Stop Vilifying Almonds
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/04/almonds_in_california_they_use_up_a_lot_of_water_but_they_deserve_a_place.html
This year’s “rainy” season is over, and California is beginning to accept its fate: Business-as-usual farming in the Golden State may soon become a thing of the past. The drought is now so far beyond the bounds of normal it’s become at least temporarily self-sustaining. Extreme heat begets more evaporation, and dry ground heats up more quickly than wet soil. Add in a dash of global warming, and you have a recipe for a megadrought that may last decades. For a state whose decades-long water-fueled bender has made it the most important agricultural producer in the country, one that leads the nation in countless water-intensive food crops, that’s all pretty terrifying.
It also explains the heated debate we’ve been having recently over, of all things, almonds—or “THE DEVIL’S NUT,” as Gizmodo facetiously called them recently. Amid the massive new water restrictions now in place in California, water-intensive almonds have become an easily vilified, easily visualized scapegoat.
It’s true that California has to get smarter—fast—about using what little water it has left. But we should recognize that the state has other, much sillier uses of water than almonds—like depleting California’s desert aquifers to grow hay and corn to fatten cows. (Nebraska already does a pretty good job at that.) I’m by no means an almond apologist, but all this recent almond-shaming demands some context. And, in fact, there’s a strong case that it makes great sense for almonds to remain central to the future of California agriculture.
For now, California’s unique Mediterranean climate is almost ideal for almonds to flourish. Yes, almonds use a lot of water, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Almonds are much more efficient water-users, per calorie, than dairy or beef, for example. (As a Wisconsin resident, I feel duty-bound to remind everyone at this point that dairy farming can be done almost anywhere—and indeed, dairies in search of more reliable water are leaving California because of the current drought.) Replacing a glass of cow’s milk with almond milk is a net gain for the environment. But almond trees, which must be watered even when they’re not producing, have been gradually displacing fields of row crops that can be fallowed when the weather turns dry. That means by planting almonds, farmers are locking in future water use for decades to come—a troubling trend.
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