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  1. #76
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    Sure. But everyone drinking that subsidized water is doing so to survive. Not industrial farmers operating in a free market. It really is an environmental problem to be producing the kinds of water intensive foods we are to then boat it across an ocean. We should be eating foods we can grow here and other countries should be eating foods they can grow there. I understand some areas can't do that so sure, there will be some food commerce but it doesn't have to be to the extent we are doing it.

  2. #77
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    Quote Originally Posted by Not DJSapp View Post
    Their water is subsidized on a monumental level; every dam, canal, and lift station in the state exists to quench their thirst.

    And if almonds grow best in Mediterranean climates, why don't they grow enough of them in the Mediterranean? Why do we ship the bulk of them to the EU?
    The cities equally benefit from all those federally built dams, canals, ect.

    CA's mediterranean climate is even more mediterranean than the mediterranean. It is (or at least was) magic land. It gets long, sunny days, wet winters with high mountains that trap its snow pack and sits near the CO river, a major river system. Spain, Italy, and Greece lack this source of water. There is no better place on earth to grow almonds.

  3. #78
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    Equally? Please elaborate.

  4. #79
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    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    Bottom line, the water almond farmers use in CA is no more "subsidized" than LA and San Diego, who rely on the Colorado River Aqueduct to supply water.
    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    The cities equally benefit from all those federally built dams, canals, ect.
    Stop it, you're embarrassing yourself. Agricultural users typically pay rates that are far below the full market rates paid by municipal users. Exactly how much can vary a lot depending on specific location, the age of the water rights involved, whether the water is purchased from Federal or State agencies, etc., but typically 80-90% less.

    Quote Originally Posted by Danno View Post
    because that's not how water rights work?
    Pfft, what, are you a water rights attorney or something?

    Western water rights are bit like quantum mechanics--if you think you understand them, you don't.

  5. #80
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    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    Bottom line, the water almond farmers use in CA is no more "subsidized" than LA and San Diego, who rely on the Colorado River Aqueduct to supply water.
    Just... stop. You clearly don't understand how water moves through CA. CO river only covers 25% of Socal's water demand. Please go do about a year's worth of research on how water can and does move through the state and just how much daily effort is involved in doing this. Water from Mt. Shasta travels 700 miles to fields in San Diego and Calexico over two sets of mountains. The Colorado river water can be pushed to Santa Barbara. The whole state is interconnected (save some of the more remote coastal towns and cities) but the demand in the south means the water is only pushed one way.

    And as far as the tech bros buying all of the central valley farms, there's around 11,000,000 acres of farmland in the Central valley. At $10k/acre for a fallowed field and $40k+/acre for a working almond orchard... it's a mere quarter of a trillion dollars at current market rates. Probably need to triple that to get everyone to sell. Bezos doesn't have that kind of cash.
    Wait, how can we trust this guy^^^ He's clearly not DJSapp

  6. #81
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    You really think cities like LA and SLC would exist but for these federally built water projects? The cities are there because of the federally built water projects. Maybe the primary purpose of projects such as the Central Utah Project and Colorado River Aqueduct was for agriculture, but the secondary effect was to allow the sprawling metropolis of LA and SLC to thrive in desert environments. Do you think LA and SLC would be as large as they are without these federal water projects? The water projects bring both water and an economy. And if CA replaced almonds with lower dollar, more water efficient crops, do you really think the water saved would make it to the ocean? It would just allow for more sprawling strip malls chewing up the farm land.

    Lima, Peru has 10.8 million people and gets 8 inches or rain a year. LA gets 14 inches a year, SLC around 17. So there is plenty of room for these municipal users to become more efficient.

    I generally think agriculture use of any kind, particularly agriculture use that is not receiving a direct subsidy, is a good use of that land. Beats the shit out a parking lot.

  7. #82
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    Also, I understand CO river water is just a part of the CA water equation. I am just using that as example of moving water from one place it should naturally flow to another at enormous public cost. There have been all sorts of crazy ideas to get CA its water, including putting in pipelines to divert the Columbia River south and putting icebergs on trains from Alaska to LA.

  8. #83
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    Yeah good luck getting a bunch of fat lazy Americans to live like they do in Lima.

  9. #84
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    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    The cities equally benefit from all those federally built dams, canals, ect.
    hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha oh my god you don't know anything about this do you? Here's a reference: Reclamation District 108 in Northern California charged $4.80/acre foot of raw water in 2016. My current residential water bill is $5.01/ccf. For reference, 1 af = 435 ccf. So I don't really understand what you mean here because ag water costs 400 times less than residential water. And yes, that water cost is the water only price, sewage and storm drain costs are separate on my bill.

