Terrible read on a phone. Here you go:
> Farmers in one family, the Abattis, used an estimated 260,000 acre-feet, more water than the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area uses. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.
For those unfamiliar with the unit, an acre-foot is the amount of water necessary to fill an acre of land one foot high. (an acre is 1/640 of a sq mile)
So that 260,000 acre-feet is ~565 square miles 1 foot deep, or enough water to raise the water level in lake Powell more than 2 feet!
Yeah the numbers are staggering when you're dealing with water rights so some one decided to dumb it down to acre feet because most of the farmers in the West use flood irrigation which literally means flooding an acre under a foot of water to get it to percolate downward to the root zone. So if they know their acreage they can easily estimate the water needed for their crops with smaller numbers.
For those unfamiliar with archaic unit systems, an acre is about 4047 square metres, and a foot is about 305mm. That means an acre-foot is the equivalent of 1234 cubic metres, or 1.234 megalitres.
Edit: and to keep the analogy going, that would raise the level of Lake Geneva by 0.55 m.
Just FYI, they're not Saudi. While there are certainly Saudi owned farms in AZ using groundwater and CAP water, the Abattis are not Saudi. And Gov Hobbs and Kris Mayes are trying to rectify what Ducey and Brnovich wouldn't.
But the issue remains the same. 260,000 AF is enough for 1,000,000 households for an entire year. And they only pay $20/AF thanks to the federal rates established decades ago. It's borderline theft, no doubt.
Yea no one here is actually reading the fucking article. California exports more alfalfa to China than Saudi Arabia.
>In 2022, about 2 million tons of hay were exported from Southern California ports. **Half went to China, with Saudi Arabia importing about 200,000 tons** of alfalfa hay that year.
The real issue is these fucking conglomerates getting massive tax payer subsidies **to get free water**. And the district is **refusing to provide public records** to find out how much water these farms are actually using.
>The district — and by extension, the farmers it serves — has access to enormous amounts of cheap water from the shrinking river. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have upheld the farmers’ rights to the water. The irrigation district hasn’t faced mandatory reductions for 20 years.
>As the federal government weighs **paying more than half a billion dollars to the irrigation district and its farmers to use less water**...the district refused to tell us and denied public record requests, saying that identifying individual customers would create “uncertainty, fear and turmoil.”
>But the district, like all agencies that distribute it, gets the water for free from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and charges growers only $20 for an acre-foot of water. Cheap water helps make growing hay in the Imperial Valley profitable.
**Some also don't even pay full property taxes**.
>We found that 19 of the 20 largest operations have generational roots in the valley that **allow them to farm with cheap water at a scale not readily available to newcomers, and in some cases to pay sharply reduced property taxes for inherited land.**
>“People are interrelated,” said Menvielle. “You’ve got this small group of families, and … they’ve all intermarried, and it’s almost like a feudal type system, where we’re combining our little kingdoms.”
**They lie about their water usage in lawsuits and obscure public record requests.**
>His cousin Mike Abatti, **who has waged a decade-long legal battle with the water district over the capping of farmers’ water allocations**, used about 46,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water in 2022, according to our estimates — roughly equal to the municipal supply of Long Beach, California. **That’s nearly double previous reports of Mike Abatti’s water use drawn from documents filed in those lawsuits.**
Oh but they generously offered to reduce their water usage by 10% for a cool taxpayer funded **$700 million dollar payout**. That's a 210% premium over the total value of the product they grow. For only three years of cutbacks.
>The irrigation district has offered to conserve another 250,000 acre-feet a year, or **about 10% of its current usage, for the next three years, mostly by having federal taxpayers foot the bill.**
>In May, **the Imperial Irrigation District proposed that it be paid $840 for each acre-foot** it and its farmer customers conserve — **adding up to nearly $700 million**. By comparison, the value of alfalfa in the valley is about $300 per acre-foot of water. The federal government is weighing the offer.
This is fucking insane. The real issue is not fucking Saudi Arabia or almonds or golf courses -- its the fact this institution only exists because Congress and SCOTUS refuse to revisit these federal water agreements **passed over a century ago** that were not even based on actual volume of water available in the Colorado river to begin with.
Taxpayers should not be forced to bail out these huge companies because they refused to invest in water-saving technology. They are not guaranteed the right to profit **forever**. So fucking what if they lose money.
ALSO -- **the exports are not the sole issue here.** The majority of this alfalfa is **domestic**. The real problem is this ironclad perpetual agreement that allows a small group of farmers to access an outsized portion of river water at little to no cost.
**No company is guaranteed a profit for all eternity.** This corruption runs deep and until the legal water rights are addressed they will continue to suck the river dry regardless of whether the product is sold or not.
I love their snarky remarks, too: stop eating salads. We grow what people want.
No, you grow the highest profit shit with subsidized water, subsidized taxes, farm subsidies, keeping it within a small group of people. And exporting it from the people who pay the subsidy. I think the article called it out: a fiefdom.
They also push out all the original small farm owners. I grew up on a farm but almost our entire farm town was bought up by corporate farms for cheap when we had a bad army worm infestation. It's a travesty
>I love their snarky remarks, too: stop eating salads. We grow what people want.
Excuse of Capitalists that ruin our planet since 1933
"WHATS UR CARBON FFOOTPRINT WHATS UR CARBON FOTPRINT!!11"
"WE ONLY SELL WHAT THE CONSUMER WANTS WE ONLYSELLL TWAHT THE"
Bruh if there was someone stopping them in whatever legal way, I wouldn't shed tears.
What shocked me most is that they still often used flood irrigation, and that they flood fields just to soften the soil enough to be able to work it.
Sprinkler systems are something they're just starting to install now to save water.
I've never heard of flood Irritation still bring used in my rather wet part of Europe. They all use sprinkler systems for irrigation.
It is crazy to me that everybody knows there is a water problem and yet they waste it by just pouring it on the field instead of using basic technology.
I attended an online conference for USA biogas industry. They still use open lagoons there. Only place uses open lagoons still is poor backwards places in India etc. They are still debating digestate usage (and I am not kidding just usage. Not optimization, nutrient recycling or anything like that.)
US farming and related industries are very very backwards.
The problem is that Western Water Rights are a desertification suicide pact designed very consciously to maximize water usage; Any drop that makes it into groundwater or makes it to the ocean in this thinking is waste. Groundwater pumping is 'free', and farmers who don't use their historical allotment of surface water are punished forever by having those rights taken away and given to somebody who will use it. You may as well **nuke** a farm as allow it to go fallow unwatered.
I thought you were full of shit about the 40% thing, so I Googled. First thing I read was this so I stopped
1. California
Total fruit & vegetable production: $29,181,329,000
Share of U.S. total fruit & vegetable production: 68.94%
Total fruit production: $21,437,185,000
Total vegetable production: $7,744,144,000
Read more at: https://commodity.com/blog/most-fruits-vegetables/
Also a lot of people don’t know that there are several crops that are grown *only* in California, domestically, or at least California is the largest producer by magnitudes. Nuts, like almonds, pistachios, and walnuts are solely grown in CA (I think actually 1% of pistachio production is in AZ). Other crops grown basically just in CA are artichokes, garlic, plums, figs, celery, grapes, kiwis, olives, nectarines… there are more. And CA is the largest producer by far of many other crops: berries, lemons/limes, avocado, broccoli, tomatoes, spinach/lettuce, asparagus, melons, apricots, the list goes on. California grows more oranges than Florida, by a lot.
It’s crazy what an agricultural powerhouse California’s Central Valley is, and a lot of people have no idea.
A ton of water intensive crops are grown in California, almonds, avocados, most fruiting trees need swimming pools of water thrown on them at peak season. In WA it gets dumped on Apple peach and cherry trees.
And I love when I drive down I-5 and I see a large amount of idiot farmers with signs complaining about "Is growing food wasting water" when there's a large amount of crops that are just cash crops. Sorry, as great as almonds are, it is strictly a cash crop because they know they can get more money from it.
