Is Agriculture Sucking Fresh Water Dry?

sciencehabit writes "The average American uses enough water each year to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and global agriculture consumes a whopping 92% of all fresh water used annually. Those are the conclusions of the most comprehensive analysis to date of global water use, which also finds that one-fifth of humankind's water consumption flows across international borders as 'virtual water' — the water needed to produce a commodity, such as meat or electronics, if the ultimate consumers were to make it themselves rather than outsource its growth or manufacture."

Comments

The real questions should be different

[aglider]

Do we actually need all those agriculture products?
Isn't there a different way to use water for the same purpose with possibly higher efficiency?

Re:The real questions should be different

[mangu]

Do we actually need all those agriculture products?

Yes, we do.

The real question is, do we need to use that much water in agriculture? As the Israeli have proved, there is much that can be done to reduce water consumption when growing plants.

Re:The real questions should be different

[SeaFox]

The real question is, do we need to use that much water in agriculture?

Do we need to use that much fresh water in agriculture, I wonder. A lower-level filtration process yielding "grey water" for these uses would probably be fine and save energy over a full treatment-plant supply.

Re:The real questions should be different

[nanoflower]

It's true that we can use much less water in growing our food but it's not easily done. More to the point it's not done cheaply and that's the biggest issue. So long as it adds to the cost of food (even if it's only pennies to a pound of tomatoes) there's going to be an issue with getting the majority of farmers to change their practices. Especially in third world countries where getting those improved practices out to the farmers can prove difficult.

It's certainly a worth while thing if an area is experiencing a lack of rainfall (as in much of Africa) or if their aquifer is beginning to run low (apparently an issue in some areas of the Outback in Australia) but without some incentive it's going to be difficult to get people to change.

Re:The real questions should be different

[adolf]

It's just a basic business decision.

If it's more profitable to use lots of "fresh" water than it is to reduce that water usage through different agricultural methods, then a good businessman will continue to use lots of "fresh" water.

If the opposite becomes true, then a good businessman will adjust accordingly.

Welcome to Capitalism.

Re:The real questions should be different

[vikingpower]

Do we actually need all those agriculture products?

Yes, we sure as hell do. We are TOTALLY dependent upon agriculture for our survival - at least in civilization as we know it.

Isn't there a different way to use water for the same purpose with possibly higher efficiency?

There is. Eat less meat. It takes tremendous amounts of water to produce the corn and, to a lesser extent, the wheat that we feed to become pork and cow meat.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

> or if their aquifer is beginning to run low (apparently an
> issue in some areas of the Outback in Australia)

nah, they're used to it and have known it from childhood. Texas is a much more interesting example, as the town & city population density is much larger, and a large proportion of the state depends on "faith" for their resource planning needs and actively lobby against educating their own children.

> but without some incentive it's going to be difficult to get
> people to change.

a big city like Houston running out of water is quite interesting to watch. (as has happened)

Re:The real questions should be different

[Electricity Likes Me]

The problem is most water on the planet is full of salt. You can't use salt-laden "grey water" to grow things.

You also want to take some care to ensure it's not full of heavy metals. Then there's the problem of whether other contaminants would be ignored or absorbed by plants.

Basically, at the point where you might consider it on a large scale, it's generally just easier to use fresh or drinking quality recycled water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

Here's a novel idea - you could try not feeding corn to cows. They can't eat it anyway, so it's a collossal waste of resources.

Here's a hint - most of the world's farmland isn't rolling midwestern cornfields. Most of the world manages to raise livestock just fine.

Partly it's a question of preference - Americans like bland greasy meat, so their livestock farming practices reflect that.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat less grain-fed feedlot meat. It takes tremendous amounts of water to produce the irrigated corn and, to a lesser extent the irrigatedwheat that we feed to become pork and cow meat.

fix'd that for you.

Where I am, in the Central Wheatbelt area of Western Australia, i don't know a single person who uses any water other than rainfall to grow crops, although some water is used in herbicide applications. And a majority of livestock here aren't grain-fed until they've been purchased and are awaiting slaughter(within a few days, a week at most), plus the water for animals is at least half rainfall from dams, and the remainder is saline bore water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[idji]

No, we don't. Too much of that ag produce is going into feeding cows, pigs, etc and in producing biodiesel. With biodiesel they are only counting carbon savings, and not counting water, nitrogen, phosphorous and hidden energy costs (e.g. in producing fertilizer)

Re:The real questions should be different

[Cimexus]

Indeed ... 'corn fed' meat is not the norm in most of the world. Here in Australia it's almost all grass-fed. Then again, we don't have the harsh winters that necessitate keeping cattle indoors for several months each year, so it's easier just to let em roam free and munch on the grass all year.

Incidentally, I honestly don't know why Americans prefer corn-fed meat. It seems fattier than grass-fed and doesn't taste 'right' to me, but I suppose that's simply because I grew up eating 'our' meat and got used to that taste. As you say, a preference thing.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

As the Israeli have proved, there is much that can be done to reduce water consumption when growing plants.

Such as not growing citrus fruit in a desert?

Re:The real questions should be different

[rtb61]

Water ain't just water, water is all about how expensive it it at the point of use. How much energy is required to provide potable water at the point of use.

The underlying corporate psychopathic distortion, is there is a lack of water. The reality is corporation want to suck up all the cheaply accessible water and then sell it at inflated prices to match the high cost of remaining water sources. Simple straight forward psychopath economics.

Water is not too salty, too hot, too cold, too contaminated, it is just to expensive and they poor are denied access because they can not afford to potable water once they cheaply accessible resources have been consumed by greed.

Serious about reducing water usage, where is the government mandated shift too aquaponics where possible, an agriculture system with the highest water usage efficiencies, little or no waste and the highest food ouptut per land usage.

Where are the government demands that user pays, including corporations for the average total cost of producing water, rather than corporations have access to the cheapest charged water sources and everyone else getting charged much higher prices (total water cost should be averaged and then user pays at the average rate).

The only difference between a clean fresh river and reverse osmosis of sea water is cost and energy consumption. The war here is access to cheap water for the majority versus corporate greed.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

No, building a wall between your delicious citrus fruits' water supply and other people who might need it.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Bert64]

The corn farmers lobbyists are too influential in the US...
They want to continue producing corn, and won't even consider changing their business model...
So instead of looking to produce appropriate products to meet demand, they are looking for ways to force their existing products onto the market, even when they are not the best choice...

Case in point high fructose corn syrup, it is a terrible sweetener and requires considerably more processing than sugar, making it more expensive to produce...
In the US, high taxes on sugar force the use of HFCS...
In other countries without such manipulative taxes, market forces result in sugar being used because its a more suitable product.

The situation is so ridiculous, that people in the US actually go out of their way and often pay more to buy Coke that's been imported from Mexico because it uses real sugar instead of HFCS.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Irrigation is mostly done in inefficient ways, some of the water just evaporates to the atmosphere the other part lixiviates through the ground and gets into nearby underground or surface water streams.

Plants also have different water needs, so that their roots are effective at pulling out nutrient out of the soil. Some just need a lot of water for their metabolism and loose much water through perspiration.

Irrigation is also bad cause it builds up salt content on the top soil, and through the excessive use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides it's a major source of pollution for freshwater water streams.

Water use can be made more effective on orchards and vineyards by use of drop irrigation, this is becoming current practice in many other crops.

To cutback water usage in agriculture would mean not only using efficient irrigation systems but also changing the crops that are sown that require less water and grow more vegetables near cities so that there is less wasted produce.

That means that consumer habits would have to change, less cereal, more greens and beans, more seasonality in food stores and less of the same food all year round.

And more important, less meat on the table cause most of the grain is produced for cattle and poultry meat production than for human consumption.

Re:The real questions should be different

[flyneye]

Well,duh on the agricultural products.
Mostly this is some "the sky is falling environmentalist attention whores" reminding you to be frugal with fresh water, it doesn't come out of the ground you know.
Water comes up from well and irrigates rows of crops, what doesn't soak back into the ground immediately is eventually evaporated back into the atmosphere.
I guess the public school fear is that it just goes into space or once its used for irrigation the water is muddy so it should be disposed of, lol.

There are better ways of irrigating, providing you have the manpower and can pay for it without adding overhead cost that would make farming not worth it.
I can't imagine a cornfield full of soaker hose. Hydroponic is far and away the most non cost effective way of growing anything, ask a pothead. Then I guess of course you could always spend eternity watering each individual plant everyday and watch the unwatered portion die.

No, this is just another scare article by the same people who want you to have nightmares about roasting, freezing and possibly the same folks who will assure you that every homeless puppy gets a buttload of firecrackers. Just bad form and another gimme money campaign to follow, After all an environmentalist has to eat and make SUV payments even though that house in Malibu is paid for.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Colin Smith]

"Americans like bland greasy meat, so their livestock farming practices reflect that."

ITYM cheap meat.

Re:The real questions should be different

[ByOhTek]

I think by gray water, he meant partially treated sewage water.

And, so long as the toxic stuff was clean out, maybe.

The problems with the bacterial and fungal contaminants would still be present, and even if they were initially cleaned out, some new stuff would get in and grow - it's a good growth medium. Care would have to be used.

Re:The real questions should be different

[drinkypoo]

The problem is most water on the planet is full of salt. You can't use salt-laden "grey water" to grow things.

What year is it?

See also AIWPS.

Basically, at the point where you might consider it on a large scale, it's generally just easier to use fresh or drinking quality recycled water.

Easier is not the issue here, sustainability is. There's no question that if you continually pump more from aquifers than goes in you will have problems.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF???? Feeding the trolls....
"They can't eat it anyway, so it's a collossal waste of resources."
Citation? Because I have 300 dairy cows out back that will call you a lier. BTW, you don't feed cows, you feed there rumen bugs, which then feed the cow.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Luckyo]

Actually, modern agriculture is exceptionally efficient. Problems lie in other things:

1. Our diet, specifically that of Western nations. Meat production is far more water-intensive then similar value (in terms of energy received from eating produce) plant production.
2. Our numbers. Amount of the people on the planet has exploded over last hundred years or so as child and adult mortality basically collapsed with advent of modern medicine.
3. People born in the cities having never encountered the reality of food production. We have things like "organically grown food", which is essentially an older, far less efficient way of doing agriculture (among other things in terms of water efficiency).

So as a result, we have agriculture that is forced to support an ever growing appetites of ever growing amount of people. As a result we're forced to use large amounts of water to irrigate the fields and mind you, this irrigation is far more efficient then it ever was in our history in terms of water used per yields received!

Re:The real questions should be different

[prefec2]

The question is: Do we need to import water intensive products from countries wiht a water "income" problem, while throwing away our own agriculture products to stabilize market prices?

The answer is: No. We should not force poor countries to produce meat and meat pre-products, like soja and corn, which we only use feed to animals in our country. Yes this will make meat more expensive for consumers, but only because they would have to pay the full price for the production and cannot externalize cost to people in poor countries who have to suffer from that ignorance.

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Partly it's a question of preference - Americans like bland greasy meat, so their livestock farming practices reflect that.

Actually, many do not. We like spices on it. For example, I eat low fat ranged beef, with habanero sauce. Good stuff. And absolutely nothing bland about that. Of course, I have seen that most veggi dishes are about as bland as it gets.

But hey, your accusation says a lot.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the REAL question we should be asking is how many libraries of Congress are there in an olympic sized swimming pool??

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

I honestly don't know why Americans prefer corn-fed meat

They don't. They just don't know any better.

FYI, the US government has subsidized the corn industry (i.e. they take money from other people, by force, and hand it over to the corn industry, like some kind of mafia scheme). This has allowed the corn industry to become a dominant force that would never have occurred in a free market. You will find corn sneaking into foods you would never have thought: ice cream for example (corn syrup, being subsidized, is artificially cheaper than real sugar). The situation is ridiculous -- and reeks of injustice -- but as you are probably aware, there is no such thing as a temporary government program.

The people behind it are making millions; that was, of course, the entire point.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Doc Ruby]

And then the tornadoes carving through. Eventually a new Grand Canyon. Think of the tourist dollars! :P

Re:The real questions should be different

[einhverfr]

One of the things that goes on in permaculture is the idea of being careful about water use when growing even traditionally water-intensive crops. The idea is that you can actually do a LOT without a lot of water, and also that many mature ecosystems (including rain forests) tend to recycle a lot of their water in the form of transpiration turning into rainfall.

So while we need a lot of water to be used in agriculture, it can be done efficiently, and with a surprisingly low level of water input even in arid environments.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Electricity Likes Me]

Basically, at the point where you might consider it on a large scale, it's generally just easier to use fresh or drinking quality recycled water.

Easier is not the issue here, sustainability is. There's no question that if you continually pump more from aquifers than goes in you will have problems.

Yes, but my point was that you end up needing to use a lot of energy to treat the water anyway. Leaving yourself with a product which has to be carefully handled by farmers (marginal sewage) is not necessarily a great improvement.

It's not like water is hard to purify - but it is energy intensive, which is what this all boils down to.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Doc Ruby]

All those thousands of dams and many other public water "reclamation" and distribution projects across America make our version of "capitalism" a funny one very similar to socialism.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just a basic business decision.

If it's more profitable to use lots of "fresh" water than it is to reduce that water usage through different agricultural methods, then a good businessman will continue to use lots of "fresh" water.

If the opposite becomes true, then a good businessman will adjust accordingly.

Welcome to Capitalism.

Yes, but they paid for their water, dagnabbit! And that means they have a right to do anything they want with it and to it! What could possibly go wrong!

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reasonably sure that the other fellow is talking more about how americas cereal feedlot/minimal movement farming practices produces crappier meat than practices elsewhere.

Not quite sure where you got your interpretation, you can add seasoning to anything.

Re:The real questions should be different

[cbope]

And the OTHER real question is; why does the average American use so much water?

As an American living abroad for nearly 12 years, I noticed a dramatic difference in water consumption after moving out of the US. Where I live in Europe (Finland), we use roughly 10-20% of what I was used to in the US. People here don't let taps run. They don't take long showers. The appliances in the home (and machines in businesses) are designed to use FAR less water than the equivalent devices in the US. My washing machine uses worst-case 10-15% of a typical US-made washing machine. Ditto for the dishwasher. Yes, the appliances and machines cost more, better engineering is required.

When something is cheap, you don't CARE about waste. This is part of the problem with what I call the cheap-ification of America. Everything must be cheap, cheap, cheap. It is a too price-driven market. Witness the success of Walmart, which has completely destroyed large numbers of otherwise fully working businesses, all in the name of CHEAP. Let's not even get into their business practices, hiring practices and treatment of their own employees. I vowed never again to step into a Walmart and to be first in line to raise my voice should they attempt to set up shop here (luckily, they are mostly absent in the EU).

Re:The real questions should be different

[Rich0]

Usually grey-water is partially treated sewage - it doesn't meet drinking standards but it doesn't contain salt/etc that would kill plants.

Israel is the size of New Jersey - no farm is more than 50 miles from a city most likely.

In the US much of the agriculture happens in flyover country. These areas probably don't have that much sewage. Sure, they have it, but you need a LOT of water to irrigate a field.

Now, runoff/etc with less treatment could be an option. I wouldn't be surprised if farms already try to make better use of this - for no other reason than to lower their water bills.

However, is there some kind of water shortage problem that we actually need to resolve? Unless we plan to pipeline water from Kansas to Boston I doubt that use of water in the one area has much effect on availability of water in the other.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Magada]

You remind me of a certain Japanese mayor.

Re:The real questions should be different

[hey!]

It's quite easy to imagine us using *much* less water in growing our food, and coincidentally spending a lot less money to produce it. It's just hard to do that without changing what we eat.

If we were faced with an agricultural water crisis in the US, we could easily fix it by eating less beef -- at least beef that wasn't grass-fed. So I think that this problem might be naturally self-limiting in North America. As we approached the limits of the water available, the price of the most water-intensive foods would go up, and demand would shift to more water-efficient foods.

The problem would solve itself, if we don't *try* to solve it. But the problem is that we *would* try to solve it. We'd invest public money to find ways of keeping the price of beef low, rather than letting the rising price of beef curb beef consumption. We might undertake massive public-works projects to divert water to the supply-chain of beef production. It's not that reducing the price of beef is an inherently bad thing to do, it's that costly beef isn't really a problem if there's enough capacity to produce food in general. Treating it like a problem is a waste of time, effort and money. Perhaps worse, most of the things we could do to fix the bogus "problem" would create real problems. Subsidizing beef will exacerbate the water shortage and strain public budgets. Diverting water will damage ecosystems and livelihoods dependent on them.

Re:The real questions should be different

[JasterBobaMereel]

No we don't

    a growing proportion are biofuels - a very wasteful way of making liquid fuels to replace oil

Re:The real questions should be different

[JasterBobaMereel]

Many rainforests if you remove the trees are quite arid an unsuitable for crops ... as has been seen ...

But with the trees they are very lush and full of water

They don't make more water they just recycle it very efficiently ...

Re:The real questions should be different

[luxifr]

Do we actually need all those agriculture products?

Yes, we do.

No, we don't.

What do you thing we need it for? Not starving? The worldwide food industry output is enough feed double the people on this planet and feed them well! But obviously that's not how it works. This is because humans are greedy and selfish and most are idiots on top of that.

Re:The real questions should be different

[drinkypoo]

It's not like water is hard to purify - but it is energy intensive, which is what this all boils down to.

No, it really isn't, which is what my second link was about.

Re:The real questions should be different

[PopeRatzo]

If it's more profitable to use lots of "fresh" water than it is to reduce that water usage through different agricultural methods, then a good businessman will continue to use lots of "fresh" water.

If the opposite becomes true, then a good businessman will adjust accordingly.

Welcome to Capitalism.

Maybe we shouldn't be quite so welcome to capitalism.

And given the importance of water, is this really the best time to be messing with the groundwater via fracking and laying a pipe that would only benefit a very few big corporations who don't pay taxes?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

So, bland greasy meat with cheap hot sauce poured over it.

Yum.

Sounds lovely.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

Well, true enough about their gut fauna and flora, but if you're just feeding them grain then they will be shitting most of it out untouched.

Up here in Scotland, where it rains a lot and never gets much above 25C or below freezing, we tend to feed spent distillery mash (draff) mixed with shredded sugar beet pulp in the winter to supplement the poor grazing. That's substantially broken down by the mashing process and seems to do rather better than even bruised oats. It also stays hot for weeks after it's been delivered - I'm not sure if it may be fermenting slightly.

Re:The real questions should be different

[ArcherB]

nah, they're used to it and have known it from childhood. Texas is a much more interesting example, as the town & city population density is much larger, and a large proportion of the state depends on "faith" for their resource planning needs and actively lobby against educating their own children.

Are you talking about the lesbian, Democrat mayor of Houston?

a big city like Houston running out of water is quite interesting to watch. (as has happened)

I guess you are.

I'm sorry, but I am offended by your comment. Saying that all Democrats and lesbians " actively lobby against educating their own children" is not just a stereotype, but like so many other stereotypes, is bigoted and is only separated from racism because it doesn't mention the color of anyone's skin.

Re:The real questions should be different

[proclomeesius]

Indeed ... 'corn fed' meat is not the norm in most of the world. Here in Australia it's almost all grass-fed. Then again, we don't have the harsh winters that necessitate keeping cattle indoors for several months each year, so it's easier just to let em roam free and munch on the grass all year.

Partly true. A lot of our cattle may spend much of their life growing slowly while ranging over our huge stations, but most will end up in a feed lot on a diet of grains to be 'finished' for anywhere from 60 to >200 days before slaughter. This drastically improves carcass weight and fat score. Meanwhile our pigs and chooks are almost exclusively grainfed (although its hard to object to chicken considering their relatively excellent feed conversion ratio.)

Re:The real questions should be different

[Sulphur]

It's not like water is hard to purify - but it is energy intensive, which is what this all boils down to.

I saw what you did there.

BTW has anyone combined reverse osmosis with a high dam.

Re:The real questions should be different

[prefec2]

I life in Germany and we have the problem today, that the sewer system was created for much more water usage http://www.hydrologie.uni-oldenburg.de/ein-bit/12045.html (german). As you can see: After re-industrialization (1975) the consumption growed steadily until 1990. This was more or less the time when it became common in Germany that wasting water, especially drinking water is a stupid idea. In http://www.me-vermitteln.de/Portals/0/Redaktion/grafiken/umwelt/Entwicklung%20Wasserverbrau%20pro%20Person_g.jpg you can see that the current trend is still pointing downwards.

