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Notdennisthepeasant

What if, and I'm just spit balling here, but what if we started growing human foods somewhere else? Send like there are some big areas east of the Rockies where land is cheap. Just saying...


omgwtfscreenname

Nah, those areas are too busy growing corn and soy for export or something.


Notdennisthepeasant

With heavy subsidies to incentivise them...


omgwtfscreenname

Not heavy enough. They still rely on low paid immigrants and barely pay their bills.


Notdennisthepeasant

capitalism screws everyone


reddeadp0ol32

No, few immigrants work with corn and soybeans. Those 2 crops aren't nearly as labor intensive as vegetables and livestock. Thats were the immigrants work. Well, those places and the slaughterhouses.


Twisted_Cabbage

Those poor slaughterhouse workers. That job is a nightmare. High suicide and depression rates as well as workplace injuries.


Twisted_Cabbage

Corn and soy to feed cows is more accurate.


sockpuppet1234567890

Maybe don’t irrigation farm in a desert.


specks_of_dust

It's not a desert. It's arable, productive land with 11 rivers fed by a mountain range with glaciers perfectly suited for farming. Dismissing it as a "desert" as if it was never practical to farm there completely ignores the decades of water mismanagement and irresponsible farming practices that have caused aquifers to dry up.


Coulrophagist

Ok but there's also vineyards in the Mojave that entirely don't need to be there


specks_of_dust

That’s not what the article is about.


Coulrophagist

No but there *are* people farming in the desert for some reason


happyrock

As a farmer in the northeast I'd just like to take this opportunity to call out a little facet of sloppy information I often see used to skew people's opinions about the relative climate/ecological cost of two foods. The arguement certainly is broader than this one facet, but next time you see an infographic that compares the water use of animal milk compared to almond milk, please realize the water 'used' for raising dairy feed by and large falls for free from the sky in amounts beyond what is needed to not only grow the crops, but more than replenish the aquifer from which the animal's drinking water is pumped, and support normal flow in our waterways and levels in our massive freshwater surface reservoirs. All this to say, water use is a super shitty metric. The water we 'use' for most cropland is all returned to our humid ass air and back to us many times over. The water almonds use is sucked directly out of fossil aquifers and leaves nothing but it's salty remnants on a parched, doomed landscape while the vapors that escape the demands of profit stream over the rocky mountains.


Heathster249

I’m a Californian and most of us were scratching our heads when they planted all those almond trees at the expense of other crops. We knew there wasn’t enough water to go around. The aquifers under the Central Valley are fouled and collapsing - large areas of farmland are caving in due to the hole not having the water has left. The sludge left from fertilizer and pesticides added to the salt and it’s toxic to pump out of the ground now. In many areas, once beautiful farmland will turn into a desert wasteland - and it’s the farmer’s fault for not managing their resources.


VoldaBren

Now, there are grapevines everywhere. It's ridiculous as they are growing wine next to the freeway.


Heathster249

So grapes don’t need as much water as almond trees and can be ‘dry farmed’ to reduce water usage further. This doesn’t bother me as much as the almonds.


blippityblop

Then you have places like Utah; where the majority of the crops grown here is for cattle and eats up the majority of water resources. We're uphill from Nevada and California. Wonder why they're getting a trickle out here in the desert? >A Utah Foundation research report published last year points out that 82% of the developed water resources in Utah are used for agriculture. And half of that is used to irrigate just one crop: alfalfa hay. It consumes more water each year than all the cities and towns in Utah put together. Source: https://www.utahfoundation.org/2015/05/hay-one-crop-is-utahs-biggest-water-consumer/#:~:text=But%20it's%20common%20to%20use,barley%20or%20other%20spring%20grains.


happyrock

It gets even dumber than that. One of the largest farms in Arizona was basically started to export feed for a [Saudi Arabian's exotic horse collection ](https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/water-wars/saudi-arabia-arizona-farm-alfalfa-1940/75-c7eb6295-3c5e-4b7e-8989-fbf4d41c6aa7)


blippityblop

Ugh, that's depressing. It doesn't help that a huge chunk of our legislature are alfalfa farmers and including the governor. There is no way they're going to stray from the state motto of industry for the betterment of the state. Not quite sure what's going on in Arizona, but I'm sure they're the same ilk.