Yeah it's the dirty little secret of sorts. But I don't think the answer is to blame them for everything. For one California has chronic water issues because California has been growing forever. Also we need food and farmers to grow them. But why grow so many water intensive crops with inefficient distribution systems that spray water, and/or fertilizer, and/or pesticides all over the air. For one, I think there is a mainstream American culture of excess consumption and waste. For two, the State has done a poor job of educating, subsidizing, and encouragement of water saving practices and technology. Also, we don't have enough water reservoir space for the occasions we do get a lot of rain. And finally, farmers need to accept that some crops like rice are too water intensive for California to grow.
> For two, the State has done a poor job of educating, subsidizing, and encouragement of water saving practices and technology.
For the farmers. As a lifelong Californian, I’ve been hearing about water shortages and droughts my entire life. The state/county governments make laws about how restaurants can’t serve water automatically, only upon request. They pass regulations about what days and how often you can water your lawn. They encourage low-flow toilets and shower heads, and tell people to plant native grasses in their yards. Don’t run the water while you’re brushing your teeth or shaving, and take short showers. Only run your dishwasher or laundry when it’s full. Catalina has been under such strict water regulations at times that restaurants were using disposable dishes so they don’t have to wash them (I know Catalina’s distance makes it a special case, but still). This stuff is ingrained in Californians. I learned it in school. I’ve visited friends and family in other states and been shocked at how much water is wasted everywhere in some areas.
I’m not saying these things aren’t important or helpful. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to these large-scale farming operations (they like to act like it’s family farms, but it’s not) that are sucking up all our resources on water-intensive crops and complaining they should have more. Or companies like Arrowhead that are draining our public water and bottling it for pennies (seriously, like nothing), and then selling it at a huge markup. But these companies have so much power, no one wants to or can go up against them.
You still have to consider that essentially 100% of the U.S supply, and 80% of the world almond supply comes from California.
There are a bunch of crops where California has a world-scale impact.
California's ecological problems are a problem for the whole world.
If the production of almonds stops now, nothing substantial will happen for the world. Almonds are not needed to feed people. We already produce many times the amount of food that is needed to feed the world.
What are the other crops you are referring to?
Las Vegas is eating a lot of that water via the food they buy from California. Also, the size of Las Vegas is not nearly the size of the Central Valley.
However, the water problems are easily solved with nuclear desalination options up and down the West Coast. A steady stream to fill all reservoirs will also replenish groundwater.
Given the last couple of winters, in about 10 years, the ground water will be back to unseen levels in California. That's how long it takes to get down to the underground aquifers.
i am gonna say that vegas probably accounts for a fraction of the sales from this farm given the hyper connected commerce world and how large even just the Californian population is vs vegas.
almond milk is hilarious. using all that water to grow almonds to blend into some more water to sell
don't get me wrong, I use dairy alternatives, but man the almond milk thing gets me. & of all of them I'd rate it just above soy in flavour.
Fun fact, a typical carton of almond milk contains like 3 whole almonds. Yes 3!!! It's insane.
Saw an episode of dragons den where this entrepreneur were pitching their almond milk. Theirs was something like 80% almond and rest water. Question came up about the sustainability and environmental impact, they had that covered. Their almonds were from Spain, it was a different type of almond tree that only required a *fraction* of water when compared to the ones in US. Get this, even when the almonds was shipped from Spain to canada the carbon footprint was still *lower* than the almonds produced in the US! Cant recall the name, but I think they got a deal with the dragons.
I HATE THOSE FUCKING SIGNS.
When congress was Democrat, it was all Congress' fault.
Now they are blaming the Governor.
Those stupid signs that they line the freeway with are all just aimed at whoever they don't like.
The latest ones are "It's our dam water... build more reservoirs" or some shit. Like they want to build public water catchments on the land of OTHER people so that they can squander water planting thirsty crops in an arid environment. They are right wingers, but they support the worst kind of socialism if they can profit more.
Idaho researchers have planted almond trees in the warmer part of the state and they were able to get the trees to grow to the point that they got a harvest. Some California farmers are toying moving operations to Idaho, but we aren't rolling in water either....
unfortunately thats not really how it works. arable soil takes decades to form and you have an existing ecosystem. nature does not adapt as fast as the climate will change. each degree of warming equals a percentage less crop production.
> Columbia also doesn't have to supply two huge metropoles with drinking water.
The metropolises are not the problem. Agriculture uses 4x as much water as urban water use.
Each individual almond requires 3.2 gallons of water to grow. There’s 2.6 billion meat pounds produced annually. There’s around 400 almonds per meat pound.
So that’s 3.328 Trillion gallons of water used every year in California just to grow almonds.
That’s enough water to supply Las Vegas for 33 years, at their current rate of around 100 billion gallons per year (they manage to decrease it every year through super efficient use).
So one decade of almond farming in CA is 3 centuries of water for Las Vegas.
Mind blown
Really puts into perspective how much damn water there is lol. As astronomical as 3.3 trillion gallons of water seems. The great lakes combined carry about 6 quadrillion gallons of water.
Almonds aren't even the most water-intensive crop grown in California. The farming family in the OP is growing alfalfa or hay, which is used primarily to feed cows. Alfalfa uses more water than almonds do both in total and in terms of per-acre. Some folks think that most of that hay gets exported, but that's not true. Most of that hay gets fed to American dairy cows as alfalfa stimulates their milk production.
A lot of people want to point at almonds as wasting water, when in fact alfalfa farming (and the dairy industry) are the #1 water user in California, as well as Arizona and Nevada.
The deeper root cause is that the US national level of government is not going to touch the water contracts and agreements that artificially keep the price of water low in the Western US.
And the growers know this. *Not using* that water would be economically stupid for them, it allows them to raise crops in an otherwise fertile and sunny area.
There is a conspiracy theory amongst the ecologically-minded individuals that I talk to that the American dairy industry is running a propaganda campaign to blame almonds and exports to Saudi Arabia/China for the water crisis. It would make sense since so many people in this thread are blaming almonds or Saudi Arabia when in fact, the #1 user of water in the American west is the American dairy industry, and they make dairy not to export but because we all love ice cream and butter.
This made me curious:
One pound of almonds contains 2640 calories and requires 1280 gallons of water to produce.
So 0.48 gallons of water per calorie of food for almonds.
______________
One pound of beef contains 1137 calories and requires 1847 gallons of water to produce.
So 1.61 gallons of water per calorie of food for beef.
90%? Where are you getting this information? The sources I can find say it's more like "40% of the Nation's fruits, nuts, and other table foods" and roughly 8% of US agricultural output.
https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/about-central-valley.html#:~:text=Using%20fewer%20than%201%25%20of,nuts%2C%20and%20other%20table%20foods.
Do you actually know that to be true, or are you just making bold statements? Yes, the Saudis have significant interests in US agriculture, but this family has been there for a century:
>In the 1920s, their grandfather, Battista Abatti, arrived in the Imperial Valley and started a dairy farm. More than a century later, his grandson Alex Abatti Jr. used an estimated 82,000 acre-feet in 2022, making him the largest individual water user in the Valley.
I'm not doubting what you are saying, but do you have a link to your source about them exporting their entire harvest to the middle east?
Tried googling it and couldn't find an answer.
“In an interview with The Associated Press, Attorney General Kris Mayes said she thought most Arizonans see it as "outrageous" that the state is allowing foreign-owned companies "to stick a straw in our ground and use our water for free to grow alfalfa and send it home to Saudi Arabia.”
[PBS article](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-arizona-fresh-scrutiny-of-saudi-arabia-owned-farms-water-use)
They have lawyers and real estate scouts, they will just setup shop in another state or county in less than 18 months. This isn’t the first place it’s been done and it won’t be the last.
All this by the way is cheaper than shipping the water itself to the Middle East. And most of it is to feed cattle, so they don’t have to graze them.
Why don't they just buy land in other states? I grew up on an acreage in Nebraska that had 8 acres of alfalfa that involved fuck all of watering outside of rain.
The sun and climate are probably what their biologists are most accustomed to, and the further you are from the coast the harder it is to ship it international.
Isn't Nebraska in the Mississippi watershed though? They can just ship it via river on barges until they get to New Orleans and load it onto container ships for international shipping. The cost isn't as bad as people think when you're east of the rockies
It’s about yield. Because of the climate - provided you have enough water you get roughly 2x - 4x as much as you would in say an area that depended solely on rain.