For comparission of water usage per person world wide: http://chartsbin.com/view/1455

Re:The real questions should be different

[Pubstar]

Actually, a 355mL mexican coke is cheaper than that new 12.5oz around here. Also, the import stuff is in a glass bottle, so that makes it taste better too.

Re:The real questions should be different

[__aaltlg1547]

Then again, we don't have the harsh winters that necessitate keeping cattle indoors for several months each year, so it's easier just to let em roam free and munch on the grass all year.

American farmers don't keep cattle for beef indoors for months. They spend most of their lives feeding on grass in the summer and baleful hay in the winter. Then they are taken to feed lots where they are fattened up on a grain- rich diet before They are slaughtered.

Milk cows, though, spend most of their adulthood in feed lots eating corn.

Re:The real questions should be different

[dpilot]

Here's an idea... Go just a bit deeper. Why the heck aren't we using land for things that that land is suitable for? That includes other things as well as just the style/crops for farming.

We build housing on prime farmland, as small farmers want to "cash out" and retire. At the same time, we irrigate deserts and turn them into farmland. Most of the time I agree that "the invisible hand of the marketplace" can come to a pretty decent solution, I just think that it can be very slow and damaging in the time it takes to get there. This is one of those cases, and it's all because of what I'll call for the moment, "false valuation."

I once made an argument here on /. about "inherent value" and was promptly schooled by someone that nothing had inherent value - the only value anything had is that which the market assigns to it. This thread cites exactly one of those cases, and the commodity being poorly valued isn't just water, but inherently arable land.

We tend to take something for granted - the marketplace assumes it's "just there for cheap/free" and neglects its value in making decisions. First we squander the resource, then with time we assign it a small value and begin to manage it in small-value ways. Eventually its value increases and we expand on those small-value management techniques. The problem is that sometimes those small-value management techniques are entirely inappropriate and often counter-productive as the resource moves to high-value status.

We first settled in areas where land could be farmed, usually near rivers for transportation. As populations grew we turned the nearby farmland into towns and cities, and farmed land further away. Both the farmland and water were taken for granted - near zero value. Eventually land value started increasing - based on its building value, and farmland was still near-zero value. That started us doing things like irrigating desert land - like in parts of California. The Colorado River was a "cheap and easy" source of water for irrigation. Aquifers were a "cheap and easy" source of water in other areas.

We grew into land use patterns based on "cheap and easy" water that is becoming less cheap and less easy, and those land use patterns are a big part of the problem. If we were farming where it's really "cheap and easy" to farm, and building our towns and cities on land that's no good for farming, perhaps we'd be better off. But we've come so far down the road we're on that this is almost impossible.

I came to this realization at Disney World, on the "Soarin'" ride. Part of the ride went over the French countryside where a village was built onto a rocky crag, and all of the nearby land was farmed. This struck me as the exact opposite of the US, where we would have turned the farmland into suburbia, then terraced or leveled the rocky crag and turned it into farmland.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

I have seen that most veggi dishes are about as bland as it gets.

If you're eating veggi dishes which are bland, you're eating something repaired by either an incompentent cook or a recipie which is 30+ years old. If if the later, see the former. Modern veggi dishes are commonly far more flavorful than most meat dishes specifically because they are attempting to win over picky, anti-veggi, American eaters.

Seriously, go online and find some modern veggi dishes. You'll be amazed how much flavor there is and how good it tastes. I love meat and yet can easily be satisified with a well prepared and spiced veggi meal without longing for meat. This is true for even the hardest of core meat eaters. The only catch is, they generally act like incompetent babies and thusly are unwilling to even try.

The days of bland veggi meals are long gone. If you choose to eat bland veggis, that's your fault.

Re:The real questions should be different

[camperdave]

The AC mentioned nothing about lesbians, democrats, or mayors. All of that came out of your own biases and prejudices. The only group the AC mentioned were the religious (those who depend on "faith"), particularly those that are turning their backs on current schooling practices. Furthermore, the only thing he said about them is that they are a large proportion of the state.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Ihmhi]

we could easily fix it by eating less beef -- at least beef that wasn't grass-fed.

We already fixed this problem in America. Our cows eat corn, just like everyone and everything else in the country.

Re:The real questions should be different

[sycodon]

OK...alright...this, from a country that loves Vegimite

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Which is exactly why I do ranged grass-fed beef, as opposed to feedlot corn-fed beef.
BTW, this is not just an American practice. ALL nations that export been are doing feed lots.

Re:The real questions should be different

[sycodon]

Fuck California Cows...the Happy ones are in Scotland!

Re:The real questions should be different

[cptBongo]

Yes, it's a question a perspective. That's the great thing about Permaculture- it can change your perspective. Thinking in fossil fuel terms about water ("we need to use X gallons for Y outputs") won't do. The earth has supported life for 4 billion years and is essentially a closed system- it has had no 'inputs' of water and no waste.

What's important is understand how water is stored and moves through a system. Using slope and inclines, storing water in the earth and 'pumping' it back up through deep rooted plants. Animal urine becomes nutrients for plants which then filter the water to be used again. The same water can be used dozens of times passing through different elements in an intelligently designed Permaculture system.

I wish more nerds would read Permaculture. A million Permaculture trained engineers could change the planet forever.

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Did you miss the part about ranged beef? As opposed to feed-lot.
Or are you just one of those nut-balls that scream about meat eaters?

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Well, my wife is Indian, so between her and the in-laws I get plenty of vegi meals. However, I hate the American or European vegi meals. They really are fucking bland.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Good points, indeed.
But:
- who is going to answer? (None, I fear)
- if this is going to bring less money to companies, then forget about it.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

Do you miss the part about reading comprehension, and the lack of it among Americans?

Or, do you prefer to just assume that anyone that finds the squishy boiled-until-grey DDT-laden yuck that Americans call "meat" unpalatable is a "nutball who screams about meat eaters"?

I would most likely switch to being vegetarian or even vegan if I travelled to the US.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, he was talking about the people who are "actively lobbying" but that most certainly means the lesbian Democrat mayor who is actively lobbying herself against educating her (I'm assuming he meant this since "their" doesn't work for just this one lesbian Democrat), obviously.

Re:The real questions should be different

[sycodon]

May I remind you that the industrial revolution was driven by "cheap". When ordinary people can afford things that used to be luxuries, we call that progress.

Re:The real questions should be different

[oGMo]

If it's more profitable to use lots of "fresh" water than it is to reduce that water usage through different agricultural methods, then a good businessman will continue to use lots of "fresh" water.

If the opposite becomes true, then a good businessman will adjust accordingly.

You forgot the "then charge a premium, claiming water is expensive, while lobbying Congress to reduce regulation and taxes" part.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Incidentally, I honestly don't know why Americans prefer corn-fed meat. It seems fattier than grass-fed and doesn't taste 'right' to me, but I suppose that's simply because I grew up eating 'our' meat and got used to that taste. As you say, a preference thing.

They "prefer" it because it's generally the only thing available in stores.

People voted with their wallets, and purchased the bag of meat that cost the least per pound at the grocery store. Given the subsidies the US gives to corn farmers, it is ridiculously cheap to feed it to cattle and then just buy some chemicals on the side to mix in with it so they can actually digest the food.

So by artificially lowering the price of a certain kind of feed, Americans are now left one primary type of beef to buy. Anything besides corn-fed beef is "special" and must be purchase at a premium.

Re:The real questions should be different

[ArcherB]

The AC mentioned nothing about lesbians, democrats, or mayors. All of that came out of your own biases and prejudices. The only group the AC mentioned were the religious (those who depend on "faith"), particularly those that are turning their backs on current schooling practices. Furthermore, the only thing he said about them is that they are a large proportion of the state.

No, he mentioned the state of Texas, said "large proportion of the state depends on "faith" for their resource planning needs" and then mentioned Houston specifically. Assuming that the OP meant religion when he said faith listing Houston as an example disproves his entire point. See, the mayor of Houston is an open lesbian, and Democrat, which is exactly the group that the OP was NOT trying to blame. That's not my "own biases and prejudices". That's from CNN.

I know what the OP meant. The mistake that the OP made was assuming that the red state of Texas was an all red state. Of course, all reds (conservatives) are religious too, right (yet another stereotype)? He was trying to blame the problems of Texas on the "reds" and listed a blue portion of the state as an example. I was pointing out that the OP has a "bias and prejudice" against conservatives and the religious and I used the his own evidence to disprove his case entirely and point out that he is a bigot. I guess that description includes you as well since you are so willing to blame religion for issues that religion has nothing to do with. It's kinda like the old days, when racists would blame all their problems on those damn (insert racial slur here), except you are blaming religion. If you place "Christians" in the place of "racial slur", the argument doesn't change. The level of bigotry doesn't change either.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Sique]

You are talking like someone living in a region with regular rainfall (e.g. like someone with not much of a clue about water).

Otherwise you would know that in regions with long dry periods, if you get too much water from wells, the wells fall dry. If you irrigate too much by dropping water from above, the earth starts to collect salt, because all natural water contains at least a little bit of salt, and if you just drop it onto the earth and let it evaporate, the salt starts to form a small crust on top of the soil - rendering your farmland worthless.

There are large regions already fallen to this, around the Lake Aral in centra asia, most of the land is now a salt desert, while about 20 years ago, it was either lake, or cotton and wheat fields.

Re:The real questions should be different

[poetmatt]

again, how does this explain the israeli situation where they use excessively minimal amounts of water and yet it sure as hell seems sustainable for them so far?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

While I won't dispute the comment about eating too much beef, you overlook the fact that California, mostly desert, has been transformed in to an agricultural through irrigation. Not only is it foolish to irrigate a desert to grow vegetables, it's foolish to have an irrigation system that waste so much water through its transportation. For example, California gets its water from the Colorado river. So while it's easy to blame meat, vegetable growers are just as guilty. If meat is evil, vegetables aren't far behind.

The sad part about all this is that California is competing with Midwest farmers who have a sustainable source of water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed ... 'corn fed' meat is not the norm in most of the world. Here in Australia it's almost all grass-fed. Then again, we don't have the harsh winters that necessitate keeping cattle indoors for several months each year, so it's easier just to let em roam free and munch on the grass all year.

Incidentally, I honestly don't know why Americans prefer corn-fed meat. It seems fattier than grass-fed and doesn't taste 'right' to me, but I suppose that's simply because I grew up eating 'our' meat and got used to that taste. As you say, a preference thing.

Thanks for the completely incorrect stereotype. Americans don't prefer corn-fed beef. Americans that can afford to do so pay extra for grass-fed beef, which costs nearly twice as much as corn-fed beef. That's the problem. Corn-fed beef is ridiculously inexpensive in the United States, although in recent years the price has increased dramatically. The response is that over the last decade beef consumption in the US has been declining. An even better trend is that Americans are increasingly choosing to buy and eat smaller quantities of leaner and higher quality beef. ...Back to the regularly scheduled bashing of America...

Re:The real questions should be different

[cptBongo]

I'd be surprised if most Americans do truly prefer it, although I suppose you get used to the way things are and many people are very used to industrialised food. I saw a TV show recently where free range, organic chicken lost in a taste test to industrial battery chicken. People said the free range bird tasted 'too strong'. It depressed the hell out of me.

A cow is a grazer and should be eating grass. E-coli thrives in a corn fed cow's belly so the meat is laced with anti-biotics (last I heard America was packing beef in chlorine). Diseased, fatty, bland, drugged meat.. hhmmm....

Re:The real questions should be different

[Hans Lehmann]

The areas in which most farming is done, i.e. out in the sticks, also have the least amount of gray water due to the low population density. The only way this idea would work was if infrastructure was built to not only partially treat the sewage and runoff from the cities, but then transport it possibly hundreds of miles to where it's most needed for agriculture.

Re:The real questions should be different

[I(rispee_I(reme]

I eat low fat ranged beef, with habanero sauce. Good stuff. And absolutely nothing bland about that. Of course, I have seen that most veggi dishes are about as bland as it gets.

In case my typography was not clear enough, how do you rationalize using a vegetable to provide flavor to your meat, and then immediately generalizing vegetable dishes as bland?

In general, vegetables are more flavorful than meat, since meat does not want to be eaten. Many plants have a game plan of "trick the animals into eating me, then fertilizing my seeds when they crap them out." If faced with a false dichotomy of an all meat or all vegetable diet, there is no question which would be the more nutritious and the better tasting- especially considering that most seasonings other than salt are themselves vegetables.

Your generalization, too, says a lot.

Re:The real questions should be different

[bigtrike]

I think you mean "reduced subsidies."

Re:The real questions should be different

[caseih]

In the industrial world, water use by agriculture is already quite efficient and becoming more so all the time. Even with technologies like drip irrigation, there is still plant respiration which pours water into the air. A lush, green crop can expire an amazing amount of water into the air as a result of normal plant processes. I once heard the figures and they were staggering, but I cannot find them right now for standard crops. Anyway, this isn't necessarily a bad thing (it is normal for plants to do this), but it does mean that this water cannot be recycled easily. Also it does change the local climate.

You mention drip irrigation. I want to address that as I have experience in this area. Drip irrigation is not widely used for large scale agriculture mainly because it is too expensive and does not scale very well. And it's hard to clean up. If you've ever seen Israeli fields where they use it, you'll see chopped up bits of black hose everywhere. It's really sad actually. The things that make it expensive include the need for fairly fine filtration systems, lots of transmission pipes, elbows, and such, and emitters have to be checked regularly and replaced when they are plugged. Israelis typically use it on small plots, and it does work pretty well there. But a kibbutznick has a full time job just keeping it going.

Conventionally, we have room for improvement. Flood irrigation is very inefficient, as are any sprinkler systems that are high pressure (over 40 psi) and that don't drop the water down low to the ground. And even with current, low-pressure systems, there are things we can do yet. Dropping the water right near the soil is very close to the same efficiency as drip irrigation, but a lot cheaper. Unfortunately this also makes it harder to plant and cultivate the crop as you have to make the rolls follow the pivot track around so that the drops won't tear up the crops. Currently most pivot systems today (if they are anywhere close to modern standards) drop the water right inside an average crop's canopy. Even still on a windy day, evaporation losses between the sprinklers and the crop are a big efficiency loss.

One thing about agriculture in North America that really bothers me is that certain water-thirsty crops like potatoes are only grown to serve the fast food industry. It's an industrial machine of planting one variety year after year, soaking it in herbicides and fungicides to hold the diseases at bay. And typically potatoes require 16 or more inches of irrigated rain per growing season compared to 8 to 12 inches of water for high-yield wheat.

All this reminds me of something that I saw a few years ago. There was a dispute over water between Utah and Nevada, and was a typical city vs agriculture conflict. The news interviewed a woman from Reno who was very scornful of the Utah farmers' concerns. She said, "I can't understand why they need the water anyway. Why can't farmers buy food in grocery stores like everyone else?" Boggled the mind.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Bert64]

I guess it varies a lot...
I would assume the regular price to buy Coke in Mexico is a lot cheaper than its sold in the US not to mention the cheaper manufacturing costs when using fairly taxed real sugar instead of HFCS, but depending on how it was imported, your proximity to Mexico and what level of markup the various importer/wholesaler/retailers want to charge it can often work out more expensive.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Luckyo]

Water shortage is slowly manifesting in some dry places in Western world as climate change keeps rumbling on. It's far worse in 3rd world, where lack of water infrastructure is combined with inefficient farming methods.

The issue will likely become more and more evident in the next few decades, as climate change causes some of the dry areas that are used for agriculture to become even dryer (as happened with Australia some time ago).

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Hmmm. Lets see. No DDT here in the States. Has not been since the USA became the FIRST nation to ban DDT and its manufacturing back in the 70s, and then pushed Europe to do the same. Sadly, Europe is just getting around to do so. At this time, Europe still allows its use, though it may not be sprayed directly on crops. And other nations fight it.
Likewise, I eat my steak rare at best (depending on whom from; if from one of my local producers, then rare, if from outside of the USA, medium-rare to medium). In fact, I think most Americans do steaks medium-rare (though much older ones or immigrated one still do well-done because of the sanitation issues from other times or nations).
But, hey, lets not let facts get in the way of your prejudice and bias.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would we want to curb beef consumption? Growing grains requires a heck of a lot more water than pastureland.

Perhaps you're raising cattle wrong. American? I'd guess yes.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

biodiesel is not the problem. you are right on the first 2 counts. Also, using the most productive farmland on earth to produce corn feed for these animals is an abomination. Hope you have your 10 acre when there is no more ground water or top soil in the midwest. At present rates it will happen in my generation.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Rich0]

Perhaps part of the issue is that it is hard to move people around, and people don't like to sell property for less than what they paid.

Unless the total amount of arable land decreases worldwide we shouldn't see a food shortage as a result of climate change in theory. However, in practice if a huge chunk of farmland becomes a desert, and a big metropolitan area turns into ideal farmland, it is hard to actually transplant a city to follow the climate.

There is also an issue of sustainable population. At some point you can only have so many people living on the Earth. With improving technology this number can increase, but to the extent that it requires non-renewable resources it isn't sustainable.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's cheaper in the long-run to use less fresh water but more expensive in the short-run, we'll go with the short-run solution.
Capitalism 102: How the market punishes long-term planning.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Johnny5000]

Incidentally, I honestly don't know why Americans prefer corn-fed meat. It seems fattier than grass-fed and doesn't taste 'right' to me, but I suppose that's simply because I grew up eating 'our' meat and got used to that taste. As you say, a preference thing.

We have a lot of corn. Cheap corn.

It's not good for the cows, and the resulting meat isn't great, but feeding corn to cows is a cheap and fast way to get cows to gain weight.

Re:The real questions should be different

[anagama]

Basically, at the point where you might consider it on a large scale, it's generally just easier to use fresh or drinking quality recycled water.

From the (first) article:

Also, unlike most previous studies, the new analysis doesn't just measure the amount of water pumped from surface and underground sources, it considers the possibility that that water, once withdrawn, can be recycled and reused several times before it flows to the sea ...

And from the paper itself (second link), grey water accounts for 15% of the total global consumption. Realize, that they use the term "grey water" to refer to contaminated water used not only in agriculture, but also in industry.

The report also distinguishes between blue water (surface and ground) and green water (rain). Green water is used the most (74%), but that shouldn't discount the fact that draining aquifers at a rate faster than they can replenish has significant negative future consequences.

Re:The real questions should be different

[dkf]

So while it's easy to blame meat, vegetable growers are just as guilty. If meat is evil, vegetables aren't far behind.

Alas, no. You get a lot more available food calories per gallon of water when growing vegetables (the exact amount depends on the crop; there is substantial variation) than when raising animals, with cows being particularly demanding. The trick to raising animals efficiently is to feed them on things that people can't eat (e.g., grass) as there's a lot of places where you can't use high-efficiency food crops because of environmental conditions. (In my part of the world, sheep work well because they tolerate the climate and rough-grazing available. Wheat would just rot in the ground before harvest.)

Re:The real questions should be different

[radaghast]

The whole reason for the corn subsidy is because of the mission of our agriculture department in the 1970's to create access to abundant, cheap food for the poor classes. Obviously its not healthy in the slightest, but it's hard to argue that they achieved their goal. Those below the poverty line do not contribute to the subsidy, and they get access to inexpensive, sorry tasting beef and HFCS based food products.

I'm not 100% sure about your statement on the sugar taxes. It may be that if you're right about them, then they contribute to the issue. But I really believe the corn subsidy is the real reason it is less expensive to use HFCS in America than real sugar.

I doubt verymuch that it is preference for bad meat, but rather a preference for cheap meat. with the corn subsidy, it is cheaper to raise cattle in confinement farms, rather than grass grazing. Remember, that the poor folks who buy the cheapest meat are not the ones paying for the majority of the corn subsidy.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Errol backfiring]

Actually, modern agriculture is exceptionally efficient.

If you mean in eroding the soil and in poisoning the environment, you are correct. Modern giant monocultures mainly serve the chemical industry.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Muad'Dave]

In the US much of the agriculture happens in flyover country. These areas probably don't have that much sewage. Sure, they have it, but you need a LOT of water to irrigate a field.

They don't have much _human_ sewage. The amount of farm animal sewage that's generated is staggering. it's also generally produced close to plant-producing farms.

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

Do we actually need all those agriculture products?

It's begun. Now we have to justify eating.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Sperbels]

Water shortage is slowly manifesting in some dry places in Western world as climate change keeps rumbling on. It's far worse in 3rd world, where lack of water infrastructure is combined with inefficient farming methods.

