State snowpack at 61 percent, prompting concerns about serious summer drought

Alfalfa needs 75" of water

Ummmm...not even close.  A years worth (4-5 cuttings) uses about 24-32 inches here in Ukiah.  But what do I know.

Try this:   Rice is subsidized, therefore we should grow no, or less, rice.
Superficially this sounds right?

But ask:   Does subsidized rice.....go uneaten?   Is subsidized rice wasted?
No, not one single grain goes uneaten or unused or is wasted.

Consider that rice is one of the few highly transportable foods that can be eaten directly.   Rice (that would be   s u b s i d i z e d   rice) grown here in the United States is the bulk food of school lunch programs, it is the most rational bulk food to send to poor people around the world, those bone-bare starving African children, for instance...just to name ONE population of bone-bare starving kids.

Rice can be eaten directly.   It does not require an infrastructure to mill it to flour.   Since rice can be handled in GRAIN-FORM right up to the moment it is consumed, it is far less vulnerable to spoilage and loss from mold and mildew.

I'm always surprised when I hear "humanitarian environmentally-concerned individuals" knocking subsidization of foods (rice is only one).....where those subsidized foods keep starving people from starving.   

It's a serious issue.   If you cut off subsidized foods, you will instantly deprive millions of life.     I'm surprised that the environmentally-concerned don't see that.

Consider:   If the USA grew no rice if its own......World Agriculture could not grow and ship enough here (beyond it's own needs) to meet our current consumption level of rice.   The US MUST grow rice...!!..

Consider:   If Sacramento Valley were to be stripped of rice fields.....yes.....Angelinos could water their golf courses and fill their swiming pools at almost no cost...(doesn't that strike you as trivial)...and in just a few years those Angelinos would establish a "Water-Law-History" which IN LAW would consitute a CLAIM PRIORITY on their current-use-volume.   Uh oh.

So OK......THEN if it were percieved that foreign supplies of rice were inadequate
and if it were decided that we should resume growing rice in Sacramento Valley we would find it impossible.   The political base in Los Angeles is just immense and once Angelinos become    a c c u s t o m e d    to something....it's not possible to un-hook them.

There's more background and detail than meets-the-eye, with respect to agriculture and water.

But ... prudent men make sure that agriculture always has the first priority.   In this way prudent men protect themselves, their children and their grandchildren.
It's only prudent.

Err on the side of safety.
It's an old old precept.

Judd

I think I heard that stat that ag uses 80% of the water; I also seem to recall that cotton, alfalfa and irrigated rangeland comprise the lion's share of the ag amount.  I have worked on a couple of ranches (my father was a rancher at one point) and I get it about "not talking with our mouth full."  But jeez, we don't have to grow alfalfa and cotton here!  It makes NO sense.  Grow it in Louisiana where they have lots of rain.  Cotton in the US is a coddled business that is extremely subsidized, putting many third-world farmers out of business with predatory pricing.  It benefits a small cadre of extremely wealthy, influential families.  It doesn't need to be grown in this arid state.  Neither does alfalfa.

There is only one long-term way to make this work in my humble opinion and that is with a water trading system where water rights can be traded on the open market to the highest bidder.  Currently I hear it is "use it or lose it" so excess acre-feet cannot be transferred and are not conserved. Yes, ag is important and should get water.  But the disparity in pricing between the retail consumer and the heavily-subsidized farmer, reminds me of France.  Aren't we supposed to be the land of free enterprise and open capitalism?  

Our "free market farmers" should all be forced to wear berets...

 
PS I also heard that 80% of RESIDENTIAL water use in the US  goes into the lawn.  That is scandalous.

SBD: It needs more water farther south where it's hotter and drier.  You guys average about 38" rainfall according to weather.com, (man I wish I got that! I get 14.8 ) is the 24-32" in addition to that?

In wet years it doesn't matter if they grow rice or whatever, there's enough water to go around.  But the country as a whole (and certainly the state) runs a huge food surplus.  We burn the stuff for fuel.  Why should we be liable for huge expenses (like desalination plants) so we can overproduce food merely to burn the stuff in the end.  Just because California CAN produce 34% of the produce consumed in the US doesn't mean we MUST every year - regardless of the conditions and costs to the populace and the environment.  

Even the world as a whole produces more food than it consumes (like I said, we go ahead and burn the stuff) and the reason people starve is not that there was a world food shortage, but just that food at X location didn't manage to get to Y location.  Usually due to logistical challenges involving wars (Somalia) or corrupt government A-holes (Zimbabwe).  People die of lack of air too, that doesn't mean we have a moral imperative to make more air. 

But the disparity in pricing between the retail consumer and the heavily-subsidized farmer, reminds me of France. 

FYI-thats not true everywhere either.  My Ag customers pay the exact same price as everyone else.

You guys average about 38" rainfall according to weather.com, (man I wish I got that! I get 14.8 ) is the 24-32" in addition to that?

It does rain everywhere, including on alfalfa...but it is largely fallow during the rainy season.  I was referring to irrigation demands, which is what this conversation seemed to be bitching about.  Several local farmers here have recently switched to alfalfa because it is most profitable for them.  They can no longer sell pears (Ukiah's traditional crop) for a profit.  All you costco types get them from s. America for less than they can be grown here.  The shipping costs on fodder make locally or at least regionally grown alfalfa, especially since you can harvest 3-5X a season, the way to go.