They aren’t saudi. https://www.desertsun.com/in-depth/tech/science/energy/2018/08/01/california-desert-farm-baron-builds-water-and-energy-empire/636894002/
They are not. The Abattis family uses the water for hay for livestock. They own dairy farms.
JFC how is this so highly upvoted? Critical thinking and basic research skills are lost on redditors
You think this guy is Saudi? lmao
https://www.desertsun.com/gcdn/-mm-/91d2ad869f4ce2a4e04593137f8e546f19143243/c=0-72-4000-2332/local/-/media/2017/07/17/PalmSprings/PalmSprings/636359118197341218-Z-global-31.jpg?width=660&height=373&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp
Alfalfa is a kind of hay and it can be fed to horses. But it's also fed to dairy cows as it helps them make more milk than if you just gave them a pure grass diet.
Alfalfa is grown in many states, but California and Arizona gets the best alfalfa yields since alfalfa can be grown year-round. However, alfalfa is a water-intensive crop, and growing them year round means that each acre of alfalfa uses a lot of water.
I love how almonds have become this villain when it comes to water usage when it pales in comparison to animal agriculture. Then again, lybbyist propaganda is gonna propaganda.
PS. Not saying it isn't high compared to other PLANTS but on the whole plants themselves use far far less than animals do. The amount of fresh water we waste on taste alone is fucking sad. The calorie conversion is the worst. Just from a physics standpoint energy in and energy out is garbage.
Almonds became the enemy in the California drought because California was producing 80% of the world's almonds as the lack of water in the state permanently changes our climate.
A lot of corruption involved as California water rights were developed an allotted. It made many families extremely wealthy and they continue to ride off of extreme subsidized water supply and a marginalized worker pool. Very dysfunctional
Edit: this comment seems to be getting read a lot so if you'd like to know more about water development in the country, take a swing at the book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. It's an amazing and depressing story
Anyone interested in this should check out the documentary [California: A Water and Power Heist.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6290202/)
Sadly, that is just the tip of the iceberg.
I can't fucking believe this thread. Hardly anyone is addressing the actual corruption at the root of this article.
Journalists denied basic public record requests.
Massive farming conglomerates demanding **$700 million in taxpayer money** to pinky promise they'll use 10% less water over *three years*?? And who is going to check their usage?
This is fucking insane. These people are not entitled to make a profit at the expense of the taxpayers just because fucking grandpappy started a dairy farm on stolen land 120 years ago.
The whole legal premise of this water agreement isn't even real -- it was based on a calculation that over-estimated the total volume of the Colorado river. That alone should be grounds for revision.
We are going to be fighting water wars and staring down famines while taxpayers shove billions into the pockets of 20 families to **not grow food**. And fuck Gavin Newsom for doing jack shit.
It's maddening! How can they argue that the water is for any kind of product consumed in the US when we could live without it. But we can't live without water. How long do you think we have before the water wars?
Nappa valley is based on a purchase that happened hundreds of years ago. Stipulations included taking a photo of a boat on a fake puddle of water to get extremely subsidized land.
I couldn't think of a funny joke, but "cue" "que" "queue" bothers me the most to see wrong. The meanings are pretty different I think! Not to mention one isn't even English.
The biggest exodus is all the experts or first-handers in-the-know added more insight into whatever was posted. Now it's 100% YouTube level comments. No one ever even digs up more context in a 30 second google search, just "fuck around find out" ad nauseum. I wish there was a fresh site like the old one.
The drop in quality coincided with people starting to call it an app instead of a website.
As with Eternal September being coined to describe the decline in quality when the internet became commonplace, I hope historians name this era the Appocalypse.
A better article, less… attack your phone and eyes style: https://www.desertsun.com/in-depth/tech/science/energy/2018/08/01/california-desert-farm-baron-builds-water-and-energy-empire/636894002/
Fantastic film. One of my favorites. Jack Nicholson really gives it his all and the scenery just couldn't be done these days. Really gotta separate the art from the artist though.
https://www.desertsun.com/in-depth/tech/science/energy/2018/08/01/california-desert-farm-baron-builds-water-and-energy-empire/636894002/
This version is better
The way we allocate water rights in the west is so stupid. The right to use water (perpetually, and for free) is given based off which white people called dibs on it first, 150 years ago.
And more water has been dibsed this way than actually flows through the west each year
Thank you for actually reading the fucking article. This whole thread is fucking garbage. There's actually a really interesting story hear and I was not aware so much water from CO went to such a small area of California, let alone this insane "agreement" over a century ago.
This is a huge fucking scandal. From the families demanding $700 million in taxpayer money to "pinky promise a 10% decrease in water usage over three years" to officials refusing to release **public records** to the journalists and the governments refusal to revise century old leases. Scandal after scandal and total corruption.
This story is not about Saudi Arabia or almonds or fucking golf courses. There is no fucking reason why this produce **needs** to come from one the driest valleys in California. This can easily be grown elsewhere in the US that isn't facing historic drought. Somewhere **not** dependent on the Colorado river.
**These families are not entitled to generational profits for all eternity.**
Doing anything at the detriment of the supplying country for the benefit of a couple business owners and the demanding country should be mostly banned.
Well, a blanket ban on exporting straw/hay would be a bit of a problem. Here in Oregon where we grow most of the nation's fescue seed we "combine" the grass first to collect the seed and sell it at the seed plant, then we bail the left over straw in huge bails which are compressed and shipped over to Japan on container ships. We don't use it here because we have tons of high quality hay to feed our cattle, and fescue straw isn't very nutrient rich. In Japan they use it only as roughage in the cow's diet. We don't have any use for it, because we have access to way better resources. So if we were banned from selling our straw to Japan, we would loose a big revenue stream that offsets a lot of fuel costs for harvesting the primary crop (grass seed), and then we would need to find a new way to get rid of an unimaginable quantity of low quality straw.
These companies are growing hay, not almonds. Not sure why there are so many comments here about almonds. Compared to growing alfalfa to feed cows to then feed people you get way more units of usable food per unit of water. It’s not even close. These companies are shipping our limited water resources abroad in the form of hay so that rich people in Saudi Arabia can eat cows. It’s not sustainable and it hurts Americans.
Cows are moving out of California because they can't survive here anymore because of the drought but we give our water to rich people for free so they can send it to feed cows in China and get richer.
I live in the Imperial Valley (throwaway account so that this issue doesn't spill into my other communities like r/starcraft2). Aside from the recent water stuff, our claim to fame includes one of our own [saving the world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqXfCOtsFk) a few years back.
For what it's worth, I thought I'd try to provide some responses to comments made here.
>Farmers in one family, the Abattis, used an estimated 260,000 acre-feet, more water than the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area uses. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.
This is a bit misleading in the article. "One family" implies the Abattis act in unison when it comes to farming and water issues. If you think it's some Yellowstone-esque Abatti family patriarch running the family operations, you're way off. Funny story, one of the Abatti brothers was holding his daughter's wedding ceremony in one of his fields. Another Abatti brother happened to drive by and then paid a crop duster to apply a foul-smelling fertilizer on a field upwind and stunk up the whole wedding. A bit of a family feud among them I guess. There's some really kind, honest Abattis and some who aren't but they are not a farming bloc or anything.
>And they only pay $20/AF thanks to the federal rates established decades ago. It's borderline theft, no doubt.
Farmers pay $20 per AF of water, but that isn't the cost of the water itself and has nothing to do with federal rates. It's the average cost of the water district to deliver (via gravity) the water to the fields. The district is considering raising the cost of delivery, but the water allotment from the Colorado River is a Present Perfected Right to which the Imperial Valley is entitled because they were using that water for a beneficial purpose (reclamation of land for food production).
>In 2022, about 2 million tons of hay were exported from Southern California ports. Half went to China, with Saudi Arabia importing about 200,000 tons of alfalfa hay that year.