Um, no. Water shortage is slowly manifesting because we're pulling it out of rivers and underground reservoirs faster than it can be replenished. It was nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with our tendency to consume everything in sight and reproduce until the system crashes and we have to move on.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick fix would be to quit subsidizing corn, a huge water consumer, (especially corn grown for ethanol) and the ethanol plants which are also huge consumers of water. One plant consumes as much water as a large city, daily. It's a win win. We save water and money.

Re:The real questions should be different

[anagama]

we could easily fix it by eating less beef -- at least beef that wasn't grass-fed.

Not sure if that was a typo, but the researchers came to the opposite conclusion.

From the first article:

Another way to shrink our water footprint is to change our eating habits, Postel says. In particular, people can opt to eat less meat or to switch from grain-fed beef -- which, again, requires about 5300 liters of water for each dollar's worth of grain fed to a cow -- to grass-fed beef, which typically requires only the rainwater falling on a pasture. "Not all burgers are created equal," she says.

Re:The real questions should be different

[kj_kabaje]

Certainly didn't take long for some moron to externalize the true costs of the market.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Oligonicella]

"The underlying corporate psychopathic distortion, is there is a lack of water."

Corporate? Water is typically produced by local municipalities, not corporations. Hence, your screed turns to mud. And for fuck's sake, put away the Poli-Sci 101 talk.

"...where is the government mandated shift..." "Where are the government demands" "The war here is..."

Socio-political bullshit.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Colonel Korn]

we could easily fix it by eating less beef -- at least beef that wasn't grass-fed.

Not sure if that was a typo, but the researchers came to the opposite conclusion.

From the first article:

Another way to shrink our water footprint is to change our eating habits, Postel says. In particular, people can opt to eat less meat or to switch from grain-fed beef -- which, again, requires about 5300 liters of water for each dollar's worth of grain fed to a cow -- to grass-fed beef, which typically requires only the rainwater falling on a pasture. "Not all burgers are created equal," she says.

His grammar was confusing, but that's what he meant. To summarize: grass fed good (and tastier), grain fed bad.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Oligonicella]

While the city folk did precisely the same thing because food was short and *they* sure's hell couldn't grow it.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly didn't take long for some moron to call for higher taxes.

You forgot to add:

Ron Paul 2012! End the Fed!

There, fixed. You are welcome.

Re:The real questions should be different

[thrich81]

As a native Texan, let me tell you, most of the state officials and legislative reps here would be proud to say they depend on faith for most of their decisions, heck, its election season and half of them have it in their ads. That said, the cities like Houston don't have the final say in water use -- the state trumps local control and the "rule of capture" (you can take as much out of the ground under your land as your pumps can pull) is strong here..

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

Other people who don't want to live, work, or otherwise cooperate with you, but want your water? And a significant percentage of them want to kill you?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the sudsy water that comes out of your washing machine after the rinse / spin dry cycle. Depending on the state of the fabric being washed, the water may or may not be contaminated by bacteria - from someone having digestive problems or wading into river/sea water). There was an idea of using bio-sensors to determine the state of the water and use those readings to recycle the water, either for garden use or normal disposal through the sewers.

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

FYI, the US government has subsidized the corn industry (i.e. they take money from other people, by force, and hand it over to the corn industry, like some kind of mafia scheme).

Some would say we need to end the subsidies, but I'm sure we just haven't subsidized enough. The more, the better!

The situation is ridiculous -- and reeks of injustice -- but as you are probably aware, there is no such thing as a temporary government program.

Indeed. These are Depression-era policies.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we really don't, I take it you do not live in farming communities and you don't know how this goes.

Water rights are "use it or lose it", so if you have been granted more than you need, in the US, you put out the sprinklers and water the dirt of any fields you're not growing on currently. There's a monumental waste of water by agriculture. And we can do without all the "dirt" they're growing for us.

A lot of agriculture also goes to stuff like ethanol, which we don't need, or at least not in the way we produce it. You see, corn is bad for ethanol production but best for profits, so they grow and use corn for it. That's selfish and dumb, but the USDA is staffed by people from the industry and it's unlikely to change anytime soon.

In addition, it's not clear to me that lawns (especially residential lawns) aren't often counted as agriculture for some insane reason. These are a massive waste of water and are depleting aquifers faster than they can be replenished in areas like Texas (which sadly for the surrounding states, affects them too, they have the same aquifer).

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

I'd be surprised if most Americans do truly prefer it, although I suppose you get used to the way things are and many people are very used to industrialised food. I saw a TV show recently where free range, organic chicken lost in a taste test to industrial battery chicken. People said the free range bird tasted 'too strong'. It depressed the hell out of me.

OR maybe the free-range chickens really tasted too strong? You can't treat free-range husbandry like a magic wand. Chickens can and will eat things that they like, but make them less palatable. For example, they like onions. I could see a large amount of wild onions in their living area possibly affecting their flavor. Before trotting out the "ignorant Americans" straw man, consider whether a quality product was actually supplied.

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

Pepsi "throwback" with cane sugar is readily available in most areas.

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

Boiled meat? Did you just confuse the US with the UK? DDT? What decade is this? Please educate yourself.

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

I'm still trying to get over the "boiled meat" thing. Here, I would have thought, based on what goes on TV, that Europeans would expect every American dish to be either deep-fried or barbecued.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the term "use" actually convey the economy of our relationship to the watershed?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say your water do you mean the water you stole from them?

Ok ok, possession is nine tenths of the law, but that doesn't make it moral

Re:The real questions should be different

[lorinc]

Said like this, it looks like a system with a retroactive loop that keeps it balanced. Indeed, it seems quiet reasonable. Everything that looks like a self-balanced system is surely reasonable.

However one of the questions that pops inside my head from time to time is the following: is it that much safe? It's easy to find counter-examples of dynamical systems for which the feedback loop does not stabilize the system. What if the path of the most profitable leads us beyond some event horizon of doom? Is it possible that we may overuse some resources because of profitability, but that by the time they become no longer profitable, there is no other solution? Or that we break something before realizing it's broken?

What if the actions taken 20 or 30 years ago by a profit-based heuristic have put us on a route to something very annoying we cannot avoid because the point of no return was met many years before the profit-based heuristic choose another way?

Is capitalism only a blind faith that our environment is so stable we can do whatever we want with it?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Transkaren]

Very true. I worked on the design for a winery last year; the maximum runoff of their grey water was something along the lines of 1/8 of the total water needed for irrigation - and that's with a fairly water-heavy system on site.

Re:The real questions should be different

[toadlife]

Water is typically produced by local municipalities

Except in all the places where it is not. In the Western United States, much of the water comes from one of two large sources, and piped around to various areas via aqueducts. Access to it is controlled by the federal or state governments and local access to that water supplies are not ultimately up to local officials. In these cases, all local municipalities do it treat water and handle the "last mile" distribution.

Here in central CA, farmers get their water supplies heavily subsidized, especially on the West side of the valley where, if it were not for the CA aqueduct system, the land would be barren. For the last two years, I've had to endure rantings and ravings of local water interests around here blaming Sacramento for "stealing" "their" water.

The GP's point about corporate involvement is spot on. It is corporate water interests (wealthy farmers here in Central CA) who lobby politicians to give them sweet deals on water access. Meanwhile, us plebs pay inflated costs on our household water usage to make up for those subsidies.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Sewage water is blackwater, not greywater:

"Greywater is wastewater generated from domestic activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_water

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

If faced with a false dichotomy of an all meat or all vegetable diet, there is no question which would be the more nutritious and the better tasting

... assuming tasty vegetables grow equally well where you are. I live in the north of Scotland, where really you're stuck with tubers and roots - potatoes, carrots, parsnips - and some leafy green veg like kale and leeks.

Animals do pretty well on rough grazing though, so you can get lots of tasty meat by turning sheep and cows out onto moorland to eat tough heathers and grasses. This works pretty well for all concerned.

Especially when you cook your steak in the French manner - ie. ten seconds each side in a really, really hot pan. Mmmm.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans eat so much corn fed beef because grass fed beef is so much more expensive here. At my local grocery store grass fed beef costs about twice as much per pound as corn fed beef. I buy grass fed beef and have a fairly low income but then I buy very little beef as a result. If I were to want to buy more than a little bit of it, I would not be able to afford to buy grass fed beef.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we don't 75% or more is for livestock, and eating too much factory farmed meat is killing us.
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Sewage is human waste, it is called blackwater. Greywater is NEVER sewage. From wikipedia:

Greywater gets its name from its cloudy appearance and from its status as being between fresh, potable water (known as "white water") and sewage water ("black water"). In a household context, greywater is the leftover water from baths, showers, hand basins and washing machines only. Some definitions of greywater include water from the kitchen sink. Any water containing human waste is considered black water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[toadlife]

Apologies for the horrible grammar mistakes in that post. I'm not very good at proof reading my own writing. For whatever reason it seems the act of hitting the submit button transforms me into a eagle-eyed editor.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Fned]

Water is typically produced by local municipalities

Except in all the places where it is not. In the Western United States, much of the water comes from one of two large sources, and piped around to various areas via aqueducts. Access to it is controlled by the federal or state governments and local access to that water supplies are not ultimately up to local officials. In these cases, all local municipalities do it treat water and handle the "last mile" distribution.

Here in central CA, farmers get their water supplies heavily subsidized, especially on the West side of the valley where, if it were not for the CA aqueduct system, the land would be barren. For the last two years, I've had to endure rantings and ravings of local water interests around here blaming Sacramento for "stealing" "their" water.

The GP's point about corporate involvement is spot on. It is corporate water interests (wealthy farmers here in Central CA) who lobby politicians to give them sweet deals on water access. Meanwhile, us plebs pay inflated costs on our household water usage to make up for those subsidies.

Exiled Online did a whole series on this.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Any suggestions on where to look? Book marks to get one started? I'm looking to expand my diet, not my waist.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

One can use your own grey water on your garden, but city grey water would need full treatement because of varying levels levels of contaminants

Re:The real questions should be different

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Here is an idea. Use Brawndo instead.
Brawndo, it's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

42

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

The midwestern farmers can irrigate with ground water and watch their water tables rise. Irrigation or global warming seems to have led to increased precipitation. Of course everybody lives in California and New York where they import water. They have a hard time accepting the midwestern water practices.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Luckyo]

As has been shown, the water shortage in Australia has been at least in large part because of climate change enhancing the effect of el nino and la nina.

Of course, you could argue that "we're pulling water out of rivers and reservoirs faster then it can be replenished" is at fault anyway. Of course, when much of this happened because the water was not replenished as it usually was, the ROOT CAUSE is still climate change. Because if not for it, we would be able to go about pulling water out of these river as reservoirs as usual, without risk of them running out.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Rich0]

My understanding is that in practice greywater often ends up being partially-treated sewage - thus being between fresh and black.

Re:The real questions should be different

[cfulton]

Thank you, for bringing some perspective on the issues that is realistic. I'm sure there is not a real farmer or rancher participating in this discussion. If there where you might learn that they care very much about their water use. They care very much about the sustainability of their land. Since the thirties agricultural production in America has become more efficient and productive than anytime in history. It takes less water now to generate a bushel of wheat than ever before. I strikes me as insane that a bunch of well fed computer programmers are going to go on about how the agriculture industry in America sucks. We deliver low cost nutritional food to the tables of America. Maybe a couple of you should invest in some land at $2,500 an acre, purchase farm equipment, seed etc and grow some of your own food. You would learn that all the academic talk of growing food with less water is a damn hard thing to do. That the average farmer can balance the inputs and outputs of modern farming and create the great bounty of surplus food in this country while making a small profit is one of the great scientific achievements of this century. Oh and the reason we all don't die of malnutrition.

Re:The real questions should be different

[jbengt]

The biological contaminants are not hard to control, the heavy metals and other industrial contaminants are a much bigger problem.

Re:The real questions should be different

[jbengt]

However, is there some kind of water shortage problem that we actually need to resolve? Unless we plan to pipeline water from Kansas to Boston I doubt that use of water in the one area has much effect on availability of water in the other.

On the contrary, that has been a huge issue in many parts of the world (California, e.g.) for at least decades.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Slavik81]

Why does it matter how much water a dishwater uses? The water comes from a river, goes through the water treatment plant, is piped out to homes, is piped back to the sewage treatment plant, then is returned to the river. If it's cheaper to just process more water than it is to decrease water usage, why not just go that route? This is very different from agricultural uses where much of the water evaporates or is transpired by the plants.

So, what is the problem? I don't get it.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Luckyo]

Total amount of arable land globally is decreasing, and has been decreasing for a long time. This is cause by erosion, desertification, and improper farming practices. We have largely managed to regulate such occurrences in the West to zero, but 3rd world is really having problems with this.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

Like I said earlier, I live in Scotland. If I haven't got enough water, someone must have dug the country up and towed it to the equator or something.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Luckyo]

Modern agriculture when done right does neither. On the other hand, when done wrong, the first is a real problem. Second, not so much as its treatable. You can see this in practice in difference between 1st and 3rd world in terms of farming problems. The inefficient, "organic" methods largely applied in Africa are in fact causing severe desertification and erosion, and is one of the biggest causes of hunger in Sahara region.

On the other hand we have 1st world, where worst problem is overuse of fertiliser causing short-term reversible pollution of waterways and soil, which in turn is usually caused by ignoring the regulations. Unlike the problems in 3rd world, which are largely irreversible and permanent (or at least very long term), ours are usually fixed by simply letting the land be unused for a few years. Waterways being polluted is a rather minor problem, as even the 1st world's most agriculturally taxed basin, Baltic Sea remains perfectly viable source of water and fish. Rivers clear themselves by dumping themselves into larger basins such as aforementioned Baltic Sea, and modern agriculture is regulated so that it cannot cause significant pollution of rivers (barring accidents, which happen to other industries as well).

Re:The real questions should be different

[operagost]

Stole? Do explain.

Re:The real questions should be different

[craigminah]

Rather that use those old school sprinklers farmers could employ drip irrigation or irrigation schedulers and improve efficiency a lot. Of course this is much more expensive so probably won't be implemented until they're forced. Until water becomes hard to reach in the aquifers or becomes expensive (kind of saying the same thing) there will be no incentive to improve irrigation efficiency. Actually, I think bulk users of water get a discount if they use an amount over certain threshold so the incentives are in place to promote water use rather than preserving water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the ever increasing tendency for local governments to sell their water rights to private corporations, and then allow those private corporations to harvest the water and become the distributing utility.

That's when rtb61's screed turns back to crystal clear, but ugly, reality.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we actually need all those agriculture products?

Yes, we do.

I'd have to disagree, considering they're making cat litter out of corn. Does some farmer really need to produce a bountiful crop of corn just for cats to have something to shit in? Absurd right...

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

The AC mentioned Houston simply as an example of a big city. He could just as easily have said Dallas, or San Antonio, or Plano. "Democrat", "lesbian", "mayor", "conservatives", "red", "blue", "racist", "bigot", "Christian", skin color - these are all words from YOUR keyboard. Going from "a big city like Houston running out of water is quite interesting to watch" to "all Democrats and lesbians 'actively lobby against educating their own children'" is not a reasonable train of thought. It is inflammatory. You're not "using his own evidence to disprove his case", you're using your own bias to air your own opinions. Then when someone points it out to you, you call them a bigot.

Re:The real questions should be different

[jonadab]

> The reality is corporation want to suck up all the cheaply accessible water

That's absurd. Where would they put it all? They'd need a tank so large it wouldn't fit all in one state. The entire Fortune 500 could spend a decade's worth of gross revenue building such a thing.

The article summary talks about percentages of the fresh water that is actually used, *not* percentages of what's available, because we (humanity) use only a small fraction of what's available. We take almost all of the fresh water that falls from the sky and route it downstream as fast as possible, toward the ocean (where it evaporates so it can fall again someplace else), because otherwise it would flood our basements several times a week.

When you pay your water bill, you're not paying for the water itself. You're paying for filtering and chlorine and whatnot -- water treatment. The water itself is free, if you're willing to use it untreated: just put in a couple of cisterns and Bob is your uncle. Almost nobody does this anymore because untreated water isn't worth collecting.

Now, I'm kind of assuming here that we're talking on a nationwide scale. On a local scale it might be possible for a corporation to collect a fair portion of the available water in a limited area, but it would be a *tiny* percentage of the total available water nationwide, because you could only do it in an area that's significantly drier than average. If you tried it anywhere in the Midwest, people probably wouldn't even bother to laugh at you.

Re:The real questions should be different

[jonadab]

You trade off water efficiency for other kinds of efficiency. You could use less water and more land (per unit of food produced), for example, or less water and more equipment and labor (to distribute the water more carefully only to the plants that need it), but we don't usually do those things because water is very affordable, so being excessively efficient with it is uneconomic.

Agricultural use of water is not a significant environmental problem[1], because all the water we use for agriculture goes one of four places: it goes directly into the plants, or it evaporates right away into the air, or it runs off to the nearest stream, or it soaks into the ground and makes its way downstream rather more slowly. In all four cases, the water eventually makes its way back into the atmosphere and falls again as rain. "Using" water doesn't use it up in any permanent sense. It just relocates it slightly. It's a completely renewable resource, even on a very short timescale.

[1] I'm assuming here that you're not doing something problematic in the process, like putting DDT into the water. That would be a separate issue. What we're talking about here is just the mere fact of using water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is, as a farmer myself, I know that the biggest crop in the United States (the one that uses the most water and is listed as a crop) is Kentucky Blue Grass. Guess who grows it? Everyone. It's the grass that is in peoples yards and golf courses and city Parks that use the most water in this country.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Khyber]

"Isn't there a different way to use water for the same purpose with possibly higher efficiency?"

That's exactly what I do. I also drastically reduce land required to produce the same amount of crop, and nutrient usage. I also design lighting per-crop.

A video tour of the research/testing shed. Note Systems growing plants without any direct light on the left, as well.

I'm well ahead of this game, with a more efficient system than the best over at Philips have produced. Even has a faster payback/investment recoup time!

Re:The real questions should be different

[Khyber]

"You can't use salt-laden "grey water" to grow things"

That would actually be dependent upon the types of salts dissolved into the water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always research the slowly escalating threats between India and China over some of the himalayan water sources. It might open up your tiny worldview that everywhere is just like where you live.

Re:The real questions should be different

[hey!]

Sandra Postel is saying that grain-fed beef takes 5300 liters of water per pound (oh, the units! liters per pound?), as opposed to grass fed beef which just requires rainwater.

I'm glad you quoted TFA, because I actually know Sandra; it reminds me I need to drop her a line.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

The AC mentioned nothing about lesbians, democrats, or mayors.

No, he mentioned the state of Texas, said "large proportion of the state depends on "faith" for their resource planning needs" and then mentioned Houston specifically. Assuming that the OP meant religion when he said faith listing Houston as an example disproves his entire point.

I assumed it meant people who felt that there would always be enough rainwater, somewhere, they they didn't need to engage in tax-payer funded public works reservoir building projects. e.g., have faith, hope for the best, rather than "raise taxes now, plan for the worst and be pleasantly surprised" vs. the Texas "we hate the federal government and want to secede, even though it turns out we get more federal dollars than we pay in income taxes"

Re:The real questions should be different

[mangu]

they're making cat litter out of corn

Only if it's from leftovers. The best material for cat litter is bentonite clay

Re:The real questions should be different

[einhverfr]

Something like 50% of the rainfall over rain forests has been estimated to be the result of transpiration from the trees themselves. That's worth pondering....

Re:The real questions should be different

[Rei]

A general takeaway from the paper: food is environmentally devastating to produce.

Combine with: exercise takes calories (basic fact; the work doesn't come from nowhere, and no, being thinner and having a reduced idle metabolic rate doesn't come close to the amount burned during exercise)

Net result: Significantly increasing (~50% or more) your daily burned calories by walking or biking several hours per day to get to your destinations is environmentally devastating. 8x so if you're not vegan, since meat takes so much water and energy to produce per unit kcal.

"Greenest" practical mode of personal transportation: low cross-section streamlined -electric- (not pedal) powered bicycle.

Re:The real questions should be different

[wasme]

Yea, they do that here. I live in a small town out in the middle of nowhere in southern Manitoba, Canada. The town is surrounded by farm land. Town sewage is pumped into a lagoon where it sits and gets natural 'sewage treatment' through bacteria breaking down wastes. Then every so often the contents of the lagoon is just pumped into nearby fields. (With the full consent of the farmers involved because, hey, free fertilizer.)