    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    CA's mediterranean climate is even more mediterranean than the mediterranean. It is (or at least was) magic land. It gets long, sunny days, wet winters with high mountains that trap its snow pack and sits near the CO river, a major river system. Spain, Italy, and Greece lack this source of water. There is no better place on earth to grow almonds.
    Then maybe Spain, Italy, and Greece should look into building some more desalinization plants like we're doing. Hell, I'm currently building one.
    Wait, how can we trust this guy^^^ He's clearly not DJSapp

  10. #85
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    You eat crops grown in Reclamation District 108? There are fat cats in Sacramento and San Francisco who make money off those crops grown in Reclamation District 108? So even though the the price paid for water in Reclamation District 108 is less than in the city, that doesn't mean the city doesn't benefit from the federal infrastructure that allows Reclamation District 108 to pay that low price. I'm just generally against farmer bashing in this debate.

    Spain, Italy, and Greece can't build desalinization plants like in CA because they don't have cheap PNW hydro power like CA (another reason the West Coast of US is probably the word's best agriculture land on earth).

  11. #86
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    Yes, I eat food grown in my area. They also export almonds, rice and alfalfa from RD 108 via the ports of Sacramento and Oakland to Japan and China. What's your point?

    I'm fine with subsidizing ag for domestic purposes. I'm not ok with the local population suffering because ag needs to do more to feed China wasteful luxury crops.
    Wait, how can we trust this guy^^^ He's clearly not DJSapp

  12. #87
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    Total US ag export last year was $146 billion. I guess what we disagree on is whether we should reduce that number so that people in CA cities don't have to "suffer" anymore.

    Switzerland subsidizes their farmers not just to produce food, but because they believe it is part of their cultural identity and it helps bring in tourists (from an efficiency standpoint, doesn't make much sense to make cheese from cows frolicking in the Alps). Think of the outcry if the US started doing something like that.

  13. #88
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    Quote Originally Posted by Not DJSapp View Post
    ^^^^^^ times 1000

    Nothing pisses me off more than a good old drought in CA. The last one cost hundreds of thousands of urban trees as people stopped watering them. They're still breaking and damaging homes in windstorms or catching fire. Meanwhile, the farmers are pushing almonds and livestock feed off to China via a free return trip in the shipping containers that feed our consumer desires for plastic crap. Fuck those corporate cash crop farmers; they are literally shipping our water offshore and we're suffering.

    DTM, you forgot about the cotton grown in the south San Joaquin Valley. Because cotton is unique to the desert climate of Bakersfield and can only be grown there. At least the rice in the Sacramento Valley doubles as flood control and waterfowl migration habitat, because rice is unique as well. At least the almond farmers are setting up more and more drip systems as their water allocations are getting hammered and they can't flood fields like they used to. Basically they were losing whole orchards because they couldn't flood them for years at a time and pumping on their own is expensive, if they have the rights to drill a well.
    I remember driving to Palm Springs during the midst of the most recent drought and watching orchards being flood irrigated along I5. Which was also dotted with signs claiming the drought was created by politicians. The large and Corp farming interest in CA generally just do not give a fuck and are willing to drain the state dry to make a buck today.

    There is an article in the NYT today about Klamath. Some farmer is concerned her daughters will not be able to be fifth generation farmers on their land. Yeah, no shit, the previous four generations has suck all the water in the region in the name of Frito Lay getting cheap potatoes to make huge corporate profits.

    Sure, we do provide a lot of the food for our nation, but wasting water on potatoes for bagged chips is fucked. Nestle has been bottling and shipping water out of the state for decades. But being honest east this is both a western states issue and National issue more than a CA issue. CA just gets most of the press because it is cool to hate on CA in general.

  14. #89
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    The Klamath water battle is farmer vs. salmon unlike farmer vs. tech bro who wants a green lawn in the rest of the state. I'm cool taking water away from farming to support salmon habitat and allow that saved water to flow to the ocean. But other than the Klamath, CA has done an excellent job of eradicating the species from the rest of the state.

  15. #90
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    Pump it up, until you can feel it
    Pump it up, when you don't really need it


    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/u...a-sinking.html
    Move upside and let the man go through...

  16. #91
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    Meanwhile, it's lush and green in the northeast, and it's going to rain again tomorrow.

  17. #92
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    Klamath is also about tribes trying to exercise their sovereign rights.

    In California, a lot of water development projects were (are) not federal projects. Many are state and local projects, paid for by local and state citizens and “decided” on by state or locally elected officials....

    Here’s a (typical) California water rights story:
    My next door farmer has about 20 acres and he grows on about half of those acres. There’s a perennial creek that flows through his property. Until a few years back, all of his water for crops was from winter rainfall or irrigation view a few wells (fractured granite not a “real” aquifer). He recently paid for a 7,000 ft long underground pipe and box connection into an irrigation canal to get more reliability water for irrigation. That pipe went through multiple other private properties, easements, and right of ways and was not cheap, but apparently penciled out. He cannot use the water in the creek that runs through his property because a previous owner “signed away” the riparian water rights. IDK who “owns” his riparian water rights, but the rights were likely signed away during hydraulic mining in the area.