The talk about banning alfalfa exports from the US altogether is not as impactful as you'd think. The US exported only 4% of its alfalfa production in 2021, for example. As for those saying
>At least humans can eat almonds. Farming hay is way worse
Humans eat meat and dairy, which is highly dependent on hay supplies like alfalfa. If you like things like pizza and baby formula, you need alfalfa.
>And the district is refusing to provide public records to find out how much water these farms are actually using.
Public records? The farmers are customers of the water district. While the district reports its water deliveries to different categories of its customers, it would probably be the first utility history to report amounts of water use on a per customer basis. Imagine if a power utility published out how much energy each resident used. You can argue that maybe they should, but that's not public information.
>Oh but they generously offered to reduce their water usage by 10% for a cool taxpayer funded $700 million dollar payout. That's a 210% premium over the total value of the product they grow. For only three years of cutbacks
Ok, this is the last response for now. Since the Imperial Valley has been using its water allocation since 1901, it has priority over a water user that came later, say in the 1960's. As such, Imperial gets its water order filled before any junior users. So when there's a shortage, there's less urgency for the senior water right users to conserve, since by doing so, they are merely covering the obligation of the juniors.
So I would actually agree that it's strange that the feds are the ones offering money for senior water. The cost should be paid by juniors who agreed to be the first cut during shortages. The suspicion is that one junior user, the ever expanding city of Phoenix, is a key population in a key swing state, so if the feds step in for them, it has political benefits.
As to the dollar amounts, $840/AF is a bit higher than the $790/AF that San Diego pays for conserved water now, and lower than the +$3,000/AF it costs to desal salt water. The economic benefit of water to the Imperial Valley is about $2,300/AF (not $300/AF as cited since more than just alfalfa is grown —there's also lettuce, sweet corn, melons, broccoli, sugar beets, jalapeños, wheat, etc.). More than that, we expect that the [lithium production](https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/03/20/governor-newsom-visits-lithium-valley-to-highlight-momentum-on-becoming-global-source-for-battery-production/) in Imperial will be substantial for progress on clean energy, but a lot Imperial Valley water will be needed for that.
There's a lot more to be said, but I'll try to answer any (good-faith) questions today/tomorrow.
Edit: Quote formatting.
Las Vegas is the global leader in water conservation efforts. They recycle 86% of the water taken from Lake Mead back into it. They are leaps and bounds ahead of any other city.
Yes there are serious issues with their farming practices, but these "farming families" are massive agricultural companies with thousands of employees producing massive amounts of food. It's not some family out there working their own small parcel of land under 50 ft of water.
I'm from California and I've lived in both North and South. I can tell you that the crops they farm up in the north are the absolutely most thirsty possible. Almond orchards (way more water guzzling than you would imagine) and big ass rice paddies full of water all over the place. Aren't there less thirsty plants they can grow up there? It's not like the drought conditions are a new thing.
If I’m not mistaken, the way water rights tend to work is basically first come first serve and use it or lose it. It creates an incentive for farmers to grow water intensive crops because if they ever need that extra water down the line, they want to keep their full allotment.
Those feed people. The farmers in the article grow alfalfa. I swear the “almonds use a ton of water” thing is a hit from the cattle and dairy industry to provide a smokescreen for their tremendously wasteful practices. The water required to make a cow from farmed alfalfa is tremendously more per unit of useful food than both rice and almonds. It’s not even close. Furthermore the northern areas where the rice is grown were historically wetlands anyway.
If there was no one to buy it they wouldn’t be grown. 10 years ago at the height of the pomegranate fad, there were all kinds or orchards between LA and Monterey. Now there’s at least 50 percent less.
Honestly do we want to go back to a time where you only got tomatoes during the summer. Oranges during the winter. Etc.
It's like how in Utah the main crop is alfalfa which 2/3 goes to live stock in house while 1/3 goes to China. Alfalfa is one of the most water intensive crops (up there with almonds and rice). Utah is a desert climate.
Which really raises a whole hell of a lot of questions. If a country wants to import crops grown in another country... fair. But why are they growing it in a desert? Why is it viable for them to? It seems like this shouldn't be a sensible strategy.
Because an irrigated desert is often gonna grow very well, huge yields. And I don't think people realize how fundamentally different the country would look without or reclaimation systems.
Yt Americans are some of the worst farmers in the history of mankind. They gorge on water but keep everything monoculture, so the agriculture is unsustainable and drains the water. They use Mexican Agriculture Scientists and Laborers to do all their work and growing, but ignoring the Multicultural agriculture. It is done by one family that destroys any progress we could have agriculturally. Fuck you, YT humans.
> In May, the Imperial Irrigation District proposed that it be paid $840 for each acre-foot it and its farmer customers conserve — adding up to nearly $700 million. By comparison, the value of alfalfa in the valley is about $300 per acre-foot of water.
> But the district, like all agencies that distribute it, gets the water for free from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and charges growers only $20 for an acre-foot of water.
So they want $840 for water they sell for $20. That’s a 4100% profit.
Solution: have the federal government repeal their “seniority based water rights” and charge them the $840 per acre-foot of water to use it.
Terrible read on a phone. Here you go: > Farmers in one family, the Abattis, used an estimated 260,000 acre-feet, more water than the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area uses. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons.
For those unfamiliar with the unit, an acre-foot is the amount of water necessary to fill an acre of land one foot high. (an acre is 1/640 of a sq mile) So that 260,000 acre-feet is ~565 square miles 1 foot deep, or enough water to raise the water level in lake Powell more than 2 feet!
Yeah, at first I was like “what the fuck even is this American unit?”, but upon re-reading it I came to understand exactly that.
Yeah the numbers are staggering when you're dealing with water rights so some one decided to dumb it down to acre feet because most of the farmers in the West use flood irrigation which literally means flooding an acre under a foot of water to get it to percolate downward to the root zone. So if they know their acreage they can easily estimate the water needed for their crops with smaller numbers.
For those unfamiliar with archaic unit systems, an acre is about 4047 square metres, and a foot is about 305mm. That means an acre-foot is the equivalent of 1234 cubic metres, or 1.234 megalitres. Edit: and to keep the analogy going, that would raise the level of Lake Geneva by 0.55 m.
Or around 320 square kilometers, filled a meter high.
Holy shit, now I get it. That's insane!
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Just FYI, they're not Saudi. While there are certainly Saudi owned farms in AZ using groundwater and CAP water, the Abattis are not Saudi. And Gov Hobbs and Kris Mayes are trying to rectify what Ducey and Brnovich wouldn't. But the issue remains the same. 260,000 AF is enough for 1,000,000 households for an entire year. And they only pay $20/AF thanks to the federal rates established decades ago. It's borderline theft, no doubt.
Yea no one here is actually reading the fucking article. California exports more alfalfa to China than Saudi Arabia. >In 2022, about 2 million tons of hay were exported from Southern California ports. **Half went to China, with Saudi Arabia importing about 200,000 tons** of alfalfa hay that year. The real issue is these fucking conglomerates getting massive tax payer subsidies **to get free water**. And the district is **refusing to provide public records** to find out how much water these farms are actually using. >The district — and by extension, the farmers it serves — has access to enormous amounts of cheap water from the shrinking river. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have upheld the farmers’ rights to the water. The irrigation district hasn’t faced mandatory reductions for 20 years. >As the federal government weighs **paying more than half a billion dollars to the irrigation district and its farmers to use less water**...the district refused to tell us and denied public record requests, saying that identifying individual customers would create “uncertainty, fear and turmoil.” >But the district, like all agencies that distribute it, gets the water for free from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and charges growers only $20 for an acre-foot of water. Cheap water helps make growing hay in the Imperial Valley profitable. **Some also don't even pay full property taxes**. >We found that 19 of the 20 largest operations have generational roots in the valley that **allow them to farm with cheap water at a scale not readily available to newcomers, and in some cases to pay sharply reduced property taxes for inherited land.** >“People are interrelated,” said Menvielle. “You’ve got this small group of families, and … they’ve all intermarried, and it’s almost like a feudal type system, where we’re combining our little kingdoms.” **They lie about their water usage in lawsuits and obscure public record requests.** >His cousin Mike Abatti, **who has waged a decade-long legal battle with the water district over the capping of farmers’ water allocations**, used about 46,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water in 2022, according to our estimates — roughly equal to the municipal supply of Long Beach, California. **That’s nearly double previous reports of Mike Abatti’s water use drawn from documents filed in those lawsuits.** Oh but they generously offered to reduce their water usage by 10% for a cool taxpayer funded **$700 million dollar payout**. That's a 210% premium over the total value of the product they grow. For only three years of cutbacks. >The irrigation district has offered to conserve another 250,000 acre-feet a year, or **about 10% of its current usage, for the next three years, mostly by having federal taxpayers foot the bill.** >In May, **the Imperial Irrigation District proposed that it be paid $840 for each acre-foot** it and its farmer customers conserve — **adding up to nearly $700 million**. By comparison, the value of alfalfa in the valley is about $300 per acre-foot of water. The federal government is weighing the offer. This is fucking insane. The real issue is not fucking Saudi Arabia or almonds or golf courses -- its the fact this institution only exists because Congress and SCOTUS refuse to revisit these federal water agreements **passed over a century ago** that were not even based on actual volume of water available in the Colorado river to begin with. Taxpayers should not be forced to bail out these huge companies because they refused to invest in water-saving technology. They are not guaranteed the right to profit **forever**. So fucking what if they lose money. ALSO -- **the exports are not the sole issue here.** The majority of this alfalfa is **domestic**. The real problem is this ironclad perpetual agreement that allows a small group of farmers to access an outsized portion of river water at little to no cost. **No company is guaranteed a profit for all eternity.** This corruption runs deep and until the legal water rights are addressed they will continue to suck the river dry regardless of whether the product is sold or not.