This works fine for moderate amounts of sewage. But you'd have to work out quiet a complex system to deal with all the sewage from a decent-sized city. You can't put too much sewage all in one place or you'd overwhelm the ability of the land to deal with it and it starts becoming a liability instead of a resource.

Plus big cities tend to crowd out nearby farm land to make room for suburbs.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Jarik C-Bol]

i'd be more worried about the pharmacological contaminants from people on a thousand medications pissing them into the sewage system. Bacteria i can deal with pretty easily, getting a mixed dose of 15 different anti depressants, a couple heart medications, viagra, 5 pain killers, and 18 cholesterol drugs is far more worrisome.

Re:The real questions should be different

[adolf]

Is capitalism only a blind faith that our environment is so stable we can do whatever we want with it?

I think you're really reading too much into it. A proper capitalist will be blind to the environment (or any other concern) unless it is profitable for them to behave differently.

And, well...that's it.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Cimexus]

Stereotype or not, it wasn't me that originally stated Americans preferred it. It was the person I was replying to (the GP to your post). You seem to be of the impression it was me stating my opinion on the matter ... I wouldn't actually know one way or the other. I was just seeing what the parent to my post said, and saying "I don't know why that is"...

Re:The real questions should be different

[rtb61]

Sometimes looking stuff up on Wikipedia will help you be more informed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Water_management_authorities_in_the_United_States. There are a whole range of supply authorities including regional, privatised and state. Then there are state based pumping permits limiting what can be drawn from public sources including lakes, rivers and groundwater (these permits defining volumes of water that can be pumped are often traded, buying a farm does not necessarily entitle you to use the water underneath or running past the farm). Where talking mass consumption of water not really your garden tap or shower.

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Ok;

Now, that is interesting. So, you are eating in Scotland (though you might not be). Yet, what is the national dish of Scotland? Boiled sheep stomach, otherwise known as Haggis (my wife, who is an Indian born in England, HATED the stuff). To make matters worse, England/Scotland are KNOWN for their absolutely bland bland BLAND food. Here in Western America, such as Colorado where I live, many natives will buy ranged beef, and yes, all of our sheep are ranged. And yet, without having been to America, you scream that we have bland greasy meat? So, why be such a wanker and make false accusation about things that you obviously know nothing about?

Re:The real questions should be different

[flyneye]

LOL, yeah so much regular rainfall 90% of farming here is dry land wheat and milo farming.

The worlds need for arable farmland is equal to its need for food and that will always supersede sustaining a local population in favor of sustaining farmland.

I come from a place where the aquafier dropped and people get washing,drinking and cooking water trucked in to half the county while the other half can still irrigate.

Aquifiers are only part of the supply though, rivers upstream may get dammed off for an upstream state to hoard water and run it into any depression in the ground that will hold it. Like Colorados "Ancient Lakes" act.

Aquifiers replenish over time. Populations will find it necessary to move and ghost towns will happen. So what? Adapt like a good dinosaur.The lesson, plan better crops, move metropolitan areas away from water handicapped areas and continue to farm. Sustainability is more likely with good planning . Weather patterns change over 20 years, come back in 20 and try again.

Still, raising the cost of food in order to preserve water is a fools errand and unless you can show me something workable, modern irrigation is the only workable solution. We need workable solutions not well meaning hippy ideas. Ideas don't work, people do. Ideas are fine till you run into the part you hadn't counted on. Like cost vs. output. Kind of like the corn to ethanol plan. The cost outweighed the output when applied as a fuel.

Funny how you can give someone a peek at a concept in a schoolbook and they think they know all they need.
Factual education may be in shorter supply for the world than water. Definitely, a more fearsome shortage at this point in time.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Errol backfiring]

I just came back from the Alentejo, Portugal. After they cut down the forests to do modern agriculture, they had a quick and short profit. Now, the land is almost dead, the fertile soil landed in the Atlantic and most farmers have left. People in Tamera (which is in the same province) are doing a hell of a job to make their land fertile again with priciples of permaculture. Before they switched to modern agriculture, the Alentejo was the main grain-producing area of the Iberic peninsula. Now it is rapidly turning into a desert.

No chemical fertilizer will help if the soil is cooked dry in summer and washes away into the Atlantic with the winter rainfalls. Only a healthy, locally adapted, biodiversity helps there.

Re:The real questions should be different

[drinkypoo]

There is no "again" because I never argued against that point, but if you want to sit in a corner and argue with yourself that's cool with me.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

Actually, I think the national dish of Scotland is probably some sort of curry, considering most of what the West knows as curry was invented by Pakistani immigrants to Glasgow. Oh, and I don't know about England, but where is Scotland "known" for bland food? That's rather like saying the US is known for food that is inedible because of the massive quantities of salt and sugar in everything...

Haggis is a sort of spicy sausage, made from the sort of stuff you tend to find in sausages. It's quite nice. You should try it.

But hey, you're in the US, where the "national dish" is the burger - a small round blob of putty-coloured processed "meat" made from cow eyelids and rectums, served in a stale dry bun. The US is not exactly known for its appealing food, is it?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Luckyo]

Yes, you're talking about erosion. That is what happens when instead of using proper agricultural methods you just knock the forest down, put up a field and start growing plants in exhaustive (soil wise) manner. It's something that modern agriculture is specifically against, not for, which is why erosion is far worse in Sahara.

Without knowing the exact case, I would suggest that what happened was not "switch to modern agriculture", but pretty classic "see the quick buck, make the quick buck, get out". It's pretty common in PIIGS/southern European countries as its ingrained in the culture and can be seen in parts in current EU crisis, where "get rich now, things will sort themselves out somehow later"-approach has bitten everyone in the ass and not just local farmers. Blaming modern agriculture, which does not cause these problems when applied properly, is a pure case of scapegoating to avoid having to look at the real flaws. Flaws that tend to have deep cultural roots that people really don't want to have to look at.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea but the local municipalities sold off ownership of the water system to a private corporation. At least that is what Atlanta did.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Anonymous Coward]

It's really not that we prefer corn fed over grass fed. It's that we prefer more. Corn fed factories of beef production are much more space efficient and cause the cattle to grow and mature faster. It takes a lot of area to raise 95 million cows. If we tried that in the US with grass fed only, we'd have to cover, at a minimum, 10% of the entire country with pasture. That minimum could only be reached if the entire country were perfectly suitable as grazing land which it's not. On the worst case lands, it takes 10-15x as much grazing area to grow a cow (for more months btw, which leads to net higher greenhouse gasses due to longer living cattle), and we simply don't have 150% of a country. So it comes down to corn fed being quite unnatural and grass fed is actually worse for the environment (and all the other species that must be displaced for so much grazing room), but the former is at least feasible for the amount of meat Americans want in their diets. The only "solution" would be eating less or no beef and eventually meat, and a very large number of people don't want to take that step. I don't want to take that step. Oh, and our corn/grain fed beef isn't any more fatty than your grass fed beef. They just contain different types of fat that will taste different, but grass fed contains more unsaturated fats which are better for people.

Re:The real questions should be different

[WindBourne]

Well, lets see. My mother's maiden name is McGregor and she still attends the clan meetings. When I was a kid in the 60's, I attended those as well. And yes, I ate the food. Things like Scotch Eggs, Sheppards pie, something that they called sausages, but it was oatmeal and something else, Bannock, Bangors, sweatbreads (yeah, right), and other items. All of them pretty damn BLAND. Even the curry
I have gone to the Scottish festivals here with my kids and introduce them to some of the food. To be honest, my 7 y.o. likes it, because she does not like spicy foods. My 5 y.o. finds it bland as well.

So, I have tasted many of the meats from Scotland as cooked by Scotsmen here. Though to be honest, I still have not tried haggis, since bland boiled meat really does not appeal to me (though I do eat stews every so often). It strikes me as being the same as eating blutwurst in Germany.

Now, as to curry, that comes from India. In fact, my wife's tamil background makes heavy heavy use of it. One thing that I have noticed is that Europe makes use of curry, but only in very light amounts. They do not like it heavy. They appear to not like spices. OTOH, here in the western USA, you will find loads of Curry and other spices. Want something light? Try jalapeño. Want something spicy? Try chipotle and Habanero in some chile. I am sure that if you have a decent corner store that imports esp. from Mexico or South West America, you can pick these up. Then please let us know how you bland you find the food that I eat here.

BTW, have you been to America, or do you just continue to speak about things that you know little about?

Re:The real questions should be different

[Gordonjcp]

Yes, I have been to America. Have you been to Scotland?

American food is bland as dishwater, and loaded with sugar and salt to make it taste like... *something*. No wonder you spend so much time pouring salsa and hot sauce on everything.

Re:The real questions should be different

[dwywit]

The water itself is free, if you're willing to use it untreated: just put in a couple of cisterns and Bob is your uncle. Almost nobody does this anymore because untreated water isn't worth collecting.
 
That's what I do, and it's not that difficult or expensive (especially as I'm not even connected to a municipal supply). Family of 4, ~44,000 litres of steel storage tanks, collect rainwater of the roof, and that's about it. We don't filter it and we don't get sick from all the bird poop, dust, sticks, and leaves that wash off the roof and accumulate in the pipes. I clean the gutters and debris traps every couple of months, and flush the collector pipes at the same time. The water tastes great with infrequent exceptions.
 
Except in dry season, when we sometimes have to buy a load of town water - can barely drink that stuff, it's foul. Showering in town water leaves a chlorine "perfume" on my skin for hours.

Re:The real questions should be different

[badkarmadayaccount]

It isn't actually cheaper - it's subsidized.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Coren22]

Often I hear the term gray water when speaking of a camping trailer. In a camper, the sink drains are tied to the grey water system. The toilets are tied to the black water system. The gray water can generally be drained into any drain, whereas the black water has to be drained into a sewer line. So, yes, gray water would be fine, as it is mostly clean, as long as the plants can handle any soaps in the water.

Re:The real questions should be different

[Coren22]

Brought to you by drinkypoo. That name is very fitting when talking about water treatment :)

Solution

[Errol backfiring]

if the ultimate consumers were to make it themselves rather than outsource its growth or manufacture.

There are some good solutions in The Humanure Handbook. That does not change corporate agriculture, but a little awareness on our behaviour is a good thing.

As Mark Boyle (The Moneyless Man) once said: if we knew how hard it was to purify our drinking water, we sure as hell wouldn't shit in it.

Mmmmm, Commodity Meat

[Anonymous Coward]

Do those figures take into account the watering in my mouth? I don't think so.

Are americans actually retaining that much water?

[outsider007]

Because that would explain why they're so fat.

consume consume consume

[Anonymous Coward]

It's important that all resources on this planet are reduced to a commodity studied as traded between businesses and consumed by consumers, especially essentials such as water. Only then can we go the laughable way of England and have a completely privatised water supply, costing much more in real terms than it ever did when run by government on behalf of the people. And how about carbon dioxide emissions? You know what would be better than investing in nuclear and other alternatives to fossil fuel? A licence to pollute more! Some entrepreneur could make a mint selling or brokering these licences. We could call them... carbon credits.

The great thing about the old religions was that they were miles away from pretending to be based on reason. What was illogical was ascribed to the mystery of God. The free market is more insidious, being an exercise in logic based on unsound premises.

Re:consume consume consume

[Magada]

The free market is more insidious, being an exercise in logic based on unsound premises.

Paranoiac delirium, it's called.

OB

[Hognoxious]

The average American uses enough water each year to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool

The French don't get through that much in total.

Re:OB

[frenchbedroom]

That's right monsieur, we're saving the planet, one relinquished shower at a time! Come visit our lovely country and smell for yourself the wonderful aroma of true organic, water-saving BO. If you're an environment-minded person, come enjoy a subway ride in Paris! You'll be overwhelmed by the lengths we go to help all you beautiful, hygiene-conscious, rose-smelling-poop-defecators with your Olympic washing lifestyle. I mean literally, it will make you weep. Should you feel thirsty during your travel, you can lick the sweat off the brow of your neighbour, just like we do everyday. Every little drop counts! Seriously, it's not so bad when you get used to it.

I'm off to my yearly little splash in the Seine! Ta-ta, mon cher ami!

Re:OB

[Anonymous Coward]

No, can't be. An olympic sized pool has 2500m^3 of water. In europe, a household of 1 uses about 90m^3 per year. There are 64,876,618 in France. So it's more somewhere near 2 million swimming pools of water, consumed by the French each year.

Re:OB

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right monsieur, we're saving the planet, one relinquished shower at a time! Come visit our lovely country and smell for yourself the wonderful aroma of true organic, water-saving BO.

I know you're being funny, but we do tend to over clean ourselves. Unless you're doing construction, demolition, or mining, it's unlikely that you'll get much dirt or dust on you to warrant bathing everyday.

Only a few decades ago most Americans would only bathe once a week or so. Certainly most office workers don't need to take a shower everyday unless they tend to profusely sweat for some reason. (Sweat is odourless, as it's simply salt water really; it's when it combines with bacteria that BO starts occurring).

There's a growing amount a evidence which seems to support the theory that an overly clean environment (especially during childhood) prevents our immune systems from developing, and so increases the chances of allergy development later in life.

National Reservoir

[neurosine]

Now can we set up a pretend entity to buy and sell our pretend water, much as we buy and sell pretend money now? It takes the emphasis off of what's happening with our real water, much in the way the national reserve has allowed us to ignore what dire straights we're in concerning our real wealth.

Re:National Reservoir

[jpapon]

As long as we can use it to pay bills, I'm fine with it. Get it in your head already, ALL money is "pretend" as you put it.

Re:National Reservoir

[Curunir_wolf]

ALL money is "pretend" as you put it.

Nope, just much of modern currency. A "Federal Reserve Note" is not really a dollar.

Kennedy was killed precisely because he didn't want to use fake money that could be manipulated by a global banking cartel. So they got rid of him and put Nixon in place instead, who established the fiat money system and started selling off the country to China.

Re:National Reservoir

[jpapon]

No, you misunderstand me. Gold is no less fake a currency than Federal Reserve Notes. Gold is worthless. It's value is only determined by demand for it. Just like the value of Federal Reserve Notes.

Kennedy was killed precisely because he didn't want to use fake money that could be manipulated by a global banking cartel. So they got rid of him and put Nixon in place instead, who established the fiat money system and started selling off the country to China.

lol. Right...

Re:National Reservoir

[Curunir_wolf]

Gold is no less fake a currency than Federal Reserve Notes.

Repeating this lie over and over won't make it true. Gold is limited, unlike fiat money which is created out of thin air (currency costs a little more to print, but not by enough to matter). That's what makes fiat money "fake" and money backed by limited commodities "real". And it's why the US "dollar" is now worth about 4 cents, compared to its value when the Federal Reserve was created.

Permaculture

[cptBongo]

I'd encourage anyone interested (and worried) by these issues to look up and study everything they can find about Permaculture. Solutions are available, if we use our brains.

We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

Australians are dealing with it as well. The cities are drinking up more and more water. In the east where they have lots of water there is no question of starving the farms to feed the cities. But in the west water is a limited quantity.

Sure, we could kill the bread basket of the US... or in california's case it's fruit-basket. But to what end? We're already importing a lot of food from mexico because the farms have been starved for decades. Huge stretches of California that used to be covered in farms are now dust. It has nothing to do with land management. The land is fine... there is no water. And there used to be lots. The cities drank it.

Now, the cities need it... and if I have to choose between the cities getting the water or the farms then I'll choose the cities. But it's a dangerous game and the best solution is to build more dams, more reservoirs, more pipe lines, and more water treatment centers. All of that costs money but the cities have NOT built water infrastructure to keep pace with their consumption. The farms use a lot of water but their consumption has gone DOWN. The consumption of the cities has gone up and they haven't built anything. They just grow and grow without building new infrastructure for water. Even the big cities in the east aren't keeping pace. New York City has some giant water pipes under it that pump water out of an aquifer under the city. When initially built, the city only needed one of those pipes. The rest was extra for growth or if they wanted to shut down one for a time. Now they can't shut down any of them and are piping water in from farther away. But they've built nothing to deal with it.

Contrary to what many environmentalists are saying, sustainable growth doesn't mean "no growth" instead it means expanding our infrastructure as we grow so that we don't have shortages. Killing the farms to get water to the cities only shifts problems. Do that and all our food will say "product of mexico" or canada or some other place because we won't grow anything. The Australians are having the same problem. Huge amounts of water flow into the sea untapped in eastern Australia. Dams that were scheduled to be built 30 or 40 years ago were never built. It would apparently spoil the view or something. So farmers in Australia are literally committing suicide because their family farms are being starved of water and driving them out of business. To say nothing of the fact that the country is increasingly dependent on foreign importation of food when previously they were largely self sufficient.

Point being... Do not starve the farms. If the cities need water then stop looking at who to take it from. Man up and build more supply. There is plenty of water flowing out into the ocean that is never touched to say nothing of rainwater that is never touched. Furthermore, cities could much more readily make use of gray water for cleaning/etc then the farms. Starve the farms and you'll be sorry... it will just mean food prices start doubling and you lose all control over food quality standards because its all imported.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Cimexus]

The other problem in Australia is the ~variability~ of the supply of water. When it's dry, you really need that extra infrastructure ... but most of the time it'll sit there being relatively unused.

It's not true that the east has lots of water. Generally it either has too much, or not enough. "Not enough" is far more common than "too much". Right now it's wet: two consecutive La Nina summers with consequent flooding and heavy rains. Dams are all basically full. Crop yields are up (at least, in the areas where they aren't under 6 feet of water!)

However just a couple of years ago we were at the tail end of an almost decade-long drought. Worst in a century they say. Many towns completely ran out of water and had to have it trucked in daily (reasonable sized towns too, like Goulburn NSW). And even in the large capital cities things were looking grim ... here in Canberra our dams were only ~20% full at one point. For a couple of years, we were on the highest level of water restrictions that existed - no watering of gardens/lawns/washing of cars/filling of pools permitted, and minimal water allowed for personal use. Similar stories in Sydney and Melbourne. And when a drought is so, so long, you begin to think it will never rain again and the seemingly absurd prospect of a major city with millions of people literally running out of water starts to look increasingly likely (scary!)

Sydney built an expensive desalination plant in response to this threat. Canberra's building another dam (or technically, they are massively expanding one of the existing 4 dams that feed the city). Of course, as soon as these projects got underway, the rains started falling properly again for the first time in 9 years. The desal plant sits basically idle now (since Sydney dams are back to almost 100%) Still, I'm sure it'll be needed one day so I don't see it as wasted expenditure.

You're absolutely right that huge volumes of water flow into the ocean in Eastern Australia that could be tapped to provide for the cities. Generally this is of a 'quick and heavy' nature (thunderstorm runoff). So in the long term I think the cities are OK. The big problem is that most of our agricultural areas are inland of the Great Dividing Range, so water that falls there flows inland into the Murray Darling basin. And rainfall out that way is very erratic ... and even in good years, it's not that high. Australia is a very dry continent once you're off the narrow coastal fringe between the east coast and the Divide (only 50-100km wide for the most part). No amount of dams will help the inland because the rain simply doesn't fall often enough. You'd have to divert water from the coasts (which is essentially what the Snowy Hydro Scheme was about (and is largely what allowed cultivation of the inland to occur in the first place). But I don't think there's the appetite these days for such massive and expensive infrastructure projects to be honest.

Also as far as I know, Australia still exports far, far more food than it imports. I'm sure I've read recent figures showing we produce 4-5x what we need to be self-sufficient ... so I don't think we are reliant at all on imported food. We might ~choose~ to import some food rather than grow our own, but if worst comes to worst and we suddenly were completely isolated from the rest of the world, we'd be fine.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[BeaverCleaver]

We also have farms in this country that grow cotton and rice using cheap irrigation water. These crops were never suited to Australian conditions and unless there is some revolution in how to grow these crops (some new GM variety perhaps?) then it's foolish to grow them in the driest inhabited continent on Earth, and especially insane to do it in western NSW.

Like the many, many posters above, the problem isn't "agriculture" per se, it's agriculture that's unsuited to the environment, whether that's cattle where no cattle have historically been present, or subtropical crops in the desert.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[MrKaos]

No amount of dams will help the inland because the rain simply doesn't fall often enough.

We could pump our waste water inland and use it for agriculture (with fertiliser built in). I know it's a massive infrastructure project but it would also mean a great deal more potential food export plus enhance the ability to populate inland.

