Comment by nyxtom | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nyxtom | Hacker News Reader

Agriculture takes up the majority of the use of water consumption. (Nearly 70% of all water use - http://www.worldometers.info/water/). Of that consumption, in terms of irrigation, nearly 50% of the water is lost to evaporation (https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wuir.html).

There have been solutions to this problem with urban farming practices with a combination of hydroponics and vermiponics for a number of years which can grow quite a bit of usable produce in a smaller land area using significantly less water.

Also, it could be useful to continue to break down these statistics by crop and water use. For instance, almond farms appear to take up nearly 10% of California's water use (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/0...).

Doing so would lend credence to which crop would be most effective for first improving upon. This report appears to suggest that alfalfa is one of the neediest crops grown in California in terms of water consumption. There are obvious other crops as well, in terms of land area (Corn being one of them) but nevertheless it's worth noting. https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/han...

Now, you might be asking, what is alfalfa for? Alfalfa is grown as a feed for animals, mainly dairy cows. Dairy cows eat roughly 70% of the alfalfa produced in the US. It's important to note that some alfalfa farmers tend to disagree that solutions like drip irrigation will work effectively enough - as it sometimes depends on the soil type and exposure to critters chewing up the pipes. (http://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/jul/03/how-one-california-alfa...)

Adjusting our meat consumption has a huge effect on agricultural water usage as well.

Indeed, there are also alternative methods to feeding cattle that can even reduce methane emissions such as seaweed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990831132210.h...)

It also might be useful, as noted https://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/workgroups/lcfssustain/han... to simply not grow certain low cash crops like alfalfa, wheat or grain in California given the amount water use required in more drought stricken areas.

In addition to this, we can also think about overall energy efficiency of consuming a product itself. For instance, potatoes yield more energy and protein than most crops grown.

Given the situation, if we want food we will have to pay the price in terms of water and land for producing the product used to produce that food.

What makes these farms grow alfafa? Is it more profitable for them to grow it instead of a less water-intensive crop?

Essentially, water is subsidized by the Californian water pricing rules in order to provide low-cost feed that boosts milk production in cows (this is why alfalfa in particular probably won't be pushed out). Californian dairy is a surprisingly powerful lobbying group with enough of a budget to also have a general public ad campaign to protect their interests.

The price subsidy encourages overconsumption, which causes the shortage.

Most places raise prices to fund desalination plants (if they have access to large bodies of water near the population centers, like California does), but that's why they don't. And given they won't do the obviously ideal strategy that works for everyone else in the world, it's been hard to get money from the struggling general budget to build the facilities. Why should every other department struggling for a budget to meet basic needs lose their chance because they won't adopt a simple price structure change?

Instead, non-renewable reserves are being depleted, as mentioned in the article.

The problem here isn't really technical in nature, though.

I don't think the current model of agricultural production in California is sustainable; for something that takes up 70-80% of the state's water, it only amounts to 2-2.5% of the GDP.

If the problem for California is one of policy, what endeavors can technology take on to help?

Develop tech to make alternate feed cheaper without dropping milk production or quality compared to alfalfa.

Improve water distribution in soil (I think there is a way to optimize this, varying by soil type and many other factors, that would minimize runoff). Or, get easier systems to recycle runoff. Ideally something with no/few moving or manufactured parts.

Reduce the cost of desalination plants and create a more realtime water market. Having one single water market would be a fundamentally technical task (albeit a complex one), but would level out prices, removing the incentive to make the policy mistakes.

Farmers are sunlight harvesters. Figuring out how to turn sunlight + carbon dioxide (renewables) into profitable products for sale can be achieved through good management in addition to appropriate technology.

Soil's water holding capacity can be increased through techniques like green mature and cover cropping. The permaculture approach to water is to slow it, spread it, and sink it.

Eh, just lab-grow meat directly instead of indirectly from animal production -- that would save water usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

I am in favor of synthetic meats and other protein sources like bugs. We just need to be mindful of the culture part of agriculture, where animal protein has been a large factor in many people's lives for a very long time.

There are also parts of the world where crop production doesn't make sense due to poor soil, erosion, water, climate, etc. Animal husbandry with good management practices is important and can help improve the functioning of these ecosystems. Now, whether we decide to eat these animals is another question.

as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, this is a problem we are working on ( http://www.mywildeye.com/wildeye/ ). At the moment there is a lot of waste of water ( and fertilizer ) when growing things.

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