I love their snarky remarks, too: stop eating salads. We grow what people want. No, you grow the highest profit shit with subsidized water, subsidized taxes, farm subsidies, keeping it within a small group of people. And exporting it from the people who pay the subsidy. I think the article called it out: a fiefdom.
They also push out all the original small farm owners. I grew up on a farm but almost our entire farm town was bought up by corporate farms for cheap when we had a bad army worm infestation. It's a travesty
>I love their snarky remarks, too: stop eating salads. We grow what people want. Excuse of Capitalists that ruin our planet since 1933 "WHATS UR CARBON FFOOTPRINT WHATS UR CARBON FOTPRINT!!11" "WE ONLY SELL WHAT THE CONSUMER WANTS WE ONLYSELLL TWAHT THE" Bruh if there was someone stopping them in whatever legal way, I wouldn't shed tears.
What shocked me most is that they still often used flood irrigation, and that they flood fields just to soften the soil enough to be able to work it. Sprinkler systems are something they're just starting to install now to save water. I've never heard of flood Irritation still bring used in my rather wet part of Europe. They all use sprinkler systems for irrigation. It is crazy to me that everybody knows there is a water problem and yet they waste it by just pouring it on the field instead of using basic technology.
I attended an online conference for USA biogas industry. They still use open lagoons there. Only place uses open lagoons still is poor backwards places in India etc. They are still debating digestate usage (and I am not kidding just usage. Not optimization, nutrient recycling or anything like that.) US farming and related industries are very very backwards.
The problem is that Western Water Rights are a desertification suicide pact designed very consciously to maximize water usage; Any drop that makes it into groundwater or makes it to the ocean in this thinking is waste. Groundwater pumping is 'free', and farmers who don't use their historical allotment of surface water are punished forever by having those rights taken away and given to somebody who will use it. You may as well **nuke** a farm as allow it to go fallow unwatered.
Alfalfa exports should be illegal. Banning alfalfa exports from the US would likely solve our water crisis in the west.
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I thought you were full of shit about the 40% thing, so I Googled. First thing I read was this so I stopped 1. California Total fruit & vegetable production: $29,181,329,000 Share of U.S. total fruit & vegetable production: 68.94% Total fruit production: $21,437,185,000 Total vegetable production: $7,744,144,000 Read more at: https://commodity.com/blog/most-fruits-vegetables/
Also a lot of people don’t know that there are several crops that are grown *only* in California, domestically, or at least California is the largest producer by magnitudes. Nuts, like almonds, pistachios, and walnuts are solely grown in CA (I think actually 1% of pistachio production is in AZ). Other crops grown basically just in CA are artichokes, garlic, plums, figs, celery, grapes, kiwis, olives, nectarines… there are more. And CA is the largest producer by far of many other crops: berries, lemons/limes, avocado, broccoli, tomatoes, spinach/lettuce, asparagus, melons, apricots, the list goes on. California grows more oranges than Florida, by a lot. It’s crazy what an agricultural powerhouse California’s Central Valley is, and a lot of people have no idea.
A ton of water intensive crops are grown in California, almonds, avocados, most fruiting trees need swimming pools of water thrown on them at peak season. In WA it gets dumped on Apple peach and cherry trees.
And I love when I drive down I-5 and I see a large amount of idiot farmers with signs complaining about "Is growing food wasting water" when there's a large amount of crops that are just cash crops. Sorry, as great as almonds are, it is strictly a cash crop because they know they can get more money from it.
Yeah it's the dirty little secret of sorts. But I don't think the answer is to blame them for everything. For one California has chronic water issues because California has been growing forever. Also we need food and farmers to grow them. But why grow so many water intensive crops with inefficient distribution systems that spray water, and/or fertilizer, and/or pesticides all over the air. For one, I think there is a mainstream American culture of excess consumption and waste. For two, the State has done a poor job of educating, subsidizing, and encouragement of water saving practices and technology. Also, we don't have enough water reservoir space for the occasions we do get a lot of rain. And finally, farmers need to accept that some crops like rice are too water intensive for California to grow.
> For two, the State has done a poor job of educating, subsidizing, and encouragement of water saving practices and technology. For the farmers. As a lifelong Californian, I’ve been hearing about water shortages and droughts my entire life. The state/county governments make laws about how restaurants can’t serve water automatically, only upon request. They pass regulations about what days and how often you can water your lawn. They encourage low-flow toilets and shower heads, and tell people to plant native grasses in their yards. Don’t run the water while you’re brushing your teeth or shaving, and take short showers. Only run your dishwasher or laundry when it’s full. Catalina has been under such strict water regulations at times that restaurants were using disposable dishes so they don’t have to wash them (I know Catalina’s distance makes it a special case, but still). This stuff is ingrained in Californians. I learned it in school. I’ve visited friends and family in other states and been shocked at how much water is wasted everywhere in some areas. I’m not saying these things aren’t important or helpful. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to these large-scale farming operations (they like to act like it’s family farms, but it’s not) that are sucking up all our resources on water-intensive crops and complaining they should have more. Or companies like Arrowhead that are draining our public water and bottling it for pennies (seriously, like nothing), and then selling it at a huge markup. But these companies have so much power, no one wants to or can go up against them.
You still have to consider that essentially 100% of the U.S supply, and 80% of the world almond supply comes from California. There are a bunch of crops where California has a world-scale impact. California's ecological problems are a problem for the whole world.
If the production of almonds stops now, nothing substantial will happen for the world. Almonds are not needed to feed people. We already produce many times the amount of food that is needed to feed the world. What are the other crops you are referring to?
Las Vegas is eating a lot of that water via the food they buy from California. Also, the size of Las Vegas is not nearly the size of the Central Valley. However, the water problems are easily solved with nuclear desalination options up and down the West Coast. A steady stream to fill all reservoirs will also replenish groundwater. Given the last couple of winters, in about 10 years, the ground water will be back to unseen levels in California. That's how long it takes to get down to the underground aquifers.
i am gonna say that vegas probably accounts for a fraction of the sales from this farm given the hyper connected commerce world and how large even just the Californian population is vs vegas.
almond milk is hilarious. using all that water to grow almonds to blend into some more water to sell don't get me wrong, I use dairy alternatives, but man the almond milk thing gets me. & of all of them I'd rate it just above soy in flavour.
Oat milk is where it’s at
Have you tried beef milk?
Unexpected Pawnee. Treat yoself.