Excellent post, BTW. Melbourne - Four seasons in one day, Sydney - Four seasons at the same time - sometimes - who knows??? I posted about Sydneys weather not so long ago.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

As to the system only being needed in a drought... I feel like you're saying you only need shoes when you go outside or only need a knife you need to cut something. Sure, you don't need a knife when you go jogging or shoes when you go to sleep. But you need it because there will be a drought. And that can go on for a decade or more. In california we struggled with a long drought and our great dams drained year after year. But we had enough because prior generations had built them.

There has been much growth since they built those structures and there will be much more to come. We must be as kind to our children and grand children as our fathers and grand fathers were to us. We must build or there will be nothing for them but what their great grand fathers built. It will not be enough.

As to the eastern US not having lots of water. Oh my god. If the east thinks it isn't swimming in the stuff then they're like a rich man that is so incompetent with his finances that even the smallest checks bounce. If what you're saying is true then I have to laugh. I hope you're wrong because I don't want to think the water management people out there are outright morons.

As to it being too much or too little... you're not seeing a solution in there? Take a little from column A and add it to column B.

As to these areas flooding, they were told thirty or forty years ago this would happen and they had to raise levies. They didn't want to do that. Fine. Swim.

Seeing a theme here? I don't mean to come off like a dick here. It's just that everyone was told a full generation ago how to solve these problems. And everyone took the engineering diagrams and planning projects and dismissed them. Now we're having problems and it's just going to get worse. It's just bad planning.

As to some areas not having enough water. Pipe it. Los Angeles has water pipe lines going for hundreds of miles piping water from all over the state. My home city was made possible by men who thought big and long term. City builders. If the city is running out of water now then it's because the inheritors of my great city are not of the same stature. How many of them do you think have the stones to actually build a city like LA from the ground up? Not a one of the losers. The men that built my city were not nice people. They were not warm or cuddly or your friend. They weren't monsters but if they had to cut a throat to get the water... throats were going to get cut. Judge that how you like but my city of millions wouldn't exist without them. Many of them did all this without advanced educations or teams of scientists to work out long term consequences. They had neither the time nor the inclination to bother with it. They had problems and most had no solutions at all. They for all their faults came up with plans... hundreds of them. And they then did it. They actually went out there and did it. People told them it was impossible... it had never been done before. They didn't care. Say what you will but I have to admire the hell out of that. The carebear and latte crowd would have sat in mud huts wondering what to do... it's what they do best. If we just channeled a quarter of the old guts and determination that built my city all of these logistical problems would evaporate. I'm not claiming the world would be perfect... but stupid issues like "we don't have enough water" would be gone. We've got lots.

If you're having water shortage issues in the eastern US then you have much smaller and easier issues then we have out here. How many pipe lines and aqueducts have you built? The romans could have solved your problems and they lived in the bronze age. We had to have hundreds of miles of custom made pipeline custom built for us in Italy and then shipped all the way to san francisco where it was pulled by horses and oxen in huge numbers into position. And then with little more then brute strength piles large enough for a tall man to walk upright were bolted together one after the other. The temperature was frequently over 100 degrees. Th

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Rich0]

Won't economics just solve this problem? If food becomes scarce then its price will rise. If its price rises, then farmers will get more money. If farmers get more money they'll be willing to pay for more expensive water. If demand on water goes up its price will rise. As the price of water rises, the farmers selling expensive food will keep buying it, and people taking expensive long showers will take shorter ones. If water prices rise to 50 cents a gallon then voters will scream and politicians will build more water supply projects.

By all means enforce food safety standards on imported foods, including inspections of where they are processed. Countries routinely inspect production of goods outside their borders - companies that don't comply aren't allowed to export their goods.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

The plants need water... not money.

We have lots of money. The problem isn't that we don't have the money to build. The problem isn't that we don't want to build.

The problem is that we have sever NIMBYism... you can't build anything. A big solar power plant was recently closed down because it infringed on the habitat of a local lizard... yes, it was in the middle of the desert. If they tried to build the golden gate bridge today, they'd never be able to do it. The bay bridge and the golden gate were built at the same time in less time then planning committees take to approve an addition for a house today. And rather then screwing around with making sure everyone's back is scratched on labor contracts they just built it.

This is not an economics problem. It's a cultural problem. Generations of people have grown up in cities and take everything for granted. They don't understand that it all has to come from somewhere and has to be maintained and expanded and improved. They don't care. They'd rather buy electricity from CANADA or Mexico ... in california... then just build a power plant. It's not like anyone is suggesting we build a bunch of Dickensian coal stacks. They're shutting down solar power plants for environmental concerns. It's like dealing with mental patients.

So... I say the cities can deal with water rations before the farms get cut off because they're the ones using more. Or they can build more water infrastructure. They have the most money and they're the ones with increased need. The men that built Los Angeles dealt with much bigger problems and over came them with fewer resources then we have today. They built one of the most impressive water networks in the world with little more then oxen carts and human muscle power in 100 degree weather in the middle of the desert with no roads.

Anyone that finds the actual logistical problem a challenge is either less intelligent then the largely uneducated social planners from a hundred years ago or just enormous pussies. We've got the money. The technology is easy off the shelf engineering. We've got the water. If we run out of water then someone is clearly wasting oxygen and should probably stop breathing.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Rich0]

Well, the fact that an economic solution exists doesn't keep governments from shooting themselves in the foot. If the farms had lots of money and there were a free market, then the farms would just buy lots of water, and there would be plenty of stuff growing.

Now, if the local government dictates that water shall remain cheap, but you're not allowed to buy it if you are a farm, then you've basically created a command economy with all the efficiency that brings...

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[virg_mattes]

Your understanding of the economics here is faulty. The breakdown is in thinking that food scarcity is one-sided. Food becomes scarce because it becomes uneconomical to make it. The price has to rise to make up that deficit, and then food production goes back to "normal", but with more cost. That cost doesn't translate into more freely spendable money for the farmers, because the supply chain is why the cost went up in the first place.

More to the point, it's not people taking long expensive showers that eats up the water supply. A factory uses ten times the water that a town does. The large majority of water use in most places where farming is done is business, and they've been unsuccessfully pushing for more water projects for decades.

Lastly, if water rose to fifty cents a gallon in any community, demand for the water would drop to zero because nobody could afford to run any kind of business, and the residents would move because there'd be no work. There's an upper limit on how much water can cost before it's cheaper to move operations than try to irrigate locally.

Virg

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

again, the farms don't have a lack of water until the cities take it away from them.

The point I'm failing to get across here is that they had water.

The farms had water.

The farms that don't have water problems are the ones with old high priority water rights. They don't have water problems because you can't take their water away. They own it.

Los Angeles has high priority water rights on the Colorodo river... I think it might be as high as 20 percent of the whole river and it might be the highest priority which means if the river drops to 20 percent of it's normal flow LA gets 100 percent of that water. That's how water rights work in the west. It's different from the east. You own a specific amount of water every year. And there is a pecking order so everyone get to take their share in turns. If you're low on the poll it means you sometimes don't get any water at all. Zero. Now, some of the farmers have old water rights and that means they actually have priority for the water before the municiple water authority. And that means you can't take it away.

They don't have a problem.

The farmers that do have a problem are those with lower priority that that used to get water often but don't have one of these old awesome water contracts. So the cities can pouch the water from them rather then actually building anything.

When was hte last time LA built a major water project? And how much have we grown since? That's happening all over.

The cities need to build. The solution of ripping off the farmers is self destructive. Sure, it solves the problem for today. Just like borrowing money when you don't pull in enough. But it stops working eventually... eventually you've robbed all the water from everyone and borrowed all the money the creditors will let you have... and then what?

You've then ruined a once thriving farming business, made your population totally dependent on food imports, and your water issue is worse because now you don't even have a cushion to take you through bad times.

It's stupidity squared.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Rich0]

Your understanding of the economics here is faulty. The breakdown is in thinking that food scarcity is one-sided. Food becomes scarce because it becomes uneconomical to make it. The price has to rise to make up that deficit, and then food production goes back to "normal", but with more cost. That cost doesn't translate into more freely spendable money for the farmers, because the supply chain is why the cost went up in the first place.

Food is fungible. If I want a bun for my hamburger I don't care if the wheat was grown across the street or across the planet. I'll obviously have to pay more to transport the latter.

If prices on food rise, then the value of it anywhere on the planet rises as well. Sure, initially most of that money will go to pay for transport, and farmers far from population centers won't see any of it. However, somebody who owns a farm NEAR a population center can charge a slightly lower price and sell a ton of food and capture almost all of that price difference.

So, if California doesn't artificially restrict how water is used, and the price of food rises, then local farmers will be able to irrigate more land, then sell the resulting food for more than the increased cost.

Lastly, if water rose to fifty cents a gallon in any community, demand for the water would drop to zero because nobody could afford to run any kind of business, and the residents would move because there'd be no work. There's an upper limit on how much water can cost before it's cheaper to move operations than try to irrigate locally.

Obviously I was using hyperbole to make a point. The price wouldn't go from cheap to super-expensive overnight. The price would rise slowly, and as the price rises slowly there would be increased pressure to increase supply. Now, if the reason the price of water is expensive is because you're living on the moon, then moving might be your only option. However, if a perfectly usable river is available and imbalanced environmental regulation is the only reason it isn't being tapped, then that is a problem government can easily correct and make its voters happy.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Rich0]

This is basically making the same point I was making. The only reason that water is scarce for the farm is because government is dictating how the water can be used, and not simply making it available at the cost of production. By saying that 20% of the Colorado or whatever has to be used for LA you're imposing artificial scarcity elsewhere.

If the State or Federal government simply auctioned off the water rights at the source annually to the highest bidders, then whatever utility had the most demand would get the most water. Prices everywhere would tend to reflect the same base price combined with a transportation charge based on how far the destination was from the source (since water would be auctioned off at the source).

Earmarking resources for particular exclusive uses tends to create imbalances and perverse incentives.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[StikyPad]

The main thrust of the paper is that domestic consumption is a very small (less than 10%) fraction of water usage per person. Just a bit of math will tell you that a family of four consuming 5,000 gallons per month * 12 months / 4 people = 15,000 gallons per person per year -- nowhere close to the claim of 640,000 gallons (an olympic-size swimming pool).

Of course they don't explain how they get their other numbers, if or how they account for water reuse, or how they estimate water pollution (which is also included as water usage), so the whole thing is dubious at best. It appears to be a worst-case scenario hit job, and not particularly useful for planning or policy decisions. There's no question that we need to either produce or consume freshwater more efficiently, but it's not an exhaustible resource and so doesn't necessarily demand a minimization of "water footprint," especially defined as broadly as it is in this paper.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

I'm still not making myself understood.

Okay, lets put it this way. Lets say I own 20 aces of land and there are 100 acres of land total. I'm not imposing scarcity on anyone else by using my land. It's mine. I don't need to pay you to use it. It's mine. I own this land. This isn't up for debate. I have a deed. It says right there. I get the first X gallons from this river. It's mine. I pay no usage cost for it. I pay no one for it. It's mine. Maybe I'll sell you some if I want and you make me a good offer. But I don't have to sell anything to you. I can take that water and dump it in the ocean if I want. Its mine.

See, you're coming from the eastern US perspective. In the east, it works more the way you suggest because there is more of it. In the west, someone isn't going to get water. Its' a game of musical chairs. Someone is going to get left out. Just how it is. We always need more.

So we have water RIGHTS. I don't have to dispense my rights to anyone else. They're mine. I own them. I can sell them if I choose but you can't take them. Possibly you could try some sort of eminent domain to pull them but that would be a hilarious political crapstorm.

Anyway, I don't know if I'm being clear. Be patient with me here because it's a way of seeing water that most places in the world haven't adopted because they either don't need it or didn't think of it. It's just how we do things. It's old legacy law from the bad old days.

These are water rights. It's a deed.

telling us to share is like me telling you to share your house with strangers because they need a place to stay. It's your house. You don't have to share it with anyone. If I took it from you or forced squatters on you that would be a problem.

I'm trying to make myself clear. Let me know if I'm making sense. I'm really trying.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

Sure, but isn't the water required for the food they eat something that should be considered on a per capita basis?

I mean, sure your home might only use so much and you might only drink so much. But if you consume products that required significant amounts of water to produce isn't it spurious to claim that the man is using the water more efficiently then the farm? If the farm stops making food the man dies from starvation. He needs the product of the farms. Further, most farmers in the west don't waste water. That's suicide. We have more land then water. We have whole deserts that could bloom with fruit trees if we had the water for them. The limit on our production is water. So a farmer that wastes water is a fool. Every bit of water he wastes is water that he can't use on more crops and increase his yield.

now, do some farms waste water? Sure. For example, there are some farms that grow rice or other crops that require flooding the field. That is crazy. But the vast majority are growing very reasonable crops from oranges to tomatoes. Every time you eat a tomato you have consumed the water it took to create that tomato. So all those people in their one room apartments eating their single serving salad can't claim to be disconnected from the system. Just as I'm connected to the Asian sweat shops that built the computer I'm using now. You are connected to the farm that grew your food.

Taking water away from the farmer will only mean they grow less food and you import more food from somewhere else which means you're using water there instead.

A more reasonable solution would be to see if you can get the farmer to produce the same amount of food with less water and no increase in prices. But don't be surprised if you only suck five percent out of their production by doing that. And everything you pull after that has a direct relationship to production.

Again, the farmers aren't using more water then they've ever used. In fact, they're using less. The cities are using more. taking water from the farmers isn't a long term solution. It's a short term solution which merely delays the city's own development requirements at the cost of destroying the farms.

It's a dumb move... you're just putting something off that you have to do eventually and you're ruining the farms as the price of procrastination. You have to see that.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[undeadbill]

Actually, 80% of the freshwater used in California is used by agriculture. Cities here regularly ration water, and we are pretty much exhorted to not exceed the 20% we normally use. It is somewhat of a bone of contention up and down the state, because generally that 80% is used wastefully and is polluted with chemicals and animal waste when the large agribusiness concerns are done with most of it. Even long droughts aren't much of an issue here- we have an extensive system of dams, dikes, levees, spillways, and other water management systems to deal with up to seven years of drought. But this is also why we are so adamant about using water wisely (and why people here tend to get a bit upset over ag water waste, the "big players" are always the last to come on board).

The more serious problem the state has is sprawl expansion covering arable land. That is a serious issue that has more to do with county level greed and a misanthropic commercial property tax code than anything else.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[StikyPad]

I'm not arguing that the externalities shouldn't be counted, I'm just questioning their method of counting, particularly since it isn't explained in any detail.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

No, 80 percent of the water in our system is used by agriculture. And while you seem to think you're not using that water... you eat that food. In fact, you not only eat that food but you eat imported food that used lots of water somewhere else to be produced.

As to the water being wasted. California has some of the least wasteful practices as regards water in the world. Want to see wasteful? Go back east, look at east asia... Hell, the Europeans are more wasteful with water then the Californian farmer. Of course, they can get away with it because they have more water then we have.

As to run off and waste, what exactly is the farmer supposed to do with it after irrigating his field or watering his cattle? Is there some sewer we can put it in? Because I haven't seen one. By law we're not only allowed but we're supposed to put the water exactly where we do put it.

So make up your mind. Where do you want it? We can put it in bottles and sell it to you for 5 dollars a quart if that's your thing? :D

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Rich0]

So we have water RIGHTS. I don't have to dispense my rights to anyone else. They're mine. I own them. I can sell them if I choose but you can't take them. Possibly you could try some sort of eminent domain to pull them but that would be a hilarious political crapstorm.

Clearly this is a dysfunctional market - the people who own the rights are unwilling to transfer them. Maybe regulation is interfering with the transfer of rights, or price-fixing makes the rights of limited commercial value, so people sit on them? Even if in theory the rights are transferable that doesn't mean that a near-monopoly couldn't exist, and those need to be regulated. A famous case of this was land ownership in Hawaii, where property was seized and redistributed because its high level of concentration resulted in a horribly-expensive rental market. Similar principles exist around rights of way - ownership of property isn't an absolute right.

If water rights are getting in the way of the general welfare, then they need to be constrained. Nobody likes losing property, but sometimes it is necessary. A simple way to accomplish this is to give the existing rightsholders a property right to a portion of the water source - perhaps 95% to start. Then over time you ramp that from 95% down to 0%, so that the value of the water right diminishes over time. Those who use the water would have to steadily pay more and more to continue to use the same amount of water, until everybody is paying the same.

Of course, if opening up the market to trade the existing water rights is possible, that might be an alternative solution. I just don't want society to be beholden to paying somebody a fortune to buy rights that are owned simply due to the luck of inheritance, unless they've really been paying generational estate taxes on the valuation these rights are now being given.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Solandri]

Won't economics just solve this problem? If food becomes scarce then its price will rise. If its price rises, then farmers will get more money. If farmers get more money they'll be willing to pay for more expensive water. If demand on water goes up its price will rise. As the price of water rises, the farmers selling expensive food will keep buying it, and people taking expensive long showers will take shorter ones.

That feedback mechanism is inoperative under current policy. Following the dust bowl of the 1930s and mass crop failures and food shortages, the government enacted programs to ensure it never happened again. We began subsidizing farming so that there would always be an adequate oversupply of food production in case of a crop failure (why corn gets subsidized), and there would be plenty of excess reserve agricultural land in case of a dust bowl-like natural disaster (why farmers get paid for leaving fields empty).

While this does stabilize the price and amount of food available, it also means that the price of food is mostly decoupled from demand. If food becomes scarce, the price remains the same because the reduced amount of food is still enough to satiate everyone. If everyone's stomachs are full, there is no additional demand, and consequently no price increase. Although if city-dwellers get their way and end agricultural subsidies because they take food for granted and don't understand the randomness and variability in food production and how the subsidies stabilize supply, this economic feedback mechanism will start to function again.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

Oh that's very simple.

It's about net water usage. Agriculture needs a lot of water. That isn't some 20th century capitalist evil symbol of waste... that's just a fact of the process. It's like complaining that melting steel requires a lot of heat. Yeah it does. It's how you do it.

Farms need water. They just do. They need a lot of it. They actually need it. They can use a lot less if you want... by producing less. I mean, you'll have more water but people will starve to death if they had to depend on those farms for food. You can choose.

What the cities keep doing is making short term decisions to kill off farms which allows them to delay their own inevitable infrastructure programs. It's going to happen. ANd if they keep killing farms until they're forced to finally fix their own problem then everything will be dead around the cities for hundreds of miles. Just desert and wind. And all the food will have to get shipped in from a thousand miles away likely from mexico or canada. it's crazy. California is one of the great agriculture farmlands in the world. We can put high quality inexpensive fruit on the table of every family in America and export more at a great profit. Our produce is amongst the best in the world. We have peers but no superiors. Beyond that, we have the premier agricultural scientists and universities in the world. We have genetic engineering labs and detailed crop breeding programs that go back nearly a hundred years. Ever heard of the Russet Potato? We invented it.

That is what you're killing if you kill the California agro business. We're like the Detroit of fruit and vegetables only we didn't go into some sad decline in the 70s. We're still brilliant. We're still very competitive. We just need water. We don't even need more water. We just need our water. Let the agro business have the water it has always had and amazing things will keep coming out of this industry. But starve it down to some tiny farms in northern California and a few wineries... and we're dead. It all dies with it. And as to the environment... who thinks the mexican farms are going to be more environmentally conscious then the californian ones? Exactly... it's stark raving foaming at the mouth lunacy.

I don't know whether to argue with these people or grab my butterfly net and march them off to the nuthouse. It's just very frustrating.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a comment on NYC water usage. NYC is a prime example of how cities can manage water supply despite an increasing population. Water usage in NYC in 1979 was 1.512 billion gallons per day with a population of roughly 7.1 million. This comes out to water usage of 213 gallons per person. Today, the US average for water use per person is approximately 153 gallons per person per day. NYC's usage in 2006 was 1.086 billion gallons per day. With a population of 8.2 billion, this comes out to a use of 132.4 gallons per day. So with more than a million more people living in NYC today, the water consumption as a whole has come down 39% while the use per person has come down 61%. The majority of consumption decreases can be attributed to more efficient plumbing(toilets, showers, fixing leaks in water distribution) rather than any lifestyle change. This combined with the strong protection of wilderness areas between the reservoirs and the city has created a very sustainable water supply for the city.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

dysfunctional market?

First to have a market you have to have property rights. That is ownership.

Without ownership how do you have a market?

