California Cuts Farmers’ Share of Scant Water | Hacker News Reader

California Cuts Farmers’ Share of Scant Water

nytimes.com

48 pointsjstreebin53 comments

It was a big government mistake to ever irrigate the southwest in the first place. It distorted the economy, encouraging people to build unsustainable industries and communities in the middle of the desert. We laugh at middle eastern countries for trying to make agricultural industries in the desert (see: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), but we're doing the same thing in California.

I'm sympathetic to the individual farmers, of course, but the solution is not to allow these unsustainable practices to continue. We should charge market rates for every drop of water, and let welfare take care of the farmers who can't profitably pay those rates. If our welfare isn't enough for them, then it's not enough for anyone else and we should increase it. Ironically, rural California keeps voting against that.

People have been growing food in dry valleys with rivers that bring water down from the mountains since the dawn of civilization. California is no exception. Calling it "unsustainable" in the context of agriculture is a bit simplistic. When less snow falls in the mountains, water deliveries to agriculture gets reduced, and some acreage goes fallow. "Market rate" sounds easy but is a bit of a red herring in this context. If you're a farmer contracted to get a certain share of a water system (as farmers are, in byzantine agreements that were set up decades ago and could probably only be unwound via acts of U.S. Congress and probably years of litigation) you take what you get, and then you have to buy more at market rate. If you grow nut trees, that's what you do both because the crop can still be profitable and because it costs you tens of thousands/acre if the trees die. If you grow alfalfa, you might just wait until next year.

Unlike people at the dawn of civilization, those farmers didn't build those dams on the Colorado River, the Army Corps of Engineers did. As to the water agreements, they were a stupid idea that never should have happened, like lots of other stupid ideas people have had over the years (e.g. unsustainable pension agreements for public workers). The common theme is that it's essential that people today have the power to undo the mistakes of their predecessors.

Will that result in a lot of litigation? Sure. But the state has a lot of leverage on its side to push for a better result.

Yeah, we have a common government that sometimes builds things, which is maybe more efficient than farmers shooting at each other over who diverted the river. Water rights are considered property, and you can't just go take them without recompense. But really, what are you after? California is going to use the collected water it has allocated for agriculture for that purpose, and the only thing you're going to accomplish by increasing what farmers pay for water is change the water usage patterns, so you'll replace a lot of alfalfa and rice with more almonds, pistachios, and wine grapes. Is that good or bad? I don't know.

Sometimes the government builds things in stupid places which encourages people to do stupid things, like try to farm in the desert. And yes, water rights are property rights, but the answer simply cannot be "now you're stuck spending 80% of your water on something that makes up 2% of GDP."

There has to be a way for California's current government to fix its old mistakes. The government could tax water per gallon, or impose steep property taxes on water rights. Both would solve the problem and side-step any Constitutional takings claims by farmers.

The battles over water rights have been going on in the west for at least a century, so I'm not all that optimistic that you're going to radically change how it works. But I still don't see what you're hoping to accomplish with this talk of "farming in the desert" as folly. What would you possibly do with the 30+ million acre feet that currently goes to agriculture? More golf courses?

Farming in the desert is folly because that water could be put to much better uses (e.g. allowing more growth in the cities). Farming only happens in California because farmers don't pay for the real cost of that water. We don't have to do anything with that land. We have plenty of land in the U.S. Water, not so much.

> Farming in the desert is folly because that water could be put to much better uses (e.g. allowing more growth in the cities).

Do we really want more growth in the cities where water is scarce?

What's your point? Let them piss all the water down the drain until there's no more? There is land in the U.S that is more hospitable to growing crops. Get your head out of your behind and see that. Otherwise, let them suck all of the water out and then look at each other like idiots when its all gone. More and more this country seems like it needs to get a smack in the face and a swift kick in the arse to wake up. I never wonder how past civilizations went extinct when I read comment trains like this. Everybody wants to talk w/ their nose up in the air instead of addressing problems... Because that's too hard and problems have been around forever. Oh no, change that makes sense. Why do that?

Reply to post below me : So, there is no issue. Best of luck.

The point is that water falls from the sky, in varying amounts, every year, and California has a huge amount of infrastructure to collect and use it, and a bunch of people who manage it. If agriculture and ranching stopped in California there would be nothing to do with 2/3s of that water (i.e. about twice annual domestic/commercial use), even in drought years, once the reservoirs and aquifers filled up again. It would end up in the ocean. If the western mega-drought that some people are talking about happens, then things would be different.

A sustainable solution wouldn't involve ending all farming in California. Instead, what you would do is set a tax per gallon that's high enough so that demand for water decreases to the sustainable level of supply. That'll drive a lot of farmers out of business, but that's okay, that's what welfare is for. But some farmers will be able to stay in business because their crops are valuable enough to be worth growing in the desert.

As a known lawyer here, you need to appreciate the water law of The West (and all the nuance involved). Unless otherwise over-ruled, it's at a state's discretion issue. IANAL, but I have considerable experience with water in the west; specifically, The Rockies. The oldest water rights are agricultural, so what takes precedence as a matter of law is geared towards that.