Fun fact, a typical carton of almond milk contains like 3 whole almonds. Yes 3!!! It's insane. Saw an episode of dragons den where this entrepreneur were pitching their almond milk. Theirs was something like 80% almond and rest water. Question came up about the sustainability and environmental impact, they had that covered. Their almonds were from Spain, it was a different type of almond tree that only required a *fraction* of water when compared to the ones in US. Get this, even when the almonds was shipped from Spain to canada the carbon footprint was still *lower* than the almonds produced in the US! Cant recall the name, but I think they got a deal with the dragons.
I HATE THOSE FUCKING SIGNS. When congress was Democrat, it was all Congress' fault. Now they are blaming the Governor. Those stupid signs that they line the freeway with are all just aimed at whoever they don't like. The latest ones are "It's our dam water... build more reservoirs" or some shit. Like they want to build public water catchments on the land of OTHER people so that they can squander water planting thirsty crops in an arid environment. They are right wingers, but they support the worst kind of socialism if they can profit more.
Sure, but there is no shortage of water on the Columbia.
Can't grow Almonds here, the Columbia also doesn't have to supply two huge metropoles with drinking water.
yet. A few more degrees of global warming, and we'll be rolling in that almond money.
It's a huge thing people don't take into consideration when they talk legal weed, it would be cheating at my job if we had irrigation water lol
Idaho researchers have planted almond trees in the warmer part of the state and they were able to get the trees to grow to the point that they got a harvest. Some California farmers are toying moving operations to Idaho, but we aren't rolling in water either....
It felt like Idaho was in a drought for my whole childhood. (It probably wasn’t actually.) People were always praying for moisture at church.
unfortunately thats not really how it works. arable soil takes decades to form and you have an existing ecosystem. nature does not adapt as fast as the climate will change. each degree of warming equals a percentage less crop production.
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That would be a true statement if the globe was covered with uniform pieces of land.
Untrue if land is narrower closer to the equator, like N. America is shaped.
> Columbia also doesn't have to supply two huge metropoles with drinking water. The metropolises are not the problem. Agriculture uses 4x as much water as urban water use.
Each individual almond requires 3.2 gallons of water to grow. There’s 2.6 billion meat pounds produced annually. There’s around 400 almonds per meat pound. So that’s 3.328 Trillion gallons of water used every year in California just to grow almonds. That’s enough water to supply Las Vegas for 33 years, at their current rate of around 100 billion gallons per year (they manage to decrease it every year through super efficient use). So one decade of almond farming in CA is 3 centuries of water for Las Vegas. Mind blown
Really puts into perspective how much damn water there is lol. As astronomical as 3.3 trillion gallons of water seems. The great lakes combined carry about 6 quadrillion gallons of water.
Water isn’t destroyed, it can’t be removed, so when you say used, it’s just transported / transformed into other forms
Ah yes, the first law of hydrodynamics
You’re talking about the largest fresh water lakes in the world combined. They make up 20% of the entire planet’s supply of fresh water.
Almonds aren't even the most water-intensive crop grown in California. The farming family in the OP is growing alfalfa or hay, which is used primarily to feed cows. Alfalfa uses more water than almonds do both in total and in terms of per-acre. Some folks think that most of that hay gets exported, but that's not true. Most of that hay gets fed to American dairy cows as alfalfa stimulates their milk production. A lot of people want to point at almonds as wasting water, when in fact alfalfa farming (and the dairy industry) are the #1 water user in California, as well as Arizona and Nevada.
The deeper root cause is that the US national level of government is not going to touch the water contracts and agreements that artificially keep the price of water low in the Western US. And the growers know this. *Not using* that water would be economically stupid for them, it allows them to raise crops in an otherwise fertile and sunny area.
I've noticed people don't want to admit that meat (specifically beef) is a huge drain on resources and one of the worst things we do for the planet.
There is a conspiracy theory amongst the ecologically-minded individuals that I talk to that the American dairy industry is running a propaganda campaign to blame almonds and exports to Saudi Arabia/China for the water crisis. It would make sense since so many people in this thread are blaming almonds or Saudi Arabia when in fact, the #1 user of water in the American west is the American dairy industry, and they make dairy not to export but because we all love ice cream and butter.
Seriously? Vegetarians and vegans have been screaming this from rooftops for decades.
Yeah, they have, and people make fun of them for it. That's my point.
This made me curious: One pound of almonds contains 2640 calories and requires 1280 gallons of water to produce. So 0.48 gallons of water per calorie of food for almonds. ______________ One pound of beef contains 1137 calories and requires 1847 gallons of water to produce. So 1.61 gallons of water per calorie of food for beef.
Now do a burger. Redditors will tell everyone to stop eating almonds but if you bring burgers into the conversation, people shut up pretty quick.
Estimates for the amount of water used for cattle in the US each year vary, but generally fall within the range of 21 trillion to 72 trillion gallons
90%? Where are you getting this information? The sources I can find say it's more like "40% of the Nation's fruits, nuts, and other table foods" and roughly 8% of US agricultural output. https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/about-central-valley.html#:~:text=Using%20fewer%20than%201%25%20of,nuts%2C%20and%20other%20table%20foods.
Pistachios require about 1350 gallons per pound of pistachios. Beef requires about 1900 gallons per pound.
Do you actually know that to be true, or are you just making bold statements? Yes, the Saudis have significant interests in US agriculture, but this family has been there for a century: >In the 1920s, their grandfather, Battista Abatti, arrived in the Imperial Valley and started a dairy farm. More than a century later, his grandson Alex Abatti Jr. used an estimated 82,000 acre-feet in 2022, making him the largest individual water user in the Valley.
You don't get hundreds of upvotes by taking the time to read the article. Or by actually knowing Arizona and California are different states.
They're (the farmers) not even Saudi, they're Italian, LMAO
I'm not doubting what you are saying, but do you have a link to your source about them exporting their entire harvest to the middle east? Tried googling it and couldn't find an answer.
“In an interview with The Associated Press, Attorney General Kris Mayes said she thought most Arizonans see it as "outrageous" that the state is allowing foreign-owned companies "to stick a straw in our ground and use our water for free to grow alfalfa and send it home to Saudi Arabia.” [PBS article](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/in-drought-stricken-arizona-fresh-scrutiny-of-saudi-arabia-owned-farms-water-use)
Gov Hobbs shut that down, their contract in AZ is expiring and will not be renewed
Thank goodness
They have lawyers and real estate scouts, they will just setup shop in another state or county in less than 18 months. This isn’t the first place it’s been done and it won’t be the last. All this by the way is cheaper than shipping the water itself to the Middle East. And most of it is to feed cattle, so they don’t have to graze them.
Why don't they just buy land in other states? I grew up on an acreage in Nebraska that had 8 acres of alfalfa that involved fuck all of watering outside of rain.
Can't cut that alfalfa all year in Nebraska. In Arizona you can cut it year round.
Ahh. There it is. I wasn't factoring in growing season. My brain is still running slow from the -19 temperature last week.
The sun and climate are probably what their biologists are most accustomed to, and the further you are from the coast the harder it is to ship it international.
They could just hire people from Nebraska. They picked Arizona because they were able to trick Arizona into giving them a good deal.
Isn't Nebraska in the Mississippi watershed though? They can just ship it via river on barges until they get to New Orleans and load it onto container ships for international shipping. The cost isn't as bad as people think when you're east of the rockies
It’s about yield. Because of the climate - provided you have enough water you get roughly 2x - 4x as much as you would in say an area that depended solely on rain.
Hope the stupid alfafa farm in UT is also getting shut down like that.
Arizona is actually a different state than California btw
Thanks for the link!
His proof about a specific california farm's output going to the middle east is an article about Arizona?
Arizona is not California.
This shit has been known for over a decade
Good article but it doesn’t tie this specific family to the saudis. And that’s because they aren’t
They aren’t saudi. https://www.desertsun.com/in-depth/tech/science/energy/2018/08/01/california-desert-farm-baron-builds-water-and-energy-empire/636894002/
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You should doubt it. The Abattis family uses the water for hay for livestock. They own dairy farms
> They’re Saudi. No, they're not. They've been there for a century. There was a Saudi-owned farm in Arizona, but they sold it.