Second, they're more then happy to sell water to each other at fair market value. Unfortunately, that is very high.

There are farmers that sell water to each other and to the cities. But it's like buying bottled water and putting it in the tap. It's very expensive because they don't have to sell it and the only people that buy are people that REALLY need it.

There is a shortage. It is more demand then supply. The cities sell the water to residents at a VASTLY discounted price. The cities don't have to pay for most of it because the cities also have water rights. So they don't buy most of the water either. They own it. They use it. They can buy the water from the farms if they want. But if you're shutting down production of a profitable farm to give water to the city you're going to want to make AT LEAST as much in profit as you would by growing a crop with that water and then selling it on the open market. Think they use a lot of water? Wait until you see how much money they make using it. And that's what buying water from the farms costs. Minimum. Lots farms would rather grow something and remain active then shut down. It's what they do. They like farming. So you often have to pay them even more then what they'd make. And it's theirs. It's their water. if they don't want to sell they don't have to sell. It's like your car. If came up to you on the street and offered you the value of your car in cash would you accept that and let me take your car? Probably not. You'd want more then it was worth because then you don't have a car and you need new one. And there is inconvenience in the transaction. And of course I look like I really want the car so you might as well charge me extra just because you can.

That's all that's going on here and that's an entirely healthy and normal market.

I think you're upset that the government doesn't own all the water. I think your notion of a market might be the government just dolling water out to whomever it deems is worthy and charging a fee it finds reasonable. That isn't a market. That's a monopoly... and that is dysfunctional.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[StikyPad]

Agriculture needs a lot of water. That isn't some 20th century capitalist evil symbol of waste... that's just a fact of the process. It's like complaining that melting steel requires a lot of heat. Yeah it does. It's how you do it.

Yes, but "a lot" is not a useful number. How much beef do you eat? "A lot." How much water do cows drink? "A lot." The authors are claiming a specific number, but not explaining how they get it, or whether the same water is counted twice. How do they measure it? Do they use the same technique everywhere? Presumably not every farmer is using the same irrigation techniques or sources. For better or worse, there's runoff. There's water reprocessing plants. Evaporated water may be reintroduced back into the same supply. How do they measure water pollution, which they include in usage? Is polluted water unused for other things? Obviously it is, in some places, so why is it summed into usage? These are not nitpicks; the viability and veracity of their conclusions is directly dependent upon their measurement methodology.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

Getting specific is not useful in the context of this discussion. Furthermore, rationing the water indifferent to your objective of being efficient will cause a large decrease in productivity.

Farmers are very cautious by nature. They've got Murphy's law beaten into them through generations of improbable things going wrong. Farmers worry about everything. They worry about the weather. Every day. They worry about the price of their product. They worry about disease. They worry about pests. They worry about poison. It just goes on and on. But farmers have ulcers from all the things they worry about.

If you give them a strict water limit based on the number of live stock or the acreage they're going to cut back production so they have a fat surplus of water. In their mind they're going to think "what if I need it." In their world that could happen. They could have a situation where maybe it was a little hotter for a few days and that caused additional evaporation and that evaporation dried the soil out and the soil can't be too dry or it damages the plant. And if the plant is damaged we could lose the whole crop, everything could die, and months of hard work and worrying will come to nothing.

Farmers worry.

If you tighten their belts they'll going to find ways to stick their thumbs between the straps so they have a little room.

Please don't try to judge and regulate a very complicated and sophisticated business without any experience in it. It's as complicated as anything else we do today. This isn't farming like the Egyptians 4000 years ago. Lots of people like to think that farming is just people screwing around in the dirt. Any moron can stick a seed in the ground and get a shoot to come up. We did that in pre-school. Every kid was given a radish seed, we stuck our seed in our cup with our little names on it. And then couple weeks later out shoots this little stem from the cup. Amazing... miracle of life.

That's about as much like farming as putting a band aid on is practicing medicine.

The farmers are not stupid, ignorant, or especially in California "hillbillies"... They've more college education then most of the people that presume to be superior to them.

I don't mean to come off strong here. I'm just saying... don't presume you can come in with no knowledge of a very sophisticated business and correct all their obvious mistakes. That's about as likely as looking at the blueprints of a satellite and determining the flaw in it's design without in fact any experience or knowledge of the field.

I'm just saying... it's complicated.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[timeOday]

Won't economics just solve this problem?

Not really. For many people in the US, rising food prices might just mean eating steak less often. But for millions (billions?) of people around the globe, and also for many Americans unless food stamps benefits also rise, a rise in food prices equates to going hungry.

And if you expect hungry people to concern themselves with legal artifice, such as respecting property rights or water rights, you will be disappointed. It doesn't work that way. Rising food prices contributed to a number of regime changes in the last couple years. (As much as Gingrich derides Obama as the Food Stamp President, I honestly think the US would be in major political upheaval right now without them.)

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Rich0]

dysfunctional market?

First to have a market you have to have property rights. That is ownership.

And there can be ownership - you own a gallon of water, not a perpetual right to draw a gallon of water per day from some river without further cost.

I think you're upset that the government doesn't own all the water. I think your notion of a market might be the government just dolling water out to whomever it deems is worthy and charging a fee it finds reasonable. That isn't a market. That's a monopoly... and that is dysfunctional.

I don't propose that the government arbitrarily doll out water. I'm suggesting that it auction off whatever is available to whoever wants to buy it. Those who can extract the greatest economic value from it can bid the highest. This is usually the most effective way to utilize scarce resources.

Water rights only exist with the consent of government in any case. If there were no government, then anybody could dam up anybody else's supply lines, or draw as much as they wanted from the supply. Then people could stand around with guns shooting at each other and whoever has the biggest guns would end up getting the water. Government is in practice defined by whoever has the biggest guns.

It sounds like government fiat was what caused the problem in the first place. Hundreds of years ago some government administrator told somebody that they could draw 20% of the water from some stream. Today we have a big problem. If government can create the mess, I see no reason that it can't fix it.

By all means the government can pay for whatever "property" it confiscates, if it is owned by an individual. I'd value the rights at whatever the individual valued them at when they paid the inheritance tax on it when they got it from whoever had it before them. Chances are they didn't say that it was priceless back then, so it isn't priceless now. Corporate rights could be purchased at the average rate that individual rights were purchased for, since corporations don't pay estate taxes (which is one of the reasons that corporations tend to get out of control).

I'm all for private ownership - when it makes sense. However, private ownership of scarce commodities like water causes more problems than it solves, especially when coupled with bad legislation.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Karmashock]

Well, I failed to explain how the system works since you don't understand. I'm sorry I explained it badly.

I don't think I'm skilled enough to make it clear. Sorry.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Anonymous Coward]

The plants need water... not money.

We have lots of money. The problem isn't that we don't have the money to build. The problem isn't that we don't want to build.

The problem is that we have sever NIMBYism... you can't build anything. A big solar power plant was recently closed down because it infringed on the habitat of a local lizard... yes, it was in the middle of the desert.

Karmashock, you keep repeating that fallacy. It never happened. The closest thing is that a solar plant was forced to to pay for the RELOCATION costs of the tortoises! They didn't shut down the plant despite what Fox News and Rupert Murdoch right wing American press may be telling you they "heard about." You know better now, so quit repeating that BS over n over n over.

Re:We see this all the time in the western US

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I failed to explain how the system works since you don't understand. I'm sorry I explained it badly.

I don't think I'm skilled enough to make it clear. Sorry.

Your explanation is bad because it fails to address self-interest.

Let's say you offer to sell me your water from the river flowing through your land at a buck a gallon or a million a gallon, whatever. Instead, I buy the land just upstream or yours and pipe it around your land and use it, sell it or even to just dump it in the sea because I'm rich and have a personal grudge against you.

Clearly, a river running through your land does not make it your river, other wise I can do what I just proposed. Ground water really runs in slow seeping underground rivers (aquifers), so that's the same thing. The US would certainly not like it if Canada tried to do that to the US. We might even threaten sanctions. You may try to make it a rain argument instead.

Nothing prevents me from buying a thin strip of land around your and digging a 20' walled ditch around it. I can then dig as many wells as I want and pump all the ground water surrounding it out, which deprives you of anything you can't barrel. No slant drilling needed. If you can't store 100% of the water you need between rain storms, you're bankrupted and lose your land. Even if you think you can, there's no reason I can't build a giant fan and dehumidifiers upwind of your land and a wall around it to prevent rainfall on it. Impractical today, yes, but no more impractical than trying to turn every drop of rainfall on millions of acres into (a lot of) barrels.

How about air? Why can't I run an oxygen concentrator on my land, a really, really big one that happens to asphyxiate those who are just across the property line? Because I "own" that oxygen since it's on my land, so why should I be deprived of my property?

Here's one more analogy for you. If I buy an acre, am I entitled to all the heat that hits that land from the sun, the atmosphere and radiative heat from neighboring lands? What if I also invent a zero point energy storage device? Am I allowed to turn my acre into a subzero heat vacuum, killing anything near it (let's say I have a no-trespassing sign) because heat flows towards my land is is captured? Technology continues to progress...

The invention and application of enough of machinery and plastic means you might be able to capture all that water one day, but if you ever do, expect the application of a rock to your head until other people aren't dying of thirst.

Oh, and cities don't steal water from farms, the citizens of a state own the water by virtue of paying taxes and water bills.

Water is highly recyclable

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too bad that once water is consumed it disappears forever.

Oh wait, no it doesn't.

Privatization

[Anonymous Coward]

The criminal activity today is to privatize water.
Fuck these Agenda 21 fascists
Fuck the slashdot experts (who don't know shit)

It's all to do with pricing

[Colin Smith]

The perception is that when something is cheap, it is of low value so it doesn't matter if you consume too much of it.
If you look at areas where water is scarce and where wars are fought over it, or where it has to be desalinated i,e, it's expensive, you'll find the users are a lot more careful over how much is used and how it is used.

Compare US irrigation methods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irrigation1.jpg

with Persian Qanat methods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat

Re:It's all to do with pricing

[petermgreen]

The perception is that when something is cheap, it is of low value so it doesn't matter if you consume too much of it.

mmm, it's basic economics, if something is cheap then you don't worry about how much of it you are using. If you do then you will likely be driven out of buisness by someone who doesn't.

One problem is in a lot of places there are a lot of people with rights to draw from the same aquifer. Since each individually makes up a tiny portion of the load on the aquifer none of them individually have any motivatation to reduce what they take from it even if the current overall take rate is unsustainable.

Compare US irrigation methods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irrigation1.jpg [wikipedia.org]

with Persian Qanat methods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat [wikipedia.org]

mmm, looks the persian QNAT method avoids a lot of evaporation losses and doesn't need power but it also can only be constructed in specific terrain and looks highly labor intensive to construct.

A compromise could be to keep the pumps from the american method but deliver the water through soil seepage like the persians do.

Re:It's all to do with pricing

[Rostin]

1. That's a typical method of irrigation in the US only in the loosest sense of the word 'typical'. What you've managed to find is a picture of an antique. My dad has a 20-year-old center pivot sprinkler that has low pressure dropped nozzles to reduce evaporation and soil compaction as much as possible, and it was old technology even back then. Center pivot means just what it sounds like. One end is fixed, and the other end goes around in a giant circle.

The nozzles on these machines vary in size from the center (i.e. near the pivot) to the end. Think about it: The drops near the pivot go around the circle much more slowly than those on the end, and so if the nozzles were all the same size, a lot more water would be put out near the center. Also, the water pressure is higher there since it hasn't undergone friction losses through the length of the sprinkler. During the first summer that my dad owned that machine, I remember walking down it several times with a dot matrix print out in one hand and a bucket of nozzles in the other, replacing them one at a time to try to evenly distribute the supply of water as much as possible.

A half-mile-long sprinkler was (again, 20 years ago) an $80K investment over the former, low-tech system of row irrigation, and he was and is not an especially wealthy farmer. Why would he go to so much expense and trouble? In part because one of his largest expenses is pumping costs, and center pivot irrigation makes much more efficient use of water, overall.

2. I am not personally familiar with Qanats, but they appear to be a water collection and storage method, not a method of irrigation. It was surprising difficult to find quantitative information about irrigation in the middle east, but after several minutes of googling, I did find this brief, UN-produced report on irrigation in Saudi Arabia. It claims, in part:

All agriculture is irrigated and in 1992 the water managed area was estimated at about 1.6 million ha, all equipped for full/partial control irrigation. Surface irrigation [i.e. row watering, like my dad used to do] is practiced on the old agricultural lands, cultivated since before 1975, which represent about 34% of the irrigated area (Figure 3). Sprinkler irrigation is practiced on about 64% of the irrigated areas. The central pivot sprinkler system covers practically all the lands cropped with cereals.

Oh.

Re:It's all to do with pricing

[Savage-Rabbit]

1. That's a typical method of irrigation in the US only in the loosest sense of the word 'typical'. What you've managed to find is a picture of an antique.

The fact remains that in large regions of the USA (and other countries for that matter) ground water is being depleted so aggressively it is causing land subsidence. The symptoms, ground water levels lowered by tens and even hundreds of feet, speak for them selves:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html

I particularly liked the part about closing down runways at Edwards AF base because of fissures caused by ground water depletion. One should also keep in mind that farmers are far from being the only ones to contribute to this problem. Urban and industrial water wastage also plays a part.

Re:It's all to do with pricing

[Rostin]

Yes, I understand that ground water is being depleted. So do most farmers. As the links you posted point out, diminishing ground water leads to higher pumping costs, both because it has to be pumped from deeper under ground, and because wells which used to be very reliable have to have work done on them (acid treatments, shooting, etc) or abandoned entirely. New water wells can be incredibly expensive in areas where the water table is hundreds of feet beneath the surface. That's what's driving investment in fancy equipment to reduce water usage, like computer-controlled center pivot sprinklers.

I think I'm probably guilty of reading too much between the lines of your first comment, but a couple of things about it set me off. First, the assertion that we consume "too much" water because its low price causes us to misperceive its true value. Actually, I agree with you to some extent. Water is being inefficiently used by farmers because, for one thing, the government has its thumb on the scale. Farmers are incentivized by ag subsidies to produce certain crops like corn in quantities that far exceed free market demand. Water usage that couldn't be justified at the free market price of corn can be justified when the government is paying for it.

But, I don't think that's actually what you meant. I think you really believe (or at least you assume without thinking carefully) that water has some kind of inherent value independent of what people are willing to pay for it. Here's the part where I'm really reading between the lines: Usually after someone says a thing like that, they follow it up with "Thar oughtta be a law!" that "corrects" this imbalance in what people are paying versus what water is "truly" worth. Because if we don't, all the drinkable water will run out. It's an argument related in many ways to "peak oil" alarmism that has continued without abeyance for decades now, despite being repeatedly proven wrong by history.

The point I wanted to make is, look, market forces are already taking care of this. Obtaining water is more expensive than it used to be, and farmers are investing in giant, sensationally expensive sprinklers to use less water. And the world keeps turning. Ten or fifty years from now, when there's even less water available at the current price, who knows what it will become economical to pursue? Solar concentrators driving desalination plants. Actual water recycling. Maybe we'll finally be rid of the damn ag subsidies. We don't need anyone telling us what the "true" value of water is to make it last or to prevent us from "over consuming." Prices do that already, when the government doesn't get in the way.

Second, I detected an undercurrent of "greedy American bastards!" in your comparison. I apologize if I'm wrong, but you have to admit that such comparisons are de rigueur. As I pointed out, prices have driven American farmers to adopt the same technology for conserving water that people with a lot of money use in the desert. In fact, I rather suspect the flow of technology occurred in the opposite direction.

Re:It's all to do with pricing

[Trogre]

Does your dad do his sprinkling at night?

Not trolling, but I often see these things running on hot summer days and wonder how much of the water actually makes it into the ground.

Re:It's all to do with pricing

[Rostin]

Even though I'm sure more evaporation occurs during the daytime, he runs the sprinklers continuously. I honestly don't know why.

I was going to speculate, but as I thought about it, I realized that there more constraints than I first realized. It's possible to both under-water, and over-water, of course. There's a limit to the flowrate of water he can supply. The sprinkler, even on 100% speed, takes (IIRC) approximately a day to make a full revolution. Watering continuously might be the only way to satisfy all the constraints, even if he does lose significantly more water to evaporation during the day.

Unfortunately, even though I grew up on a farm, I don't know that much about the reasons behind the decision making. My dad kept all that to himself. I just did what I was told. :)

Desalination

[backslashdot]

Desalination .. just have solar powered desalination plants so that desalinated sea water can be piped inland to the farms .. israel does it .. if you dont wanna be stuck with a salt mound .. just remix the salt with the agricultural outflow and it'll be dumped back in the sea.

Re:Desalination

[DeathToBill]

Yeah, only, like, wouldn't it be great if instead of having to build huge desalination plants and then pipe the water to where it's needed, there was some way that the water would, just, like, float up into the sky and then dump down on farmland?

Wait...

Re:Desalination

[Luckyo]

Indeed. While places like Israel and Australia are indeed in a bit of a trouble in relation to water, there are plenty of spots in the world where rainfalls are significant enough to reduce the need for such extreme measures to ensure irrigation needs are met. Incidentally, that's where most of the world's food is produced as well.

Re:Desalination

[Dr. Tom]

graphene bilayers selectively pass only pure water. problem solved.

We need an agricultural revoltuion

[arcite]

That is fit for the 21st century. We had a food revolution in the 20th century, where we used massive amounts of fertilizer and massive amounts of water, this resulted in massive amounts of food. But at what cost? We chopped down most of the great rainforests and are quickly depleting what remains of the prime topsoil left in the world. We need a paradigm shift. We have the technology to make maximum use of water, we only need to make the investments needed to reap the savings. There are numerous small scale initiatives around the world, utilizing mangroves, saltwater irrigation, greenhouses, hydroponics. Wastage results in more than 1/3 of food going bad or being thrown away due to market conditions. Much work needs to be done if we are to feed 10 billion humans.

Re:We need an agricultural revoltuion

[Mindcontrolled]

Given that for any one calory worth of food we consume, we use about 10 cal worth of fossil fuels for its production and transport, I'd say that this paradigm shift will be upon us in force shortly, whether we want it or not.

Re:We need an agricultural revoltuion

[Karmashock]

That is fit for the 21st century. We had a food revolution in the 20th century, where we used massive amounts of fertilizer and massive amounts of water, this resulted in massive amounts of food. But at what cost? We chopped down most of the great rainforests and are quickly depleting what remains of the prime topsoil left in the world. We need a paradigm shift. We have the technology to make maximum use of water, we only need to make the investments needed to reap the savings. There are numerous small scale initiatives around the world, utilizing mangroves, saltwater irrigation, greenhouses, hydroponics. Wastage results in more than 1/3 of food going bad or being thrown away due to market conditions. Much work needs to be done if we are to feed 10 billion humans.

As to what the food amounted to... it amounted to your parents being able to eat and you being able to eat. Willing to go hungry to save the planet? Even if you are, which is unlikely most would beat you to within an inch of your life for a sandwich after going without food for a few days. Your moral position only survives if people stay well fed. If people go hungry everything breaks down and people just stop caring about everything but where to get food - NOW.

As to the environmental cost, you're mostly talking about the third world that is practicing slash and burn. Both Africa and south america have a big problem with that and it is destroying their environment. In the first world, it isn't a problem. Our agricultural revolution didn't do that. In fact, I think by most estimates we have larger forests today then we did 400 years ago. That sounds absurd, but apparently the old forests burned a lot and due to our land management... eg logging and fire departments... they don't burn down as much. I'm not 100 percent sure on that but I did hear that from what I considered a credible source.

As to prime topsoil, again this is mostly a third world issue. There are mismanaged farms in the US but they're the exception to the rule. Farming is a professional business. It's actually one of the more scientific and specialized fields in our society. Farmers... especially the large ones are run like long term investments. They're not going to let the farm go to hell because that would spell doom for their business.

As to mangroves... not sure what you're talking about there. How do you get food out of them? I don't think you can eat them no matter how they're processed. I supposed you could eat the cellos... but you wouldn't get any nutrition out of it. Some food companies add what is basically wood pulp as a filler to food... it's called "cellos" on the ingredients. On the bright side, it's low calories and won't hurt you.

