How Growers Gamed California’s Drought

[villager]

I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,” said pistachio farmer John Dean at a conference hosted this month by Paramount Farms, the mega-operation owned by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire known for his sprawling agricultural holdings, controversial water dealings, and millions of dollars in campaign contributions to high-powered California politicians including Governor Jerry Brown, former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.

The record drought now entering its fourth year in California has alarmed the public, left a number of rural communities without drinking water, and triggered calls for mandatory rationing. There’s no relief in sight: The winter rainy season, which was a bust again this year, officially ends on April 15. Nevertheless, some large-scale farmers are enjoying extraordinary profits despite the drought, thanks in part to infusions of what experts call dangerously under-priced water.

Resnick, whose legendary marketing flair included hiring Stephen Colbert to star in a 2014 Super Bowl commercial, told the conference that pistachios generated an average net return of $3,519 per acre in 2014, based on a record wholesale price of $3.53 a pound. Almonds, an even “thirstier” crop, averaged $1,431 per acre. Andy Anzaldo, a vice president for Resnick’s company, Wonderful Pistachios, celebrated by showing the assembled growers a clip from the movie Jerry Maguire in which Tom Cruise shouts, “Show me the money,” reported the Western Farm Press, a trade publication. At the end of the day, conference attendees filed out to the sounds of Louis Armstrong singing, “It’s a Wonderful World.”

Agriculture is the heart of California’s worsening water crisis, and the stakes extend far beyond the state’s borders. Not only is California the world’s eighth largest economy, it is an agricultural superpower. It produces roughly half of all the fruits, nuts, and vegetables consumed in the United States—and more than 90 percent of the almonds, tomatoes, strawberries, broccoli and other specialty crops—while exporting vast amounts to China and other overseas customers.

But agriculture consumes a staggering 80 percent of California’s developed water, even as it accounts for only 2 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. Most crops and livestock are produced in the Central Valley, which is, geologically speaking, a desert. The soil is very fertile but crops there can thrive only if massive amounts of irrigation water are applied.

Current pricing structures enrich a handful of interests, but they are ushering the state as a whole toward a parched and perilous future.

Although no secret, agriculture’s 80 percent share of state water use is rarely mentioned in media discussions of California’s drought. Instead, news coverage concentrates on the drought’s implications for people in cities and suburbs, which is where most journalists and their audiences live. Thus recent headlines warned that state regulators have ordered restaurants to serve water only if customers explicitly request it and directed homeowners to water lawns no more than twice a week. The San Jose Mercury News pointed out that these restrictions carry no enforcement mechanisms, but what makes them a sideshow is simple math: During a historic drought, surely the sector that’s responsible for 80 percent of water consumption—agriculture—should be the main focus of public attention and policy.

<snip>

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/30/how-growers-gamed-california-s-drought.html

[quadrature]

1. Almonds are more important than people

that why almonds should get priority
for water

(sarcasm)

[Igel]

2. Worth considering facts.

Not just those from one source.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-water-going

The problem is laws. The problem is also that urban growth came late and nobody rewrote the laws. The problem is also that in some areas humans use hundreds of gallons of water per person per day.

The problem is also in using well-defined but obscure terms. "Delivered" or "developed" water means water that's piped in. Some areas in California use a lot of water that's pumped from aquifers; that's not counted in the 100% that agriculture uses 80% of. The Central Valley Project, long a foe of many environmentalists because it's the result of flood control projects that hurt fisheries but tamed rivers for urban growth, doesn't provide water to the Southland--and the north hasn't much needed it. The problem is also that a lot of that base of "developed" water has shrunk, affecting some urban areas more than the Central Valley--it's being returned to rivers on a seasonal basis (which now get a decent chunk, at times, of the formerly "developed" water available for towns and agriculture).

The problem is also that some plants, like pistache or almond trees, take a decade before they begin to bear heavily. You let them die one year, it'll be 10-15 years before the farms are functioning again. Then again, they require not so much water compared to other crops. On the other hand, they do require a lot of time and investment before there's any return. So the big returns per acre have to be averaged over all the non-bearing acreages that doesn't yet count. It means that decisions made in 2008 are producing new acreage harvested for the first time in 2014--making it look like suddenly acreage is being converted to a water-intensive crop. They're a bad showcase crop for water-intensive, greedy practices. They are a good showcase crop for wet-crop farmers whose lands have been fallowed (something like 25% of farmland's been fallowed as water conservation measures have been implemented). It makes it look like a rich versus poor thing, when it's not that--at least not yet. Except for some large corporations who have vast holdings of land (and therefore water). However, what's true for the large corporate farmers is also true for the smaller farmers. Making it a fundamentally an urban/rural divide.

Really--better pistachios and almonds than all the broccoli, lettuce, and other leafy things that are masters at transpiration than xeriphytes and near-xeriphytes like pistachios and almonds. Hit them with more water restrictions to save the buttercrunch and they'll mostly survive. But be clear about what's being saved.

The problem is also that the Central Valley aquifer's been hit, and hit hard, and that's an environmental problem that's unrelated (but exacerbated) by the drought. However, pumping or not pumping that water won't help urban areas in the least. So it's primarily *billed* as an urban/rural divide.

Now, granted, it might be possible to build canals and use pipelines in the next year or so to pump water from the CVP to the dessicated droughtlands in the south. That's not really up for discussion. And it would almost be humorous to watch California try to deal with all the environmental regs to build such a pipeline or canal. Instead it's billed as "we have to suffer but they don't have to", even though the context is different (and when the urban areas were under voluntary restrictions, which is to say, no restrictions, not really, the agricultural lands were already under restrictions as bad as the ones now asked of urban areas. It's hard to know exactly what the sense of rhetoric is: Is it "make them suffer, too" or "since they're not suffering, we shouldn't"? Or maybe it's "make the corporations suffer" or just "make the rich suffer."

Personally, I'd have them dispose of the buttercrunch and florette producers, quick-build a pipeline from the central valley to the south, and let the rivers that are now getting more water than 15 years ago wait.

The Beast is, yet again, simpler than possible yet appears to be a trove of profound insight. Dunning-Kruger, eat your heart out.