Hmmm even though we are rapidly approaching the limits of my intelligence, both in terms of Cal ag policy and replying to posts (how DO you highlight a passage another guy posted and reply to it?) I will drone on.  First, if agribusiness is paying the same rate as the retail customer (aka me) I would like to see some evidence because that flies in the face of everything I have ever heard about California Agriculture policy; it certainly isn't the norm.  Second, I'm not sure I agree subsidized agriculture "keeps people from starving" in the third world.  The truth - again, as I have heard it, from smart people - is that our subsidized food giveaways keep SOME of those people from starving, sure, but ONLY AFTER those same subsidized crops have allowed us to undercut the small producers in poor countries so they can't support themselves in the first place.  Third world people don't buy food, they grow food, and they can't compete with our efficiency (once you factor in free water).  I hear the poor farmers of Mexico - original birthplace of corn - are being systematically crushed by dumping of our subsidized corn on their market.  That really sucks.

We have another time bomb in Africa: you may have heard of it.  The EU has been buying offshore fishing permits from the dictatorships who are running the different African countries (and have no real legitimacy).  These vital fish stocks are being sucked up so diners in Madrid can enjoy more jumbo prawns.  Yet MILLIONS of Africans depend on sustinence fishing along the coasts, and as these stocks are plummeting we will soon see major food issues, refugees etc, as a result. 

Peteb.....well.......you're a totally well-informed guy.
Far as I know, everything you say is true.

There's a just-wonderful book about Africa called "The Shadow of the Sun"   I finished reading it a couple-three weeks ago.   Written by a Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (yeah, I know, a Polish journalist in Africa, for pete's sake---but he paid his dues and in the many-years course of his stay in Africa he caught both Malaria and Tuburculosis) who I felt came across in the book as an absolute truth-teller. He discusses the very points you have raised about food-to-starving-countries but he also discusses the just plain flat-out reality of people   s t a r v i n g.   He talks about everything important, just everything, in a conversational intelligent way.  You can tell I liked the book.   Well, I did.   You might too.

Food and Foreign Policy......is a different subject from whether we should grow water-intensive crops in a California valley so fertile that it does supply 34% of America's ag. product needs.    But I'm at fault.   I opened the door to that discussion.

And like you------I cannot conduct an intelligent discussion about the role that "American subsidized crops" play in world politics.   The scope of that topic is too wide and I'd be out of my depth.

But the bottom line is that I personally come from a farm.
I was born on a farm, I grew up on a farm, I've seen farm accidents, I've felt terror over the damage a late freeze did, the greatest terror we all felt was one year when we (yes WE, a "Corporate Farm" as liberal city-dwellers just hatefully speak of we family farmers) came "that close" to defaulting on a bank loan. 

I do know that farms and farmers CANNOT (as liberals and "environmental activists" routinely try to do) be fairly paired with all of the "conceptual evils" that Americans routinely attach to "Industrial Corporate America."     

All FARMS are CORPORATIONS because without the liability, tax and income protections that "corporate tax status" confers.......not one farm anywhere could operate.

Why Is It....!!!!.....that city-dwellers just cannot see that "outsourcing their food supply" carries GREATER danger than buying oil from offshore sources?

Do Americans wannna get caught up in a loop where the USA is buying it's grain from China?    Do we actually think it is prudent, where the benefit we are trading away is agricultural capacity, to trade away that capacity to gain something as trivial as So. Calif golf courses & swimming pools???????

I see it as outrageous:  That any decision to "cut" water to Sacramento/SanJouquin Valley agriculture ---- could even be    a l l o w e d   to be a local decision......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That valley is SO VALUABLE to all of the people of the USA....how on earth do a handful of selfish southern californians (and effite environmental activists) obtain the power to make a decision that would compromise a resource that 34% of all the people in the USA depend upon..??..!!..??..

Rates charged to Sacramento Valley farms for water...in all logic....should be decided by National Election.

It's that important.

Judd

I would be interested to hear what Norman Borlaug would have to say about our current situation.

Water is a commodity like any other, and we use it to make a variety of things.  Among them are food, drink, recreation, habitat...  All have their own values and become more valuable the less we have.  People deride golf courses for using a lot of water, but they use it to make a product that they sell exactly the same as a farmer does.  Trout hatcheries also use water and produce a product dear to our hearts that some anti-fishing folk view as much of a vice as us non-golfers view golf.  Same with people with pools and lawns, we like that just as we like other things we don't absolutely need like TVs, computers, internet, kayaks...  Just as we could use water to make food, we could use labor to make food, we could use technology to make food and we could use other resources to make food (greenhouses, ect).   It's really all the same, just another commodity - we can use it for this or that but it bests serves society going where it is most wanted.  Nobody will choose a lawn over starvation...

I come from farm stock too, but in the mid-west folks don't generally irrigate their crops - they count on the weather to be favorable and buy insurance in case it isn't.  In a bad year the corn only comes up to your knees and is only usable as silage at best.  In a good year you get a good crop and in a great year you get a good crop and other parts of the country have a crop failure and you get top dollar for your harvest.  Frankly, the guys out here are spoiled on guaranteed water and 8 months of guaranteed sun. 

Tote:  perhaps BS? 

Spark..."Water is like any other commodity.."...???
Oh cummon, dude.
Here, advocacy is taken just waaaay too far.

Judd

A commodity is something that can be bought and sold and it doesn't really make a difference what source it comes from.  Water can be bought and sold and for the most part, water is water.  If government agencies didn't divide up the supply and say who gets what, there would be a ticker symbol for the stuff just like natural gas (which is also pumped to our houses).  The main thing that's kind of different about water is that it's value per gallon is extremely low, which makes shipping it prohibitive in many cases. 

JDS, the only reason I was NOT born on a farm is that my farmer lost his lower leg in a farming accident at age 23, and never could run again. So my parents moved to SF.  The ol' man had a wooden leg, true story.  So yes I think farming has affected my life. 

Looking forward to AOTY and "breaking bread" with everyone on this thread (and then bitching at each other about where the wheat comes from...)