Edit: My solution is for the people wanting water rights need to purchase them from those that have them (i.e. the agricultural folks).

The situation in California has almost no resemblance to your dry-valleys-fed-with-runoff lore. The southern San Joaquin Valley is forcibly irrigated using tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure to pipe water where is doesn't naturally go. Same for Imperial in the South, and every major urban center south of Fresno.

"Buy more at market rate" means nothing if there is no water that's actually deliverable. Now that reservoirs are running dry, that's exactly what's starting to happen.

Sure, there is huge water infrastructure with dams, canals, pumps, etc., but the principle is the same: water that used to flow to the ocean gets diverted for other use. Is the allocation between ag and urban/commercial use the correct one? Hell if I know.

Acts of congress aren't enough. Some of those rights stem from treaties - second only to the constitution.

Ok, then there is no issue. Best of luck

> It distorted the economy, encouraging people to build unsustainable industries and communities in the middle of the desert.

The central valley in California is not a desert. It has never been a desert. You seem to be confusing it with Southern California. Central California naturally contained one of the largest groundwater basins in the US, large rivers and lakes. For a couple million years, the whole thing was a giant lake for goodness sakes.

It is an agricultural area whose output and scale dwarfs anything else on Earth because it has both ideal growing weather, exceptional soil and normally more than enough water and because we have a drought once every 50 to 100 years, it all of a sudden unsustainable?

Where do you think we should grow crops? Eden?

If you had more knowledge of agriculture, you wouldn't make an ill-informed comment like "We laugh at middle eastern countries for trying to make agricultural industries in the desert (see: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen), but we're doing the same thing in California."

The Central Valley has the largest area of Class I soil in the world. Don't know what that means? Look it up. The climate in the Central Valley is quite unique and perfect for growing a wide range of crops. Very few regions in the world have the characteristics of California's Central Valley.

This doesn't mean that water isn't a serious issue worthy of debate. But folks like you, whose knowledge of agriculture is clearly quite superficial, aren't adding anything to the debate. You conveniently ignore how important California agriculture is to our nation's food supply and seem to be willing to pretend that ag in California can just go away without consequence. In reality, it's not the farmers who stand to lose the most if a sustainable solution to this issue isn't found; it's the American people.

This isn't an agricultural issue. It's an issue of environmental economics. If California's soil is so valuable, some farmers will be able to grow crops there profitably even if they have to bear the true cost of water and dam infrastructure. Giving those things to them for free just encourages agricultural activity beyond what is efficient.

I'm not one to reflexively invoke the magic market fairy, but this is pretty much the textbook case of where markets are good at allocating scarce resources.

Not that simple. Dams and canals aren't just subsides, they're system efficiency multipliers, much like the Interstate Highway system. Sure, we all pay for such things, but the benefits to transport or farming efficiency reduce end consumer costs significantly.

But, as we say in the water industry, Whisky's for Drinkin', Water's for fightin' over!

You have to ask yourself why we subsidize certain kinds of infrastructure, and whether that rationale applies equally to transportation as to dams. The answer is it doesn't.

There are two basic concepts in environmental economics: positive and negative externalities. A positive externality is when someone benefits from something they don't pay for. Markets under-produce things that create positive externalities, because the price does not reflect that externalized benefit. You correct for positive externalities with subsidies.

A negative externality is when someone is harmed by something they do not get compensation for. Markets over-produce things that create negative externalities, because the price does not reflect that externalized cost. You correct for negative externalities with taxes.

Transportation infrastructure creates positive externalities. People benefit from a train line besides those who pay to ride it. Dams create negative externalities. The environment and people downstream are harmed by diversion of water, but they don't get compensated for that harm. Consumers buying produce is not a positive externality, because they pay for that produce. Water is an input to production, and the benefits accrue pretty much only to water users, or those who purchase a product or service from water users. If we stopped subsidizing water, the prices of California avocados would go up, but those prices would be efficient prices that correctly reflected the true cost of growing produce in a place with scarce water.

Eh, people also benefit from water management. The alternative is pouring all that fresh water into the ocean.

You'd be paying for these guys to do it less efficiently, or paying more to the other guy who farms it in the Midwest or S. America because he doesn't have the competition.

This seems fundamentally unresponsive to the parent. What is the true cost of water and infrastructure? Who decides? In any case it's not a desert which was your original statement so do you retract that?

America heavily subsidizes food not just in the US but around the world. All economies need the food thing taken care of. This was the America's way of taking care of that issue completely.

What evidence to you have that these industries and practices are unsustainable? According to NOAA, the current drought is not part of a long term change in precipitation. It is just normal variation.

Even if the rain were not to come back and farming were to stop in California we got well over 100 years of incredible productivity out of it by bringing water in from regions that inherently could not be as productive. I would be surprised if we are not long past the breakeven point compared to not irrigating and trying to use that water in places with less favorable soil and climate.

First start with Palm Springs and the rest of Southern California. Then move on to the farmers. Farms produce some utility in the form of food. That patch of grass that fronts every gas station in Palm Springs and socal gives zero benefit.

But if it's only < 1% of the problem, then spending time on it is useless.

