beans and leave grass farming to the central and eastern states.
The vast majority of California is not a desert and there are ways to irrigate without significant environmental harms. I think we’re moving towards such a system, but the highly seasonal climate here makes agriculture without irrigation fairly difficult, and we are an agricultural society so…
I just imagine a guy in a suit made of money saying “we’re moving towards a sustainable system” while giving a golf course a money-shot with a giant water hose between his legs.
I’m definitely anti-golf course but the reality is that California grows a huge proportion of the food people in the US actually eat. Most of the Midwest is growing corn and soy for industrial purposes, not food.
If you want us to stop irrigating it won’t be the fat cats who suffer the worst when food prices double. I agree we need change and it needs to come quickly but it’s not going to happen overnight.
uh…
Water in California is just as valuable as food and we are far from water sustainability statewide. San Diego is probably the most water sustainable city in the state, but they also don’t grow much.
Most of the desert is not under cultivation, excepting the imperial valley. I should have said the vast majority of cultivated and inhabited land. Semi-arid is not the same as desert. Much of California gets multiple times the precipitation of a true desert like Phoenix. We have water to work with and we don’t need to adopt the same strategies as desert cities.
There is a lot of work to be done, no doubt, but the law passed in 2014 requires each water district to come up with a plan to stop depleting ground water in the next few years.
There are solutions but I think we should focus on better infrastructure, higher efficiency, more desalination, groundwater recharge, etc. over water austerity. Water is a requirement of all life and pretending we aren’t going to need any is a fantasy.