Water costs are confusing — even for the experts. A new study shows huge differences in what cities and farm water districts pay for supplies from rivers and reservoirs in California, Arizona, and Nevada.
I moved to California about a decade ago, and I still struggle to fully grasp the scale of this place. Think about this example: CA grows 80% of the world’s almonds, but almonds are not native to CA and they consume an insane amount of water. I saw a statistic somewhere that the few thousand almond farmers in the state use something like 30 times more water than the entire city of Sacramento and all its residents.
I know farming is incredibly difficult with barely any profit margin, but crops like almonds simply aren’t sustainable, so the cost to grown them and the price to buy them should reflect that.
Pretty much all farming west of 100 degrees longitude depends on irrigation, with most of it being fodder for cattle and ethanol that’s blended into gasoline. Both of which are even less efficient than almond growing.
I moved to California about a decade ago, and I still struggle to fully grasp the scale of this place. Think about this example: CA grows 80% of the world’s almonds, but almonds are not native to CA and they consume an insane amount of water. I saw a statistic somewhere that the few thousand almond farmers in the state use something like 30 times more water than the entire city of Sacramento and all its residents.
I know farming is incredibly difficult with barely any profit margin, but crops like almonds simply aren’t sustainable, so the cost to grown them and the price to buy them should reflect that.
Pretty much all farming west of 100 degrees longitude depends on irrigation, with most of it being fodder for cattle and ethanol that’s blended into gasoline. Both of which are even less efficient than almond growing.