Strawberry case study: What if farmers had to pay for water?

The fan idea is actually quite okay, cold pockets exist. But let us not forget that "cheaper than the alternative" depends on the prices of everything else.

The problem capitalism constantly keeps running into is that certain externalities are not priced into that "cheaper" choice. You can defrost your fruit with helicopters if the fuel and helicopters are cheap enough, but you may be happily stacking a debt elsewhere, e.g. in the form of polution, social costs, climate crisis, draught etc.

The problem here is that these externalized costs are often not paid by the people who stack them up, which is when regulation can become increasingly benefitial.

Granted, the "crazier" measures like defrosting fruit with helicopters are often just limited stop-band measures in a bad phase that can safe a whole harvest, but if they are used to battle the stacking hidden cost they are in the danger of becoming more and more common while making the problems worse (or at least masking it).

An example: I grew up in the Alps, where skiing is a thing. Each year ski resorts have to rely more and more on artifical snow, which uses extreme amounts of energy and water. Climate change means that the snow mark moves higher and higher each winter, but what about the communities that built a living around the slope and it's tourism if it is their resort that has no snow this winter? That's when you go in with the artifical snow. Twenty years ago that may have been a few bad days in the year or just small parts of the slope, and over slow creeping times it has become more and more. The problem is it just prolongs the needed change, it doesn't solve it. Maybe they are lucky and blessed with snow next year, but what about 10 years down the line? The good ski resort villages are already aware that this is an issue and try to move more towards summer tourism, with the artifical snow just buying them time to do that transformation.

But the only reason they have to do that is because energy is expensive and artifical snow works only down to certain temperatures (to warm and it cannot be produced). These limiting factors may not exist elswhere.

"While corporate growers of premium products like berries, which are shipped to the shelves of major chains like Whole Foods, Safeway and Trader Joe’s, can absorb the price of Pajaro’s water, there is no way farmers of commodity crops like cotton, alfalfa and soybeans can make the economics work, said David Sanford, the agricultural commissioner of the Santa Cruz County, which includes the Pajaro Valley.

"In the years since the price on water was imposed, growers of those crops either shifted to high-priced berries and lettuces, or simply left the region for cheaper pastures."

The increased cost could only be handled by shifting to higher-margin crops.

On the other hand, anyone growing alfalfa or soybeans in the stinking desert deserves whatever happens to them.

I know enough about their lives to know that your armchair quarterbacking is an absurdity.

Also, the US's Midwest has one of the best lands in the world for farming, there's zero need to farm in the deserts from the country's (not the rich farm owners') perspective.

That's true of everything from banks to shops to restaurants to tech companies and farms; if they're not viable businesses, then either the proprietor pays to keep them open out of their own pocket, or they shut down and make room for companies that are viable.

And yeah, if society values the work enough but it isn't profitable to do, then the answer is that the government or some other organisation funds it, not that people get exploited or rules get relaxed to make it 'viable'.

I hope that with universal basic income we will be able to bring back market forces to food production instead of relying to artificial incentives for the farmers.

Usually, on those permaculture "internships", you get a roof over your head and food to eat. You don't get any money on top of that, the assumption is that you're being paid in skill acquisition. It's a fair deal for many people.

But yeah an increase in ag water pricing for all arid areas commensurate with their aridity would be a step in the right direction

I'm pretty sure the colony that lives by me has been exporting them (given the number of babies and new dams I've seen) but they're not likely to cross the Rockies on their own.