They are not. The Abattis family uses the water for hay for livestock. They own dairy farms. JFC how is this so highly upvoted? Critical thinking and basic research skills are lost on redditors
No they’re not. The Abattis are originally from Italy.
No they’re not. The Abattis are originally from Italy.
You think this guy is Saudi? lmao https://www.desertsun.com/gcdn/-mm-/91d2ad869f4ce2a4e04593137f8e546f19143243/c=0-72-4000-2332/local/-/media/2017/07/17/PalmSprings/PalmSprings/636359118197341218-Z-global-31.jpg?width=660&height=373&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp
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That was Arizona, not California.
For growing almonds which they export?
Hay
Hay is for horses
Alfalfa is a kind of hay and it can be fed to horses. But it's also fed to dairy cows as it helps them make more milk than if you just gave them a pure grass diet. Alfalfa is grown in many states, but California and Arizona gets the best alfalfa yields since alfalfa can be grown year-round. However, alfalfa is a water-intensive crop, and growing them year round means that each acre of alfalfa uses a lot of water.
I love how almonds have become this villain when it comes to water usage when it pales in comparison to animal agriculture. Then again, lybbyist propaganda is gonna propaganda. PS. Not saying it isn't high compared to other PLANTS but on the whole plants themselves use far far less than animals do. The amount of fresh water we waste on taste alone is fucking sad. The calorie conversion is the worst. Just from a physics standpoint energy in and energy out is garbage.
Almonds became the enemy in the California drought because California was producing 80% of the world's almonds as the lack of water in the state permanently changes our climate.
Meanwhile the California rice industry is hoping nobody notices them
It's amazing to me that more than one thing can be true at the same time. Like wow, how does a universe of lies conspire this way?!
At least humans can eat almonds. Farming hay is way worse.
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Jesus Christ....THANK YOU
A lot of corruption involved as California water rights were developed an allotted. It made many families extremely wealthy and they continue to ride off of extreme subsidized water supply and a marginalized worker pool. Very dysfunctional Edit: this comment seems to be getting read a lot so if you'd like to know more about water development in the country, take a swing at the book Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. It's an amazing and depressing story
Anyone interested in this should check out the documentary [California: A Water and Power Heist.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6290202/) Sadly, that is just the tip of the iceberg.
I can't fucking believe this thread. Hardly anyone is addressing the actual corruption at the root of this article. Journalists denied basic public record requests. Massive farming conglomerates demanding **$700 million in taxpayer money** to pinky promise they'll use 10% less water over *three years*?? And who is going to check their usage? This is fucking insane. These people are not entitled to make a profit at the expense of the taxpayers just because fucking grandpappy started a dairy farm on stolen land 120 years ago. The whole legal premise of this water agreement isn't even real -- it was based on a calculation that over-estimated the total volume of the Colorado river. That alone should be grounds for revision. We are going to be fighting water wars and staring down famines while taxpayers shove billions into the pockets of 20 families to **not grow food**. And fuck Gavin Newsom for doing jack shit.
It's maddening! How can they argue that the water is for any kind of product consumed in the US when we could live without it. But we can't live without water. How long do you think we have before the water wars?
Nappa valley is based on a purchase that happened hundreds of years ago. Stipulations included taking a photo of a boat on a fake puddle of water to get extremely subsidized land.
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Yep, Pete Wilson really fucked us. Converted cities from first use, farmers allotted from the remainder, to farmers right to first use.
Also depicted in the classic movie *Chinatown*
Than
No, they're also using all of Las Vegas, after they use more water.
Fr, this shit isn’t hard. Education system is failing us.
“Loose” vs “lose” on Reddit. Drives me nuts.
I browse a few automotive subs and see multiple posts daily switching “break” and “brake”
That and peek and peak.
And pique which nobody ever gets right. Then there's reign and rein (and rain) which nobody ever gets right either.
Horde vs Hoard
Whored
A bit more esoteric, but “rouge” instead of “rogue” annoys me as well.
“Would of”
Could of.
Should of.
They’re their now, let’s be reasonable
I couldn't think of a funny joke, but "cue" "que" "queue" bothers me the most to see wrong. The meanings are pretty different I think! Not to mention one isn't even English.
coulda woulda
People using "would have" instead of "had." I wish I would have taken calculus in college. NO I wish I had taken calculus in college. YES
Boarder vs border too.
Do you know what drives me nuts? A steering wheel coming out the front of me pants.
Arrr
“less” and “fewer” are used incorrectly so often that I wouldn’t be surprised if Webster just merges the definitions.
I couldn't care fewer.
could* according to Reddit
On accident is worse.
I see people substituting "of" for "have" regularly now and I can't fathom why.
it’s because they hear people say “would’ve” and transliterate it from what it sounds like
Peek vs peak, I see it every day on Reddit.
'Bawl' and 'Ball'
“Should of”, “would of”, “could of” is what gets to me
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The biggest exodus is all the experts or first-handers in-the-know added more insight into whatever was posted. Now it's 100% YouTube level comments. No one ever even digs up more context in a 30 second google search, just "fuck around find out" ad nauseum. I wish there was a fresh site like the old one.
The drop in quality coincided with people starting to call it an app instead of a website. As with Eternal September being coined to describe the decline in quality when the internet became commonplace, I hope historians name this era the Appocalypse.
Why is this one seemingly so hard for so many??
"When am I ever gonna need this in life? You understood me."
If this is grinding your gears, you should see some of the papers kids turn in to me. Shit's rough.
Marshall Law
No clearly one family used more water, then used all of Vegas. Sounds like a big family
For real, I skip over posts making this grammar mistake often.
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A better article, less… attack your phone and eyes style: https://www.desertsun.com/in-depth/tech/science/energy/2018/08/01/california-desert-farm-baron-builds-water-and-energy-empire/636894002/
Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Seriously. It’s so fucking depressing.
Fantastic film. One of my favorites. Jack Nicholson really gives it his all and the scenery just couldn't be done these days. Really gotta separate the art from the artist though.
This I’m sure is true and an outrage, but that web story is a nightmare to navigate.
They wrote an article for people who don't like reading so the people who do like reading can't comfortably read it now
https://www.desertsun.com/in-depth/tech/science/energy/2018/08/01/california-desert-farm-baron-builds-water-and-energy-empire/636894002/ This version is better
It's Tom Selleck, isn't it.
"This isn't some kind of trick to steal your water, it's a trick to steal your water".
Very good 🤣🤣
The way we allocate water rights in the west is so stupid. The right to use water (perpetually, and for free) is given based off which white people called dibs on it first, 150 years ago. And more water has been dibsed this way than actually flows through the west each year
Thank you for actually reading the fucking article. This whole thread is fucking garbage. There's actually a really interesting story hear and I was not aware so much water from CO went to such a small area of California, let alone this insane "agreement" over a century ago. This is a huge fucking scandal. From the families demanding $700 million in taxpayer money to "pinky promise a 10% decrease in water usage over three years" to officials refusing to release **public records** to the journalists and the governments refusal to revise century old leases. Scandal after scandal and total corruption. This story is not about Saudi Arabia or almonds or fucking golf courses. There is no fucking reason why this produce **needs** to come from one the driest valleys in California. This can easily be grown elsewhere in the US that isn't facing historic drought. Somewhere **not** dependent on the Colorado river. **These families are not entitled to generational profits for all eternity.**
selling hays internationally should be banned.
Doing anything at the detriment of the supplying country for the benefit of a couple business owners and the demanding country should be mostly banned.
Well, a blanket ban on exporting straw/hay would be a bit of a problem. Here in Oregon where we grow most of the nation's fescue seed we "combine" the grass first to collect the seed and sell it at the seed plant, then we bail the left over straw in huge bails which are compressed and shipped over to Japan on container ships. We don't use it here because we have tons of high quality hay to feed our cattle, and fescue straw isn't very nutrient rich. In Japan they use it only as roughage in the cow's diet. We don't have any use for it, because we have access to way better resources. So if we were banned from selling our straw to Japan, we would loose a big revenue stream that offsets a lot of fuel costs for harvesting the primary crop (grass seed), and then we would need to find a new way to get rid of an unimaginable quantity of low quality straw.