  18. #93
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    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    I'm just generally against farmer bashing in this debate.
    The "farmers" DJSapp is saying can go fuck themselves are multi-billion dollar industrial agribusinesses that are exploiting public resources for private short-term profit and whose practices often threaten their own long-term existence through topsoil destruction. Nobody is saying Joel Salatin-types should fuck off.

    Also, let's remember how this all started--with the claim that inter-basin water diversions exist to supply cities and cities are the ones creating water shortages. Pointing out that cities only use ~10% of the water, and that agricultural users are incentivized in multiple ways to use water inefficiently, is not "farmer bashing."

  19. #94
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    Use it or lose it

  20. #95
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dantheman View Post
    The "farmers" DJSapp is saying can go fuck themselves are multi-billion dollar industrial agribusinesses that are exploiting public resources for private short-term profit and whose practices often threaten their own long-term existence through topsoil destruction. Nobody is saying Joel Salatin-types should fuck off.
    Exactly. The production increases over the last 15 years in CA ag are not because of a resurgence of the family farm, it's all because of consolidation and industrialization. The family crop farm is going the way of the dodo simply because they can't afford the machinery to compete with the industrialized farms. At least, not on the margins farmers make. Livestock ranching and dairies are still able to operate as family businesses as they all still need that final trip to the slaughterhouse and packing plant.

    The "farmers" I'm bashing are the corporations that are exporting our water for profit. They're doing this with catchy slogans like 'food grows where water flows' and 'no farmers, no food' and they're a damn powerful lobbying group. And they're flat ass lying. The food they're growing isn't for us; they're not our saviors. The water crisis is really a corporate revenue crisis with a PR campaign to beat the people down to give them more at the expense of our standard of living and our environment. What I'd like to see as a bit of a balance here. Grow food, but don't export more than 25% of any given crop. Find a balance and leave some water for the people and environment. I'm very much against the idea that I can't flush my toilet and all the trees at my local park die because Blue Diamond Almonds needs to make a buck.
    Wait, how can we trust this guy^^^ He's clearly not DJSapp

  21. #96
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    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    There are agriculture subsidies which involve direct payments to farmers so that the the price the US can export the crop is less than what the price would be absent the subsidy (frowned on by the WTO but the US still does this, like most other countries). Almonds aren't on this list. You could argue that every drop of water in places like CA, and SLC, is "subsidized" because back in the 50s and 60s the federal government built massive water diversion projects and the people living in these places did not have to foot the entire bill. But under that definition of "subsidized" every drop of water in the US is subsidized since we are all drinking water that the feds help bring to our faucet. The drier places receiving more federal teat than the wetter places. Bottom line, the water almond farmers use in CA is no more "subsidized" than LA and San Diego, who rely on the Colorado River Aqueduct to supply water.
    Feds didn't bring shit to my house. I have a well. It's mine. I don't live in CA though.

    Sent from my Pixel 4a (5G) using TGR Forums mobile app

  22. #97
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    Quote Originally Posted by altasnob View Post
    Total US ag export last year was $146 billion. I guess what we disagree on is whether we should reduce that number so that people in CA cities don't have to "suffer" anymore.

    Switzerland subsidizes their farmers not just to produce food, but because they believe it is part of their cultural identity and it helps bring in tourists (from an efficiency standpoint, doesn't make much sense to make cheese from cows frolicking in the Alps). Think of the outcry if the US started doing something like that.
    Cattle and sheep are grazed on Wilderness and other public lands at subsidized and artificially low AUMs across the west in very pretty places. "from an efficiency standpoint, doesn't make much sense". But we do that in the US currently. In fact, there's a big cultural and touristy event celebrating it. They take the sheep from from their subsidized mountain public lands grazing areas and trail them through a ski town.

    https://trailingofthesheep.org/

    But I guess that's probably different so no outcry.

  23. #98
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    Quote Originally Posted by Skidog View Post
    Feds didn't bring shit to my house. I have a well. It's mine. I don't live in CA though.

    Sent from my Pixel 4a (5G) using TGR Forums mobile app
    I live in California and have a well in fractured granite as my only source of water. Those in my area that received pipe treated water get their water from non-federal projects.

  24. #99
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    Quote Originally Posted by Not DJSapp View Post
    I'm very much against the idea that I can't flush my toilet and all the trees at my local park die because Blue Diamond Almonds needs to make a buck.
    Yup! That's exactly what's so asinine about politicians and others acting like personal use is the problem. They try and make you feel guilty for not upgrading to the latest low flow toilet, but God forbid they dare say ANYTHING about the absolutely insane water usage of the almond industry among others.

  25. #100
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    Quote Originally Posted by MontuckyFried View Post
    Yup! That's exactly what's so asinine about politicians and others acting like personal use is the problem. They try and make you feel guilty for not upgrading to the latest low flow toilet, but God forbid they dare say ANYTHING about the absolutely insane water usage of the almond industry among others.
    And fracking, amiright?

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