California’s latest severe drought has brought forward a familiar debate — and a familiar blame game.
It’s lawmakers’ fault because they stopped building new dams and reservoirs decades ago and have been slow to use billions of dollars in available bond funds to add water storage facilities.
It’s residents’ fault because they refuse to conserve and millions selfishly water their lawns every day.
It’s environmentalists’ fault because they insist on using so much fresh water to preserve the health of rivers in Northern California.
But it is time for another argument to come to the fore and be given serious consideration. Like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — arid nations with limited water supplies — California should consider banning or limiting the cultivation of water-intensive crops. At a time of severe water shortages, it makes sense to end the cultivation for export of crops like almonds and alfalfa, a plant mostly used to feed cows. Where does the world get 80% of its almonds? The Golden State. Where does Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (and Japan and China) get much of their alfalfa? You guessed it. California.
It’s been nearly a decade since water policy expert Robert Glennon expressed “utter disbelief” at how much water that dry California and Arizona were effectively exporting to other nations, adding to shortages already caused by drought. How much water does it take to produce a pound of almonds? A staggering 2,000 gallons. If California only produced enough almonds for the United States, then it would have about 8% more available water. If California only produced enough alfalfa for the U.S., it would have at least 3% more available water.
In a report published in June, two University of California, Davis agriculture experts argued that arbitrary limits on crops were unfair to farmers and would impoverish rural areas. Perhaps some sort of emergency relief fund could be created by the state to help out the hardest hit. Or perhaps at least some farmers — especially corporate behemoths — aren’t as sympathetic figures as they may seem. UC Berkeley professor Ron E. Hassner notes that California agriculture uses four times as much water as its cities without basic practices that prevent water from being wasted in many nations around the world. Many farmers have long resisted using far more efficient drip irrigation instead of flood irrigation because the latter costs less.
Which shows the need for state action — and not just in limiting “virtual exports” of water. There need to be incentives to get farmers to stop wasting water. Instead, California’s byzantine rules divvying up water rights among irrigation districts and farms can create a “use it or lose it” mentality.
But those rights are not absolute. The State Water Resources Control Board can revoke them in certain circumstances. And the board is more worried than ever about supplies due to the climate emergency and the signs that the Southwest is on the brink of a “megadrought” that could last decades.
In February, the board released a since-finalized report that calls for careful consideration of major changes in water management and regulation to ensure supplies are used in a way that best promotes state interests. It suggested the granting of new water rights might have to be curtailed and some existing rights taken back.
The report is written in such a generic, dry way that it may not alarm almond and alfalfa farmers. But maybe it should. It is not hard imagining the future governor of a parched state saying “virtual exports” of water are outrageous.
And there is reason to think it wouldn’t even seem like a difficult call. California may be the world’s breadbasket. But agriculture and food processing only make up 2% of the state’s economy — down from 5% in the 1960s — and the industry’s lack of clout in Sacramento is obvious. When governors back major agriculture policy changes or order limits to water for Central Valley farms, they never even appear to consider the pleas of farmers’ begging for compromises.
Meanwhile, many state environmentalists hold farming in contempt. The World Wildlife Federation notes that agriculture is “the leading source of pollution in many countries” because of pesticides, fertilizers and other toxic farm chemicals. That’s not the norm in regulated California, but green concerns go far beyond that issue.
Almonds seem benign, but remember what alfalfa is used for: feeding methane-belching cows who are easily the No. 1 source of greenhouse gases in agricultural emissions.
The idea that so much of California’s precious water goes to feed animals that are partly responsible for the climate nightmare is perverse. And even if the heavens open up and the drought goes away, once the issue is framed that way, it’s easy to see every Democrat in the state Legislature voting to limit alfalfa production — at least those who don’t represent rural farming districts.
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