As to salt water irrigation, that is an interesting idea but unfortunately most plant species are poisoned by salt water. Would you be willing to accept some genetic engineering of existing staple crops if it meant they could be raised on salt water? If so, that would be a real 21st century agricultural revolution. We've got wheat that will grow in subzero climate because we spliced it with icefish so it produces it's own antifreeze. Down side is that people that are allergic to fish can sometimes have a reaction to it. It's still a learning process but it's very promising.

As to greenhouses and hydroponics... Expensive. But possibly it's for the best. Some of the larger agro farms might be able to finance something like this but it would require a significant increase in food prices to be worth it. The problem is that if food prices in the US rise we'll just import the food rather then growing it locally. So to make this happen we'd either need to cut off trade to other countries or have food prices raised internationally which would cause the third world to starve... millions of dead babies. I put that image into your head because it's easy to say just raise prices in the first world. But in the third food is almost the only thing they actually buy. Rent for mud huts is not something that really happens. And th

The National Parliament passed the bill part of Dh

[Anonymous Coward]

, The National Parliament passed the bill part of Dhaka City Corporation http://ansaribd.blogspot.com/2011/11/national-parliament-passed-bill-part-of.html

Why don't we use Antarctic Ice?

[G3ckoG33k]

Why don't we use Antarctic Ice? It should be transportable in large quantities. A super oil tanker sized ship should be able to supply some i guess.

But would it be financially realistic?

Re:Why don't we use Antarctic Ice?

[captainpanic]

Because the amount of water that a supersized oil tanker can carry is but drop in the big scheme of things.

Just compare your own fuel consumption and domestic water consumption. Your total water consumption is a lot higher than the domestic consumption, because, as TFA says, agriculture uses the most. So, in a nutshell, the answer to your suggestion is: "No, that's pointless, because we just use too much frickin' water to start transporting it across the globe".

Re:Why don't we use Antarctic Ice?

[BeaverCleaver]

No. It has actually been studied.

Re:Why don't we use Antarctic Ice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of cubic meters?

Re:Why don't we use Antarctic Ice?

[Anonymous Coward]

Montgomery Brewster, is that you?

Side effects

[ewanm89]

Maybe using lots of water in agriculture is actually a good thing.

Lets actually look at what side effects might be if plants weren't getting enough water, for a start photosynthesis needs lots of water for the electron exchange of the reaction, now yes there are alternatives (arsenite) usually they are toxic, also only work in specific bacteria designed to do it that way.

Fundamentally, the more water the more photosynthesis, the more sugar (for us and livestock to eat) and oxygen we get. Therefore maximizing water usage for agriculture without drowning the plants is a good thing for all of us. It's not like water doesn't fall from the sky, it is the most abundant substance on this planet and not using it in one area does not suddenly help get it in desert areas where there is droughts and famines.

Re:Side effects

[Mindcontrolled]

It ceases to be a good thing when you have to deplete fossil aquifers to feed your plants, though. Or when you grab up all the freshwater upstream, leaving the guys downstream with dust.

Units

[Penguinshit]

I need to know how many Libraries of Congress each American consumes. For global agriculture I guess we could use Libraries of Alexandria...

Actually no

[tanveer1979]

With the passing of time, local crops have dwindled due to inter regional trade, and supply demand constraints. For example, in arid regions of India, instead of wheat "Jowar, Bajra, Ragi...." etc., were grown which use much less water. but since majority eat wheat, in the interest of business, farmers shifted to Wheat, which uses more water. In other regions, which never grew rice(due to lack of water), canals saw increase in rice production, and movement of local populace to wheat and rice, instead of the local cereals which consume less water.
So everybody does not need to eat rice. Rice and wheat users can have other cereals added to their diets, and increase demand, and some cultivation area can be reclaimed, and balance restored.

Another aspect is hybrids. Many high yield varieties(which in the long run are not all that more beneficial) often require higher water content. In irrigated regions, people often switch to those varieties. In the short run you have better profits, but since these are not as resistant to local conditions(in some cases), it also means increased pesticide expense.

So with intelligent Farming, and growing crops actually suited to the region, water usage can be minimized.

Apart from that, there is the irrigation question. Using drip irrigation drops water usage by over 60-70%. We have used it on an piece of land where irrigated water was a scarcity, and illegal mining killed local rivulets and creeks. Due to very less quantity of ground water, and only perennial source being an artesian well, we had two options, stop growing, or use wisely. thanks to some govt subsidies and support, we were able to setup a drip irrigation system, which resulted in low water usage, and now we have surplus water.

Unfortunately, much of agriculture, even in developed world, does not move to this kind of savings unless there is a sword hanging on the head. Countries like Israel have water shortage, so they have moved to intelligent use. If other places where shortage is not there yet, also move, it will result in water saving.

Lastly, in many areas, rain water is not stored effectively, and a lot goes waste(flows into the sea). If a large part of that can be channeled to groundwater using recharge zones, it will replenish groundwater which can actually help people survive a year or 2 of dry season.

That said, other than conservation, many places can also have strict policies to block untreated industrial waste flowing into rivers, which will result in higher fresh water availability

Re:Actually no

[Anonymous Coward]

And by short run, you mean a hundred years. We've been pushing modern farming techniques for 100 years, and have had 3 unprofitable years. We don't do "sustainable" agriculture, which is a crock of lies, but given that our yield continues to increase over the last 100 years, I'd say something we're doing is very sustainable. And yes, we're acutely aware that our land is our only resource.

I'm not sure where you are; the illegal mining question begs whether you're a lying leftist with a grapevine or in another country. However, here, we're doing what makes the best long-term sense, and worrying that having pilfered pensions, we're the next target.

Re:Actually no

[Bengie]

" given that our yield continues to increase over the last 100 years, I'd say something we're doing is very sustainable"

We're importing massive amounts of fertilizer from around the world as we strip the soil of it's nutrients faster than it can be naturally replenished. The amount of fertilizer isn't measured in units of tons, because there would be too many to understand. We count in units of cubic miles per year.

Just like water, there are large natural reserves around the world that we strip empty and import. But don't be fooled into thinking those reserves will replenish for a few hundred thousands years. Once they're gone... well.. I guess we'll worry about that when we get there.

Re:Actually no

[Troyusrex]

> So with intelligent Farming, and growing crops actually suited to the region, water usage can be minimized. Actually, it's NOT intelligent to use less water if water is cheap and plentiful enough that it costs less than, say, adding drip irrigation. Your goods will cost more and you'll have a hard time making a living compared to the really intelligent person. The profit motive is much derided, but at it's root it's about the efficient use of resources. Farmers SHOULDN'T move to a new system until they have "a sword hanging [over their] head" as it will destroy wealth by using resources inefficiently. In a case where government believes a market failure has occurred (such as a tragedy of the commons situation with aquifers) they need to raise the prices artificially (usually via taxes) or subsidize other behavior (like they did with you) and to make, for instance, saving water the "intelligent" thing to do. For an extreme example, in the Panama canal zone it's rains a tremendous amount and the problem is usually how to get rid of excess water. Fresh water there is insanely cheap and in the occasional dry spell using drip irrigation to water the crops would be wasteful as the drip system could have been used somewhere that needs it.

Re:Actually no

[anagama]

In addition to your points, 100 years is actually a pretty short timescale. Prolonged loss of water resources that have become relied upon has been a factor in the collapse of many civilizations that lasted much more than 100 years. The Anasazi come to mind off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are others.

Re:Actually no

[tanveer1979]

In India, if you read the the first line of my comment, you would know.
WE had the "Green revolution" in 60s and 70s, but right now, yields are mostly stagnant, with slow growth rate.

Definitions - Tricky Things

[DeathToBill]

This study borders on sleight-of-hand to my mind. At least the way it is presented is misleading.

The headline says that 92% of freshwater use is in agriculture. What it doesn't mention is that the vast majority of that "use" of water is rain that happens to fall on farmland. We could increase that number by converting land use to arable land without changing any natural flow of water. For instance, the city of Adelaide is about the same area as the county of Cornwall and is built largely on prime agricultural land. Moving the city 100 miles North East onto unfarmable land and resuming agriculture there would noticeably increase the agricultural use of water - but it would actually be an environmentally good thing.

When it comes to diverting the natural course of water (extraction from rivers, building dams, draining lakes etc - what you might call exploiting the natural resource), the use of water in agriculture is much less - the majority here supplies water for urban residences and industry.

Re:Definitions - Tricky Things

[Rich0]

That makes sense. People build farms where stuff grows well on its own. Nobody picks a spot in the middle of Nevada and says, hmm, how can I engineer a farm here...

Since the biggest capital item in any farm is its land, farms also tend to be built in unpopulated areas. So, the rain that falls on them isn't really useful for any purpose other than farming unless you want to build 500 mile aqueducts.

Re:Definitions - Tricky Things

[trongey]

...the vast majority of that "use" of water is rain that happens to fall on farmland...

This growth pattern wasn't caused by rain falling on the farmland.

Re:Definitions - Tricky Things

[trongey]

... Nobody picks a spot in the middle of Nevada and says, hmm, how can I engineer a farm here...

Actually, they do.

Re:Definitions - Tricky Things

[Anonymous Coward]

vast majority of that "use" of water is rain that happens to fall on farmland

How do they shape those rain showers into circles? The crops I see in any given aerial image of the US show that farmers almost universally prefer circular fields.

The circles accommodate big sprinklers. The "vast majority" of "use" is not rain. The water is supplied from reservoirs and aquifers, and pumped onto crops using sprinklers.

Water use by agriculture is real consumption; the water becomes a part of the product, or evaporates. Most urban and industrial water use is reclaimed in water treatment. The study is not sleight-of-hand; it is correct and its conclusions about agricultural water use are legitimate.

Please stop your anthrophobe karma whoring and get your fact straight.

Re:Definitions - Tricky Things

[ffflala]

It sounds like you're not including the agricultural use of the Ogalala aquifier ahref=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquiferrel=url2html-18303http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer>. Agricultural use of this aquifier for irrigation is of the scope that complete depletion of this source has been consistently pegged around 2050.

Throw in lots of fracking with little regard to seepage on top of this (it's almost entirely under fracking-friendly flyover country), and it seems disturbingly possible that this massive natural storage reservoir of fresh water --about one seventh the amount of water in the entire Great Lakes basin-- will either be depleted or fouled beyond use within our lifetimes.

Uh...

[raehl]

I honestly don't know why Americans prefer corn-fed meat. It seems fattier than grass-fed

You answered your own question. We're Americans, and we want more fat. Fat taste good, mmmm+e@Ds%*a`v=\|3s};aH

NO HEARTBEAT

YES!

[Lumpy]

Because water sprayed on plants and on the ground dissipates into space! And we have angered the sky gods so they are not sprinkling new water upon us as much!

The author of the article needs a bit more education in earth science. Yes I know the problem with pesticide and fertilizer contamination is real but if areas do proper watershed management it's just fine. What is the REAL problem is when you get idiots in a dry area wanting to pipe water out of a different watershed to them. For example, all the morons living in California wanting great lakes water. and large dams that reduce the flow to create recreational lakes for rich people.

Plus for example Arizona, Nevada, and California has a population greater than it's natural resources can handle, so people need to start moving away or live with the lack of water. Disrupting a watershed in that way will only cause problems for the area having the water taken out. It's there because of a balance of the water consumed is equal to the water collected from rain over the watershed area.

I'd support Pumping the water from the end of the Mississippi to California, but they don't want that water, they want that clean stuff we have up here, not the 1100 miles of turd dumping that happens starting in Chicago. Which brings up another point, rivers flowing to the oceans uses 80X more water than agriculture and industry combined. Why are we not talking how rivers are sucking fresh water dry?

Re:YES!

[CayceeDee]

but if areas do proper watershed management it's just fine.

True. However, no one does. None of the agricultural methods used in large scale agriculture use any kind of watershed management. They just keep draiing the water from the aquifers and not worrying about replenishment rates. It isn't about rain. Its about water access to provide more food than rain can do. Rainfall isn't reliable for large scale agriculture. In many areas where agriculture thrives rainfall is completely insufficient for crop growth. Especially for places like China and India. The solution is to dig into the aquifers for supplies. The problem is that we are past the replenishment level for most of them and are draining water from locations where it was deposited millenia ago. The hydrologic cycle isn't capable of replacing at the level we are draining. If we stop draining aquifers and rely on rainfall for all production then production decreases to the point where it isn't sufficient to provide the level of food required. Simple fact. We are withdrawing water faster than the natural system works. The water in the aquifers is limited. Once they are depleted we are faced with the more expensive alternatives. Price of food skyrockets and production falls. Only the rich can afford food and the rest of the people starve.

Re:YES!

[Lumpy]

Modern irrigation works well with watershed management. You need to get the farmers to STOP using flood irrigation and the stupid air spraying sprinklers.

Also have you driven the agri states? Very little is FOOD production. The several thousands of miles of corn is not for eating.

Re:YES!

[dachshund]

The second problem is the way that agricultural water subsidies work. Since farms can obtain water at vastly below-market rates (and can't resell it), there's little incentive to manage it carefully. Hence the pipeline infrastructure is incredible leaky. I don't recall the statistics offhand, but simply repairing the pipeline leaks could save as much water as is used by one or more large cities.

The proper solution is to either (a) allow these interests to resell their subsidized water for human consumption (not terribly appealing), or to (b) offer them cash subsidies for water used, rather than subsidizing the cost of the water itself. Either solution would create an incentive for agribusinesses to upgrade their delivery infrastructure, and would cut out an enormous amount of wastage.

Re:YES!

[Goldsmith]

Criticizing the water use of grain crops is sure to get a rise out of midwesterners.

I would never imagine that someone would claim that a professor of water management in the Netherlands needed to learn more about water in earth science. That is highly entertaining, thank you.

Re:YES!

[Attila Dimedici]

I basically agree with your points. One of the things that angers me is when the federal government passes laws governing water usage based on areas that have water limitations that apply to the entire country. I live in an area that has an abundance of water (precipitation exceeds amount of water used by a very large factor). Yet we have federal laws that apply to us to cause us to conserve water. Why? My usage of water will not effect anyone outside of my area and even there it will only effect others on those rare occasions when there is a local drought (We have local droughts that sometimes, although rarely more than a month or two, last up to a year, but my above statement about precipitation applies to any five year period for all of the time that Europeans have lived in this area and long before that). I understand that some of the areas near me with municipal water supplies have more involved issues, but those issues are ones for the local municipality to address (or, in some cases the state government), not the federal government.
I understand that there are parts of the country where water usage effects an area that crosses state lines. In those cases, it is perfectly appropriate for the federal government to play a role in resolving the conflct between states. However, the rules applied to address those issues should be applied to that area, not to areas where water usage issues are minimal, if they exist at all.

Re:YES!

[Solandri]

Doesn't global warming help solve this problem? People have been attributing increased storms (especially hurricanes) and snowfall to global warming. The reasoning goes that increased temperatures leads to greater evaporation from the oceans, leading to greater moisture content in the air, leading to greater precipitation in the form of rain and snow.

Isn't greater precipitation exactly what you need to counter a shortage of fresh water? Yeah the terrain may tend to concentrate that precipitation in some flood-prone locales. But if fresh water is becoming scarce in other areas, then those flood waters become a resource which is worth collecting, storing, and selling to parched regions.

Re:YES!

[Trogre]

I agree with most of that you said, however I don't see how a dam, once the lake behind it is filled, reduces the flow of a waterway.

Re:YES!

[nbritton]

Where on earth do you get the idea that Chicago is dumping turds in the Mississippi river? At their closest point, they are more then 130 miles away from each other on opposite ends of the state. Yes the Chicago river is one of the many tributaries of the Illinois river, which is a confluence of the the Missasippi river, but you should realize that only treated sewage is discharged into the river. Moreover the average discharge of the Des Plaines river is a mere 535 cu ft/s and the treated sewage has to travel over 300 miles before it even reaches the mouth of the Illinois river, which discharges 23,200 cu ft/s of water. The Mississippi discharges water at an average of 593,000 cu ft/s, making the Chicago river at most 0.0009% of the Mississippi river. I'd be willing to bet that only a small insufficient fraction of the treated fecal matter actually makes it all the way to the confluence of the Mississippi river, it's filtered out through natural aquatic ecosystem processes.

My house is less then 50 feet away from the Mississippi (and surrounded by it during flood season), so don't think I don't care about protecting this great waterway. Have you ever held a cup of Mississippi water? Their are so many microorganisms in there that you would never want to drink it, even if you knew their was no human or chemical contaminants, without first treating it.

Dune & Spaceballs

[Loki_666]

So, we will be needing windtraps and stillsuits soon?

And how long before a company starts selling Perrie-air when the breathable air starts to run out?

xD

A direct link to the pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a better link.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/06/1109936109.full.pdf

Water is not consumed

[goombah99]

Agriculture does not consume water it uses water. Virtually all the water is returned to the eco system after use.

However there are different sources of water. Ground water versus surface water. Depletion of ground water is not sustainable as water table levels are dropping. Surface water use is sustainable but also has consequences as stream dry up as they are diverted or become filled with water so contaminated it can't be re-used down stream.

Re:Water is not consumed

[Sique]

Not exactly. Agriculture can consume locally available water. And that's all what counts.
If you pump water from ground depots which are not fully refilled, then most water used in agriculture ends up as clouds which the wind blows somewhere else. This water is completely lost for local use. For most of the Central U.S., the amount of water that comes in via rain or rivers, is less than the amount of water lost due to evaporation. And most of the water gets lost due to the amount of water used for agriculture. In this case, agriculture literally sucks the earth dry, because ground water, water from lakes and water enclosed in the last ice age in natural reservoirs below the surface is pumped up and evaporates. Those resources are not unlimited, and they will dry up sooner or later.
The case is different for the East Coast or for most of Europe, where more fresh water comes in via rainfall or rivers, than gets lost due to evaporation. Here you can use as much water as you want, the resources will never dry up, you just have to make sure that used water will not intoxicate fresh water wells, so you have to build an extensive drainage system and water treatment plants.

Re:Water is not consumed

[tmarsh86]

Agriculture sure does consume water. How else do you explain the majority of fruits and vegetables being comprised of 85% or more of water?

Re:Water is not consumed

[unjedai]

I don't consume any water either - I just use it and return it to the eco system (minus my small but ever increasing weight gain).

Re:Water is not consumed

[gtall]

"The case is different for the East Coast or for most of Europe, where more fresh water comes in via rainfall or rivers, than gets lost due to evaporation. Here you can use as much water as you want, the resources will never dry up"

To an extent, on the Maryland peninsula between the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomoc river, most of the fresh is from an aquifer. Due to overbuilding, they expect the peninsula to run dry in 2020 or so. I imagine other areas are not all that different, even places that use river water. Outflows are outpacing inflows, no matter what the inflow is. The only place I know where it is not a problem is the Great Lakes. And if they start to dry up, bad ju-ju.

Re:Water is not consumed

[jonadab]

> For most of the Central U.S., the amount of water that comes in via rain
> or rivers, is less than the amount of water lost due to evaporation.

When you say "Central US", are we talking Central timezone, or what?

> The case is different for the East Coast or for most of Europe,
> where more fresh water comes in via rainfall or rivers, than gets
> lost due to evaporation.

The entire Midwest is like that too. Our municipal reservoirs
generally stay pretty well full just from the precipitation that
falls on the reservoirs themselves. Pretty near everything else
gets routed downstream as fast as possible so it doesn't flood
us out. Almost every road has drainage ditches along the sides
for this purpose. That water all ends up either in the great lakes
or in the Mississippi.

So yeah, we can use as much water as we want.

I think much of the south (east of the Mississippi) is similar.

Re:Water is not consumed

[Coren22]

Do you have a link to an article about this? I live in that particular area and have never heard that.

Water subsidy for agriculture

[l2718]

Part of the problem is the traditional large subsidy that agricultural water gets (both via the infrastructure costs and in direct pricing). Farming would make better use of water if it had to pay the price.

PS: "Olympic-size swimming pools per year" is a strange way to measure water usage. "about 6.8 cubic metres per day" is a much clearer way to express this number. In particular, this makes it clear that low-flow toilets have a negligible effect on water use compared to dishwashing, showers, etc.

What's worse.....