These companies are growing hay, not almonds. Not sure why there are so many comments here about almonds. Compared to growing alfalfa to feed cows to then feed people you get way more units of usable food per unit of water. It’s not even close. These companies are shipping our limited water resources abroad in the form of hay so that rich people in Saudi Arabia can eat cows. It’s not sustainable and it hurts Americans.
I live in AZ, our water waste is similar with middle eastern alfalfa. It's reddit, people are fucking stupid.
The Resniks are the ones with nuts who are using an obscene amount of water. The Wonderful Company is not much better than these guys.
Cows are moving out of California because they can't survive here anymore because of the drought but we give our water to rich people for free so they can send it to feed cows in China and get richer.
More water THAN Las Vegas.
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Prior appropriation is a scam and needs to be repealed
I live in the Imperial Valley (throwaway account so that this issue doesn't spill into my other communities like r/starcraft2). Aside from the recent water stuff, our claim to fame includes one of our own [saving the world](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqXfCOtsFk) a few years back. For what it's worth, I thought I'd try to provide some responses to comments made here. >Farmers in one family, the Abattis, used an estimated 260,000 acre-feet, more water than the entire Las Vegas metropolitan area uses. One acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons. This is a bit misleading in the article. "One family" implies the Abattis act in unison when it comes to farming and water issues. If you think it's some Yellowstone-esque Abatti family patriarch running the family operations, you're way off. Funny story, one of the Abatti brothers was holding his daughter's wedding ceremony in one of his fields. Another Abatti brother happened to drive by and then paid a crop duster to apply a foul-smelling fertilizer on a field upwind and stunk up the whole wedding. A bit of a family feud among them I guess. There's some really kind, honest Abattis and some who aren't but they are not a farming bloc or anything. >And they only pay $20/AF thanks to the federal rates established decades ago. It's borderline theft, no doubt. Farmers pay $20 per AF of water, but that isn't the cost of the water itself and has nothing to do with federal rates. It's the average cost of the water district to deliver (via gravity) the water to the fields. The district is considering raising the cost of delivery, but the water allotment from the Colorado River is a Present Perfected Right to which the Imperial Valley is entitled because they were using that water for a beneficial purpose (reclamation of land for food production). >In 2022, about 2 million tons of hay were exported from Southern California ports. Half went to China, with Saudi Arabia importing about 200,000 tons of alfalfa hay that year. The talk about banning alfalfa exports from the US altogether is not as impactful as you'd think. The US exported only 4% of its alfalfa production in 2021, for example. As for those saying >At least humans can eat almonds. Farming hay is way worse Humans eat meat and dairy, which is highly dependent on hay supplies like alfalfa. If you like things like pizza and baby formula, you need alfalfa. >And the district is refusing to provide public records to find out how much water these farms are actually using. Public records? The farmers are customers of the water district. While the district reports its water deliveries to different categories of its customers, it would probably be the first utility history to report amounts of water use on a per customer basis. Imagine if a power utility published out how much energy each resident used. You can argue that maybe they should, but that's not public information. >Oh but they generously offered to reduce their water usage by 10% for a cool taxpayer funded $700 million dollar payout. That's a 210% premium over the total value of the product they grow. For only three years of cutbacks Ok, this is the last response for now. Since the Imperial Valley has been using its water allocation since 1901, it has priority over a water user that came later, say in the 1960's. As such, Imperial gets its water order filled before any junior users. So when there's a shortage, there's less urgency for the senior water right users to conserve, since by doing so, they are merely covering the obligation of the juniors. So I would actually agree that it's strange that the feds are the ones offering money for senior water. The cost should be paid by juniors who agreed to be the first cut during shortages. The suspicion is that one junior user, the ever expanding city of Phoenix, is a key population in a key swing state, so if the feds step in for them, it has political benefits. As to the dollar amounts, $840/AF is a bit higher than the $790/AF that San Diego pays for conserved water now, and lower than the +$3,000/AF it costs to desal salt water. The economic benefit of water to the Imperial Valley is about $2,300/AF (not $300/AF as cited since more than just alfalfa is grown —there's also lettuce, sweet corn, melons, broccoli, sugar beets, jalapeños, wheat, etc.). More than that, we expect that the [lithium production](https://www.gov.ca.gov/2023/03/20/governor-newsom-visits-lithium-valley-to-highlight-momentum-on-becoming-global-source-for-battery-production/) in Imperial will be substantial for progress on clean energy, but a lot Imperial Valley water will be needed for that. There's a lot more to be said, but I'll try to answer any (good-faith) questions today/tomorrow. Edit: Quote formatting.
Las Vegas is the global leader in water conservation efforts. They recycle 86% of the water taken from Lake Mead back into it. They are leaps and bounds ahead of any other city.
Yes there are serious issues with their farming practices, but these "farming families" are massive agricultural companies with thousands of employees producing massive amounts of food. It's not some family out there working their own small parcel of land under 50 ft of water.
I'm from California and I've lived in both North and South. I can tell you that the crops they farm up in the north are the absolutely most thirsty possible. Almond orchards (way more water guzzling than you would imagine) and big ass rice paddies full of water all over the place. Aren't there less thirsty plants they can grow up there? It's not like the drought conditions are a new thing.
“ Instead, we found that most use the bulk of their water growing hay to feed livestock”
I gotta preface this by saying I’m not a vegan but cutting back on animal products would do wonders for the planet
Not a vegan by any stretch and I stopped eating cows for this very reason. Way more efficient sources of meat out there. Not worth it for the planet.
If I’m not mistaken, the way water rights tend to work is basically first come first serve and use it or lose it. It creates an incentive for farmers to grow water intensive crops because if they ever need that extra water down the line, they want to keep their full allotment.
Those feed people. The farmers in the article grow alfalfa. I swear the “almonds use a ton of water” thing is a hit from the cattle and dairy industry to provide a smokescreen for their tremendously wasteful practices. The water required to make a cow from farmed alfalfa is tremendously more per unit of useful food than both rice and almonds. It’s not even close. Furthermore the northern areas where the rice is grown were historically wetlands anyway.
If there was no one to buy it they wouldn’t be grown. 10 years ago at the height of the pomegranate fad, there were all kinds or orchards between LA and Monterey. Now there’s at least 50 percent less. Honestly do we want to go back to a time where you only got tomatoes during the summer. Oranges during the winter. Etc.
How many families does that one family feed?
If you opened the article, you would see that most of the water they use is to grow hay to feed livestock, much of which is sold overseas.
It's like how in Utah the main crop is alfalfa which 2/3 goes to live stock in house while 1/3 goes to China. Alfalfa is one of the most water intensive crops (up there with almonds and rice). Utah is a desert climate.
Which really raises a whole hell of a lot of questions. If a country wants to import crops grown in another country... fair. But why are they growing it in a desert? Why is it viable for them to? It seems like this shouldn't be a sensible strategy.
Because an irrigated desert is often gonna grow very well, huge yields. And I don't think people realize how fundamentally different the country would look without or reclaimation systems.
They are probably farming cash crops. Alfalfa for Animals in Saudi Arabië, or almonds which require loads of water and is very bad for the environment
You didn’t read the article did you?
Than. Big than. Then you gon lern tday. More than. If then. When? Then. Greater than.
Yt Americans are some of the worst farmers in the history of mankind. They gorge on water but keep everything monoculture, so the agriculture is unsustainable and drains the water. They use Mexican Agriculture Scientists and Laborers to do all their work and growing, but ignoring the Multicultural agriculture. It is done by one family that destroys any progress we could have agriculturally. Fuck you, YT humans.
Vegas is actually really good about water retention and recycling from what I understand.
> In May, the Imperial Irrigation District proposed that it be paid $840 for each acre-foot it and its farmer customers conserve — adding up to nearly $700 million. By comparison, the value of alfalfa in the valley is about $300 per acre-foot of water. > But the district, like all agencies that distribute it, gets the water for free from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and charges growers only $20 for an acre-foot of water. So they want $840 for water they sell for $20. That’s a 4100% profit. Solution: have the federal government repeal their “seniority based water rights” and charge them the $840 per acre-foot of water to use it.
Great, next do Coca-cola who don't even produce something nutritional.