The largest agricultural use of water though is in meat and dairy production, perhaps it is time consumers eat more fruits and veggies and less highly inefficient meats. It takes a huge amount of water for each calorie of meat compared to most other fruits and veggies.
Is there an estimated date where it will be a complete emergency if nothing changes?
I wonder if people truly think bat shit insane ideas like this are really viable.
That you think a significant % of the general population will go vegetarian and ranchers will become farmers (LMFAO), when a very-very small % of the population (farmers) won't even use decades old tech.
Meat is a no-go. You have to be insane to suggest stop eating meat.
Also, how is water any worse for meat than crops? You don't say "I have to go out and water my cow every day". Also, meat is 100% essential to anyone's diet. At least, anyone that doesn't want to be scrawny and not be able to lift anything.
Of course, the worst has been shown to be nuts (Almonds in particular). If anything needs to go it's them.
A 2012 study in the journal Ecosystems by Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, both at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, tells an important story. Beef turns out to have an overall water footprint of roughly four million gallons per ton produced. By contrast, the water footprint for “sugar crops” like sugar beets is about 52,000 gallons per ton; for vegetables it’s 85,000 gallons per ton; and for starchy roots it’s about 102,200 gallons per ton.
It's a somewhat academic point though, given this simple fact.Grown on over a million acres in California, alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has one primary destination: cattle
a significant % of the general population will go vegetarian and ranchers will become farmers (LMFAO), when a very-very small % of the population (farmers) won't even use decades old tech.
One of the biggest waste of water in agriculture is the fact that about 25% of of the food grown is trashed before it goes to the market, because consumers won't buy imperfect looking fruits and veggies.
No it goes to the landfill.
Meat is a no-go. You have to be insane to suggest stop eating meat.
Also, how is water any worse for meat than crops? You don't say "I have to go out and water my cow every day". Also, meat is 100% essential to anyone's diet. At least, anyone that doesn't want to be scrawny and not be able to lift anything.
Of course, the worst has been shown to be nuts (Almonds in particular). If anything needs to go it's them.
It's not that the cattle really drink so much water, it's that you have to grow a shitton of feed for the cattle.
"Grow" the feed.
Until you realize hay is basically fallow fields with weeds that are never watered unless it rains (at least around here). Plow/seed in spring, harvest/bail in summer.
Yes, they consume rain water, that might end up in ground stores, or not. But these fields might have 0 irrigation.
If what you're concerned about is total water use, you have to factor that in.Grown on over a million acres in California, alfalfa sucks up more water than any other crop in the state. And it has one primary destination: cattle
The equivalent of 100 billion gallons of water per year is packaged up in shipping containers and floated over the Pacific Ocean.
Californians don’t get any healthy local food, and California doesn’t get a healthy local economy.
These countries don’t have the water or the space to grow alfalfa, and California is sacrificing both to feed their growing penchant for beef and milk. Effectively they have outsourced their own droughts to California. Growing Asia-bound alfalfa is by far the poorest use of our resources no matter which way you slice it. And soon, it might be too dry here to grow it at all.
Or you could just allow dry states to import their milk and cheese from states that get regular rain, like Wisconsin. There's no reason they have to raise cattle in a desert.The largest agricultural use of water though is in meat and dairy production, perhaps it is time consumers eat more fruits and veggies and less highly inefficient meats. It takes a huge amount of water for each calorie of meat compared to most other fruits and veggies.
"Grow" the feed.
Until you realize hay is basically fallow fields with weeds that are never watered unless it rains (at least around here). Plow/seed in spring, harvest/bail in summer.
Yes, they consume rain water, that might end up in ground stores, or not. But these fields might have 0 irrigation.
That's nice, but this is a fact.
California climate is not a desert. California winter precipitation is suppose to be very high.
That's great for crops that can grow when it rains.California climate is not a desert. California winter precipitation is suppose to be very high.
Unless you are just raising veal, cows tend to need food the other half of the year, too.
The Central Valley might not technically be a desert but without the CVP, none of it would be useful as farmland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Valley_Project
"In addition to water storage and regulation, the system has a hydroelectric capacity of over 2,000 megawatts, provides recreation, and promotes flood control with its twenty dams and reservoirs. It has allowed major cities to grow along Valley rivers which previously would flood each spring, and transformed the semi-arid desert environment of the San Joaquin Valley into productive farmland. Freshwater stored in Sacramento River reservoirs and released downriver during dry periods prevents salt water from intruding into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta during high tide. There are eight divisions of the project and ten corresponding units, many of which operate in conjunction, while others are independent of the rest of the network. California agriculture and related industries now directly account for 7% of the gross state product for which the CVP supplied water for about half."
What comical is their initial stance was: I have the rights to all the water from this well. Government needs to stay out of my business.
Now it's: Why is there no water in my well? I need government to manage everyone else's water rights, as long as they stay out of my business.
I can't imagine a more childish approach to take.
I wonder if people truly think bat shit insane ideas like this are really viable.
That you think a significant % of the general population will go vegetarian and ranchers will become farmers (LMFAO), when a very-very small % of the population (farmers) won't even use decades old tech.
Meat is a no-go. You have to be insane to suggest stop eating meat.
Also, how is water any worse for meat than crops? You don't say "I have to go out and water my cow every day". Also, meat is 100% essential to anyone's diet. At least, anyone that doesn't want to be scrawny and not be able to lift anything.
Of course, the worst has been shown to be nuts (Almonds in particular). If anything needs to go it's them.
The Sacramento Valley and Mountains in the north normally get a shit ton of precipitation.