You are right that unsustainable actions should be curtailed. I wouldn't start with the farmers, though. They are producing food. I would start by telling everyone to stop trying to have green lawns.

I also think you should really research the cash flow of agriculture if you think welfare would even be a drop in the buckets towards the cost of running a modern farm.

They've actually shown that the water shortage is by caused agriculture. Watering the lawn, while wasteful, is a minor contribution to the problem.

The water shortage is caused by a severe lack of rain. Not agriculture. Not people watering their lawn.

The drought is made more difficult because we don't have enough water storage to sustain our full agricultural and urban water usage when it doesn't rain, but that isn't the root cause.

Oh, I get that. But I have a different perspective on the bigger picture. Agriculture uses 80% of the water, but produces food. Lawns are a smaller problem, but are truly a complete waste, with no productive value given in return.

If we removed the smaller problem of lawns, and gave that water to the farmers, their water restrictions would not be as bad, which will have a direct result on their production, which has a direct result on food prices, which has a direct result on everybody, in particular lower incomes families.

So I really do stand by my statement that as long as people are watering their green lawns, we're not pursuing the optimal solution.

I should make myself clear, though - farmers don't get a free pass to use all the water they want. They should be pursuing more efficient irrigation methods, and plating foods that require less water. Then the cuts won't have as strong of an impact.

California's problem with regulating water for farmers is that they have always used the stick instead of the carrot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot_and_stick

In other words if I invest in drip irrigation and cut my water use say 80% I not only don't receive help for doing it but I have the same water cut back percentage as my neighbor who is using water less efficiently.

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9708211

The real problem here is runaway population growth. In California we've seen our population double in the last forty years or so, and there just isn't enough water in the American Southwest to accommodate that kind of growth.

Um, no. If you reduced the usage of water by people to zero, the agribusinesses still wouldn't have enough water.

And, let's start calling them what they are ... agribusinesses. "Farmers" are long gone from California's Central Valley.

Um, yes.

Of course if 80% of the states water goes to farmers and you're 20% below normal, that means farmers have to be part of rationing. But do you really think there would be so much farming if we didn't have 20 million extra people here?

And farmers are not long gone from the Central Valley. Most farms are still family owned, they're just too large to be worked by one family. You can call it agribusiness if it makes you feel better to depersonalize them, but they're still farmers.

http://www.ppic.org/content/images/wateruse2-full.png

Urban water usage has remained steady at around 11% of the total despite population growth. Agricultural consumers use about 4x more water, and then export it out-of-state.

Agriculture uses about 20% or so.

But all those people need to eat, so it's not like you can pretend twenty million people don't add to the demand for agricultural products.

Besides, if population was steady urban use would be 5.5%.

Agriculture uses around 80% if you don't count environmental water usage, yes.

Those people need to eat, but it's not like 100% of the food grown in California is eaten in California, nor does California grow 100% of the food it consumes. California's growers are driven by the national food market, not the state food market.

Err... 80%.

That's only part of it. California had water issues back into the 70s. I used to live there and remember all the rationing then. The big part of the problem is California never really did anything about it.

It is helpful to look at how water is actually used in CA. I thought this blog post was a decent attempt: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-do...

The revelation that we could just pay the alfalfa farmers to not farm should probable get more publicity/support.

Are you trolling? Here is a classic paragraph from Catch-22. “His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbours sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” he counselled one and all, and everyone said “Amen.”

The existing situation is even more stupid than paying alfalfa farmers not to grow alfalfa.

If you’re forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, paying alfalfa farmers is where it’s at. Obviously better water management would be the sensible choice, but that hasn’t been on the table for decades.

This actually happened back in the day. The US was originally an agrarian society and farmers held a lot of political power. Today farming makes up 1-2% of the economy. However, back then the farmers faced a problem: If you make too much food, prices fall, and you go bankrupt. Farmers would then control the supply of food by not farming to keep prices up. Certain elements within the government were sympathetic and would pay farmers not to plant to help control the problem the market put them in.

This developed a problem as people were paid to not produce and when droughts happened, there was not enough food to go around - a critical failure for a civilization. A problem that is a relevant lesson today as politicians had used faulty economics to try to fix the problem.

Modern farm policy is wasteful, and deserves criticism, but it turned the problem on its head by subsidizing farmers to produce as much as possible. We've gone from occasionally starving to death to having medical problems from eating too much. A good problem to have.

> The big part of the problem is California never really did anything about it.

That isn't really fair, there was a lot done. Desalination plants went up along the coast and rationing and conservation efforts went in to full-effect. The problem was that when the rainy season returned the desalination plants were spun down and people generally stopped caring as it was no longer an issue.

Desal takes enormous amounts of power for not much water. It's not really a practical solution.

The problem it there isn't much to actually do. Every last drop of the Colorado river is spoken for, so it's not like you can bring in more water by adding capacity there. We're taking the most we can take out of the delta, too. Where is the water going to come from?

Or you know the fact you basically live in a desert and it never rains.

Most of California is not and has never been a desert.

It rained all over California this last week.

And right now they're saying 95 % chance of El Niño and 85 % chance of it lasting through the winter, which means plenty of rain.

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