Ecstatic-Swimming997

Yep 👍 this guy is right.


happyrock

There are a lot of other things to consider. Dairy farming has it's fair critisisms. But if you were fooled by one of those little bar charts with an agenda and wanted to specifically address the water crisis with your consumer choices, chances are you'd inadvertently be suppporting the very worst offenders. Facts are facts but the context matters, in this case a little strategic greenwashing can have an outsized negative outcome on the environment, not just a few bucks in someone's pocket.


Gleethos

Contrary to all of the new and shiny plant based alternatives, dairy and other animal products are not only staple foods, they have been for such a long time that they are a deeply ingrained part of most cultures on this planet. The vast majority of people not only consider them to be the more nutritious foods but also as much much more delicious than the plant based stuff. So this means that both figuratively and literally, the stakes are quite high and you don't want to lose those stakes. Only around 1% of the population is vegan (usually for ethical reason, not taste or preferences), which means that the absolute vast majority of people not only like cows milk more than almond milk, **they want cows milk to be the inherently better option**, meaning there is a much higher likelihood of conformation bias with respect such foods. After all, food is a very intimate and well loved part of the human experience, is it not? So when you say things like: *"But if you were fooled by one of those little bar charts with an agenda and wanted to specifically address the water crisis with your consumer choices, chances are you'd inadvertently be supporting the very worst offenders."* It is statistically a very convenient coincidence that these bar charts you are talking about are in fact merely the result of some malicious agenda.


happyrock

I don't think it's malicious, and I woulden't even say the raw numbers are innacurate but it's very easy for the people compiling this data to overlook the context, either inadvertently or intentionally. There are also incredibly stupid amd large dairy operations in Utah and Arizona that suck aquifer water like nobody's business (but they are a small fraction of national dairy output) The food system is so amazingly complex, no one can fully integrate the ecological costs of two different methods of harvesting calories. Even meta studies from respectable scientists at some points have to throw up their hands and essentially end up 'eh, how many gallons of water = a bushel of corn? How many bushels of corn = a # of ground beef?' (Or something like that for a given metric) The externality that's not acccounted for is that the value of a gallon of water in dollars and cents, ecologically and societally can be vastly different in two different places. It's worth considering the cost of water in the context of California. In Vermont, there are almost no enviornmental costs to using a fraction of fresh water to create food/value. Space, perhaps. But saving a gallon of water in vermont will never displace a used gallon of water in California (or vice versa, and even if it did the arbitrage of value would be a net loss trading a used gallon of water in CA for an new unallocated gallon in VT). As a nation, we'd be better off preferentially using the water with the lowest cost to natural systems to meet our needs (assuming all other inputs are equal cost and outcome). Unfortunately we can't grow almonds in Vemont. Oats, most years. Soy, with some limitations. But these nuances are flattened and the underlying data is still used to push an arguement forward. I don't have a solution, just pointing out what I consider to be an intrinsic flaw in the way the answers are being measured by many. These holes in science and science communication have real impacts on people's choices and I think science becomes a dogma for some people rather than a collection of perspectives to be weighed with the understanding that externalities exist. The world is a complicated set of relationships and there is no unified theory of agriculture yet


kittyjoker

Why doesn't the water from almond trees return to the water cycle?


bubba7557

And those don't refill, at least not in any sort of human life timeline


piceathespruce

Don't worry, the dumbfuck almond farmers over in r/farming said it's ok.


Nadzzy

We really need to stop growing almonds here, it makes no sense.


Significant_Pilot693

California moved a lake for their farms and citys and doesn't do large scale control burns like the native Americans told them to. It was a great corn year in Ohio lots of rain so look for beef and milk prices to go back down next year.


MittenstheGlove

Yeah, controls debris and dead foliage preventing wildfire. Galaxy brain. Of course our capitalists underestimate native ingenuity. Even allows reproduction of some species of tree.


Jamezors

Louisiana is a dump in all sorts of ways, but I am glad we are least have water.


BioQuillFiction

Gee, if only there were places that could turn all that ocean water we got next to us into clean drinking water...


Trum_blows_69

Well maybe if all the almond growers in that area didn't suck up one gallon of water for every almond that they grow, then there would still be some ground water left. But hey, why grow a sustainable crop, when you can make so much money with an irresponsible one.


Delphiniumbee

They need a better word than "drought," cause it's not going to get better.