Thanks, Vice Media, for covering California agriculture and its massive and unsustainable use of groundwater during the state’s worst drought in, reportedly, 1,200 years. Watch the video. Or click on other posts, below.
Imagine you had a giant tank full of clean water, but it was running dangerously low. Imagine you knew it would take thousands of years, or more, to replenish that tank. How careful would you be with that faucet? Well, somebody’s leaving it running.
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Filed under Agriculture, Conservation, Drought, Groundwater
Image: iStockPhoto.com
When drought-struck California moved to curb consumers’ use of water, I wrote about agriculture’s massive and under-regulated use of water. On Friday the state moved to cut many farmers’ use of water, in terms of some of the older rights-holders who divert water from Central Valley rivers and streams. In spring, cuts were made to thousands of junior rights holders’ usage, including many growers. This is more than the state did when it curtailed Big Ag’s water use nearly 40 years ago, in 1977, the last time it made such a move. What it hasn’t done is to move strongly to curtail the industry’s waste of the water it’s allocated to use, which is to say … it’s allowed to use most of it (about 80 percent).
Just for “fun,” here’s an annoyingly educational reminder that most Americans make the California drought worse by eating the food grown there. That’s not to say they should forego the glorious bounty and cramp the world’s 8th largest economy, but some would argue just that, more or less. Let’s say that some of Cali’s major crops — rice, almonds, avocados — should be grown where there is ample water because they need so damn much of it. Maybe not so much compared to raising beef, but still — a lot.
Another not-fun thing: Sucking up the groundwater is making the surface of California sink faster than ever before, and it’s going to cost a lot of money as infrastructure like bridges and roads suffers damage.
Related post:
It’s Long Past Time to Police Big Agriculture’s Water Waste
Read more:
Report: Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: How the Food Sector Is Managing Global Water Risks – Ceres (full report)
California Cuts Farmers’ Share of Scant Water – The New York Times
California Move to Restrict Water Pumping by Pre-1914 Rights Holders – Los Angeles Times
Drought-Ravaged California Orders Record Water Cuts on Farmers – The Guardian
The Untapped Potential of California’s Water Supply – Pacific Institute and NRDC
California Is Literally Sinking Into the Ground – Mother Jones
Joseph Poland of the U.S. Geological Survey used a utility pole to document where a farmer would have been standing in 1925, 1955 and where Poland was then standing in 1977 after land in the San Joaquin Valley had sunk nearly 30 feet. Image: U.S. Geological Survey
Experts expect global warming to have a negative impact on crop yields, but shortages of water for irrigation could make for double the trouble, according to a study published yesterday.
As described in ScienceDaily, “given the present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural models estimate that climate change will directly reduce food production from maize, soybeans, wheat and rice by as much as 43 percent by the end of the 21st century. But hydrological models looking at the effect of warming climate on freshwater supplies project further agricultural losses, due to the reversion of 20 to 60 million hectares of currently irrigated fields back to rain-fed crops.”
The study’s lead author, Joshua Elliot, said the analysis is the first of its kind to feature an in-depth comparison of agricultural and hydrological models, which resulted in dramatically different results from other research.
“It’s a huge effect, and an effect that’s basically on the same order of magnitude as the direct effect of climate change,” Elliott, a research scientist with the Computation Institute’s Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP), Argonne National Laboratory, is quoted as saying. “So the effect of limited irrigation availability in some regions could end up doubling the effect of climate change.”
The “good” news, if any, is that some areas will most likely see more precipitation, which could mitigate some of the effects of shortages, the study says.
The study, entitled “Constraints and potentials of future irrigation water availability on agricultural production under climate change” and conducted under the auspices of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project, as part of the Inter-Sectoral Impacts Model Intercomparison Project, was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Filed under Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, Research
At the Waterline 