[Anonymous Coward]

We're polluting fresh water at a frightening pace. This fracking obsession is threatening to perminately destroy the ground water supply for a third of the country. Ironically agricultural waste is one of the largest sources of pollution. Fruits and vegetables can be grown more efficiently but we are also grain obsessed in this country and grains are harder to reduce water consumption. We are also obsessed with meat and it uses vast amounts of water in production and processing. Some times our own laws shoot us in the foot. I was interested in gray water irrigation as in using waste tap and shower water for watering lawns and vegetable gardens. Would you believe in most areas it isn't legal? I'm talking about filtering it and rendering it safe first but there aren't standards for it in most areas rendering it illegal. If those that could went to composting toilets and gray water watering systems you'd only waste a small percentage of the water and you'd avoid using any tap water for plants and yards. Lawns are often the largest domestic water use especially in the southwest. Every house could water their lawns with gray water but instead the government forces you to dump all that into the sewers which in many areas lead right back to the ocean.

FYI to all those touting desalination. Picture watering your lawn with gasoline and taking showers in it because that's roughly what the water costs. The joke is the cheapest solution to any resource problem is conservation but people want solutions that allow them to keep wasting.

Commodities Market and Water

[MrKaos]

It really puts grain dumping at sea to keep the commodities prices high into perspective.

If we didn't eat meat?

[fantomas]

>>Do we actually need all those agriculture products?

>Yes, we do.

What if we reduced our meat consumption, and reduced consumption of other water-hungry foods?

You are of course very correct about being more efficient about water use, as proved by many people in many desert and semi-desert areas.

Re:If we didn't eat meat?

[marcosdumay]

If we did that, at the first drought, instead of meat and water-hungry foods becoming scarce, it would be grains that get scarce.

Re:If we didn't eat meat?

[Insightfill]

What if we reduced our meat consumption, and reduced consumption of other water-hungry foods?

If we did that, at the first drought, instead of meat and water-hungry foods becoming scarce, it would be grains that get scarce.

I think the GP's point is that with 10-20 pounds of plant stock required to grow each pound of animal stock, we're wasting a lot of food with that extra step. Studies vary, but ~50% of the grains alone are fed to animals. We'd have excess food every year if a fraction of the animal feed were for humans, and have quite a buffer to withstand shocks of drought or blight.

Slightly dated study.

Re:If we didn't eat meat?

[u38cg]

The problem is not relly one of efficient allocation of plants to those who need them most, but the efficient allocation of inputs to those plants - in particular, water. If farmers globally were actually charged for the water they used, the cost of producing meat would jump quite sharply, and supply and demand would take care of the rest.

Re:If we didn't eat meat?

[marcosdumay]

Ok, maybe we produce more meat than necessary*, and should change some incentives. But attacking meat production as some unwanted thing (as in "what if we didn't eat meat?") is not the way to go.

* That conclusion must come toghether with the information of how much meat is necessary. Otherwise it is not a conclusion at all.

We don't want groundwater, it traps precious gas!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some coal seam gas wells must evacuate water from the great artesian basin for years before they can have anywhere near productive gas yields. Around the Injune area, I've seen these mind-bogglingly huge evaporation ponds - actually trying to transfer precious groundwater back into the sky

And although I've heard Santos are trying hard to make their reverse-osmosis plants work (that would be trying to pump water out of the aquifers at the gas extraction wells, and then back in somewhere I assume has no gas yield potential), they're having big problems making it work properly at scale.

I wish I had some better links, but it's of serious concern:

• http://www.csiro.au/news/~/media/CSIROau/Files/PDF/Coal%20seam%20gas%20PDFs/The%20Great%20Artesian%20Basin%20and%20coal%20seam%20gas.pdf
• http://www.smh.com.au/environment/water-issues/grappling-with-science-and-sceptics-20111111-1nbsg.html
• http://www.basinsustainabilityalliance.org/newsgroundwaterseminar.html

Almost 300 billion litres of water extracted with the gas annually. I've never heard what price Santos, Origin, QGC etc. are paying for this water: are they in fact paying any at all? And, "Millions of tonnes" of waste salt to be dumped somewhere.

I know the situation in Queensland. And I know how much influence the Queensland greens have on the state labor government there. The only conclusion I can draw is that the Greens are just as corrupt as the rest of them.

Posting AC, because I used to be closer to this stuff and should know better.

Whooooosh....

[Viol8]

Does sarcasm really have to be flagged on here with neon signs for some people?

Re:Whooooosh....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, ideally in German.

Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[beforewisdom]

The water to produce various food products: From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_water#Agricultural_products the production of 1 kg beef costs 15,500 L water the production of 1 kg broken rice costs 3,400 L water the production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water the production of 1 kg wheat costs 1,300 L water Google on "Meatless Monday", it is an international effort to get people to eat meatless for one day a week ( Monday ) to reduce pollution and other environmental problems. One day a week have cereal for breakfast, A PB & J and Banana sandwhich for lunch and a plate of pasta for dinner. I've seen various articles that doing ONLY meatless monday helps the environment more than being a pretentious "locavore" all week long. If you are interested in more information about the connection between good choices and the environment here are some short articles: http://beforewisdom.com/blog/environment/un-urges-global-move-to-meat-and-dairy-free-diet/ http://beforewisdom.com/blog/environment/go-greendrop-meat/

Abundant resource

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NO other resource that is available in more abundant quantities than water. Shouldn't we focus our attention on those other?

Re:Abundant resource

[Anonymous Coward]

Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.

I saw this movie ...

[cristiroma]

Seems they successfully made it out with Gatorate instead! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

the solution is

[Anonymous Coward]

to drink your urine

Its got what plants crave!

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't we be using Brawndo?

You've missed the point of privatisation

[Viol8]

It was never done to save the consumer money, it was done to save the GOVERNMENT money. Whatever politicians say, they don't really care how much the average citizen has to cough up for public services. They simply care that they can spend less on them so they have more money to waste on pointless wars so they can be best buddies with the USA (yeah, right) or subsidising undeserving "asylum" seekers and their 10 kids.

Usage

[kqc7011]

My comment is not so much about agriculture usage but about what happens when we "use" water. Is that the water goes down the drain and into the sewage system. From there it is treated and released to be used again and again. Look at almost any city on a river, they draw the water out of the river, use it for everything treat it and back it goes into the river. So if you live down stream of a water user, more than likely you are drinking some water that has been run through a sewage treatment plant. Unless the user is on the coast where when done with the sewage treatment it is dumped into the ocean. If more of the larger cities that are on a coast pumped the treated water inland???

Yes, for decades now ....

[OldHawk777]

In a few years I will retire, my wife ask frequently where do you want to live?

My reply, anywhere you want in the USA, except the western states that do not border on the Pacific ocean or the Mississippi river. Industrial agriculture not population density is the problem. So, Money or People? Money wins for more industrial agriculture and less people.

A decade ago we should have started the great irrigation canal from the Great Lakes or Hudson Bay for those west-central states, but now folks should just move east or west out of the disaster area (to little as opposed to to much). If the project were private industry it would just carry oil.

Industrial agriculture will feed the world, export food around the world, increase USA food prices, and food-stamp welfare will be an unacceptable burden on the national debt. Maybe we will have a USA national famine of plenty in 50 years.

Re:Yes, for decades now ....

[kenh]

Wait, you want to build a pipeline in the mid-west? No way! And don't try and argue that it would be 100% privately funded or create thousands of jobs - been thee, done that.

US Corn

[ThatsNotPudding]

Massive amounts of water; massive amounts of fertilizer; massive amounts of herbicide; massive amounts of pesticide. The dirt is mainly there to keep the stalks upright.

...did I mention the massive amounts of subsidies and massive amounts of corporate ownership?

Re:US Corn

[sexconker]

Massive amounts of water; massive amounts of fertilizer; massive amounts of herbicide; massive amounts of pesticide. The dirt is mainly there to keep the stalks upright. ...did I mention the massive amounts of subsidies and massive amounts of corporate ownership?

You forgot to mention the massive amounts of nutrition and oh wait.
Corn is theworst crop in existence. The only animal that can fully digest it is one that doesn't eat it - the termite.

So what do we do when faced with a shitty crop? We give it subsidies so people can continue to grow it. Then we pay other people to not grow it. Then we mandate that we put it in gasoline.

Another solution for nuclear power

[s122604]

Another problem that could be solved if we started an emergency nuclear power plant building program, on the scale of the mobilization for WW2
plenty of electricity available for desalinization.

Re:Another solution for nuclear power

[proclomeesius]

I think agriculture still has a long way to go in terms of water efficiency before mass desalination plants and the associated environmental issues become a necessity. Simple things like lining irrigation ditches to reduce loss through leakage, and moving to more efficient irrigation technologies, not to mention plant and animal breeding and better soil management just to name a few. That said, you can put a nuke in my backyard tomorrow if it means we can start weaning off fossil fuels...

Re:Another solution for nuclear power

[assertation]

Mabye, we just trade nuclear waste, nuclear accidents and getting sick for a little more fresh water.

No thanks.

There are other solutions, like food choice, conservation/efficiency, other alternative energies.

Please don't hand me the nuclear fan-boy rant about better designs. I believe there ARE better nuclear power plant designs, but as long as there is nuclear power there will always be nuclear accidents.

If you live on the same street as a nuclear power plant and have the resources to live where you want, I will listen a little more.

Re:Another solution for nuclear power

[Attila Dimedici]

I just came across an article that says that at current usage rates (plus usage for plants that are in the planning/building stages), the world will fall short of producing enough supplies to meet the demand for uranium by 2014. I just tried to google for that article and came up with several different outlooks on uranium supply, with most of them predicting demand to supply by 2020 at the latest. The one exception to that was a study that suggested there are technological ways to change the way we use uranium to offset the supply shortages. None of the articles I found thought that production could be increased sufficiently to meet the increased demand.

Re:Another solution for nuclear power

[Anonymous Coward]

Why generate power and transfer it to a desalination plant?

Use a Salt-Water Reactor, and just pull the steam straight out of it.

Virtual Isn't Real

[Doc Ruby]

Water used to make a product that's shipped isn't at all necessarily water that's shipped. If the water is consumed in place but not included in the product it's not shipped. So claims that "virtual water flows across borders" is BS.

Likewise water that's used along its natural flow path, and cleaned (enough) to return it to its original destination, is impacting only in the place where it's diverted. When we put a factory on a plot of land we disrupt that land, and we're willing to accept some deletion from nature. Nature is very resilient, and not all diversions and conversions of it have unacceptable consequences.

We do go too far, and we do waste far too much. But exaggerations like these don't do anything except discredit the already difficult efforts to require management of what we use.

100% of water used is used

[kenh]

What is so alarming about using 92% of all the water that is used in agriculture? If we cut agricultural water use in half, it would still account for 84% of all the water that is used?

100% percent of all the fresh water that is used is not 100% of all available fresh water. Some places have too much water, others too little, the primary issue is the distribution of the water, then the protection of it from harmful pollutants - the great thing about water is that it is about 100% reusable.

Re:100% of water used is used

[CayceeDee]

If processed correctly.

bald claim

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm surprised you got modded up for a bald claim with no substantiation.
let me turn your claim around a little and see if you still agree. for it
to be true that we "need" all the ag products currently produced, it
would also have to be true that,
- there are no replacements that are not ag products,
- we are using the ag products we've got with 100% efficiency,
- we don't eat too much anyway.

surely, that's not what you're saying!

Thank God

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have been worried if 92% of our fresh water consumption was being used to wash our cars or water are lawns. It seem to me that having the vast majority of our water consumption being used to grow food is a good thing.

I call bull shit on this

[Nonillion]

"The average American uses enough water each year to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool"

There is no freaking way I use this much water in a year. On the average I use no more than 300 cubic feet per month, that would be 3600 cubic feet per year. An Olympic size swimming pool holds 88,286.66721 cubic feet of water, so I call bull shit.

Re:I call bull shit on this

[stevenvi]

I wanted to second your call. My water bill each month averages at 2,000 gallons for three people. Based on Wikipedia's value of a minimum of 660,000 gallons in such a pool, that would be 55,000 gallons a month per person. I don't want to think about what the bill would be for 165,000 gallons a month!

Re:I call bull shit on this

[tverbeek]

It's not just the showers and toilet flushes. In addition to the water that flows through the pipes into your house, there's the water that flows through the the grocery bags that come into it, filling the beverage containers, giving the fruits and vegetables their turgidity, and feeding the pounds of livestock.

Re:I call bull shit on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to define use? The slice of the power plant providing your power uses approximately 10x more water per year than your home -- so there's 36k cu ft. The care you drive uses fuel that was refined -- cooling water is necessary in refineries (lots of it). The cpu in the computer you are typing on required uber-pure water -- that used both the water that got purified and the water that went to into producing the electricity to make the filtration system run.

Re:I call bull shit on this

[sChatwin]

Don't you remember how to compute averages? Total water consumed in America per year/ population of America = ~90,000 cu ft/yr Gotta remember that this includes all the agricultural, industrial and commercial uses that you benefit from (often indirectly); it's not just your water bill

Re:I call bull shit on this

[nmr_andrew]

And I'll third it.

Seriously, when I lived in Colorado, where you have to water your lawn or it dies, for our entire house we used 5k or 6k gallons/month during the peak summer months, about 4k/month the other 9 months of the year of the year. And that includes everything: drinking, cooking, laundry, showers, watering the lawn, watering a large garden, other cleaning, etc. So our total use was I also happen to have worked as a lifeguard at an Olympic sized pool in my younger days, and know that held between a quarter million and a half million gallons. If we round usage up to 15k gallons/person/year, I'm seeing some of that "fuzzy Washington math", or something. Even if I multiply our use by 10 to account for "indirect" water use, like the water used for growing livestock, something is seriously off...

Re:I call bull shit on this

[stevenvi]

Actually, average can mean many things. What you are describing in called the mean. It could also be referring to the mode, which is the most commonly occurring value in a data set. Or perhaps the median, which is the middle value of a data set: half of the population uses less and half uses more. Or any of the numerous ways you can compute an "average." Wikipedia's article provides a good starting point to familiarizing yourself with this topic.

In summary, never assume that you know which method was used to compute an average unless it is explicitly defined. I didn't take the time to examine the original paper to see how wrong the newspaper restatement was, so it is possible that it was better defined there.

Re:I call bull shit on this

[tverbeek]

Thank you for showing off what you learned in Math class; we're all very impressed.

Now for extra credit, demonstrate what this has to do with his rebuttal of the person who thought that his total annual water use was measured by the municipal utility company.

Re:I call bull shit on this

[stevenvi]

I apologize for not being clearer in my post. I was not making a comment one way or another on sChatwin's rebuttal, but was instead noting that the term "average" was incorrectly defined. My aim was not to discredit the post, and I hope it did not come across that way, but rather to point out and correct an inaccurate statement, in a similar manner of that which sChatwin's post employed.

(Also, just FYI, your post came across rather self-righteous -- you might want to tone that down. :))

Re:I call bull shit on this

[tverbeek]

That was my point: Your message didn't correct anything or support any argument. It served no purpose but to show off that you know about three different kinds of "average". It might have been vaguely educational on some other message board, but on /. (where Stats 101 is common knowledge) it's just pedantic and pointless. Self-important even. You might want to tone that down.

Water?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Like, from the toilet??

Something is wrong

[Curunir_wolf]

The average American uses enough water each year to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool

That really doesn't seem that much for a whole year. A person can't live more than 4 or 5 days without water, and health professionals recommend people drink 2-3 liters of water per day. And that's just drinking water - people also need to bath and use water for cooking.

global agriculture consumes a whopping 92% of all fresh water used annually.

Something seems wrong for that figure. It sounds like they're saying 92% of water is diverted for irrigation, but to get that figure you would at least have to be counting all the rain that falls on all vegetation that is eventually harvested in some way.

as 'virtual water'

Wha..? Yea, I don't need to RTFA - this is obvious bullshit pushing some agenda to put all the water resources under the control of a few unelected tyrants. Screw that.

Re:Something is wrong

[stevenvi]

That really doesn't seem that much for a whole year. A person can't live more than 4 or 5 days without water, and health professionals recommend people drink 2-3 liters of water per day.

You might want to rethink that. Let's be generous and assume 4 L a day for a year:

4 L * 365.25 days = 1461 L/yr

At 2,500,000 L in an Olympic-sized pool, that only accounts for about 0.058% of the pool's volume.

And that's just drinking water - people also need to bath and use water for cooking.

Indeed, and I don't have a good method for approximating this, though the quantity used in drinking water is such a small fraction of the pool's volume that I wouldn't anticipate these additional activities using a reasonable percentage of the volume. Use your water bills to determine your annual consumption and see for yourself. (Be sure to divide by the number of people in your household!)

Re:Something is wrong

[Curunir_wolf]

I know it, due to a recent dispute with the city over our water bill (they once claimed we used about 60,000 gallons in a 28 day period). The actual figure comes out to about 4,200 gallons a month for 2 adults, 4 pets, and twice-per-week visits from the college kid. But, I make a lot of beer, which consumes 20 gallons of water for each 5 gallons of beer.

Converted to liters and annualized, a rough figure is 190,000 liters. That's less than 10% of the article's figure. For 2 people, not one. So while it didn't seem like much to me, as you point out, it's quite a lot.

Another indication this article is complete bullshit.

Re:Something is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

But, I make a lot of beer, which consumes 20 gallons of water for each 5 gallons of beer.
Funny. I use about 8 gallons to make 6 gal wort. You're doing it wrong. But LOL brewing 20 batches of beer each month (10% your water consumption) must be pretty tedious. You also use an order of magnitude more water than me on other stuff. Buy a front loader, check your dish washer, check for running toilets, and if its yellow let it mellow, or reduce flush volume to 3L. Eat fiber and you do not need a larger flush volume. LOL.

Re:Something is wrong

[Curunir_wolf]

Funny. I use about 8 gallons to make 6 gal wort.

You're not counting everything. You don't sanitize your workspace? You don't clean your primary and secondary fermentor? How about your bottles (or kegs or keg fittings, etc.)? I'm probably over-estimating a bit, But I know it takes 4 1/2 gallons to sanitize a keg, the kegerator, and fittings, which I do at least every other batch. I also rinse everything after sanitizing.

But LOL brewing 20 batches of beer each month

Who does that? I don't.

Use Less Water, Do "Meatless Mondays"

[beforewisdom]

My apologies for posting this twice, Slashdot and my formatting had a disagreement The water to produce various food products: From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_water#Agricultural_products

• the production of 1 kg beef costs 15,500 L water
• the production of 1 kg broken rice costs 3,400 L water
• the production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water
• the production of 1 kg wheat costs 1,300 L water

Google on "Meatless Monday", it is an international effort to get people to eat meatless for one day a week ( Monday ) to reduce pollution and other environmental problems. For example, for one day a week have cereal for breakfast, A PB & J and Banana sandwich for lunch and a plate of pasta for dinner.

I've seen various articles that doing ONLY Meatless Monday helps the environment more than being a pretentious "locavore" all week long.

If you are interested in more information about the connection between good choices and the environment here are some short articles:

• http://beforewisdom.com/blog/environment/un-urges-global-move-to-meat-and-dairy-free-diet/
• http://beforewisdom.com/blog/environment/go-greendrop-meat/

Re:Use Less Water, Do "Meatless Mondays"

[stevenvi]

to reduce pollution and other environmental problems . . . for one day a week have cereal for breakfast, A PB & J and Banana sandwich for lunch and a plate of pasta for dinner

Let me get this straight. To be eco-friendly, forego natural sources of energy and use factory-produced ones?

Re:Use Less Water, Do "Meatless Mondays"

[Attila Dimedici]

May I suggest that you move to a state of wisdom, before you start to recommend a course of action to others. Being before wisdom is not the place to hand out advice. That is how we often end up with problems in this world, by following the advice of people who have yet to acquire wisdom.

Re:Use Less Water, Do "Meatless Mondays"

[beforewisdom]

cereal comes from grain, you choose one of the many varieties that don't have a lot of junk in it. Ditto for the bread for your sandwich at lunch and the past at dinner. Most supermarkets sell peanut butter, cheap, that is just peanuts and salt. If you want Jelly that is just fruit you might have to pay a little more but a jar can last several weeks.

There are alternatives

[AttillaTheNun]

Current industrial agriculture practices are not sustainable for many reasons, irrigation being a significant one. It depletes water and soil quality. There are alternatives. Do a search on Sepp Holzer, Bill Mollison, Geoff Lawton, and hugelkulture for a start.

Install Low Flow Shower Heads

[beforewisdom]

Save money on your utility bills, buy a gadget and help the environment at the same time. Install low flow shower heads. You get a similar perception of "thrust", but with less water. These things can save you a lot on your water bill. Heating water is another large portion of utility expenses and taxes the environment ( ie nasty things are burned to heat the water ). Wash your clothes in cold water when you can.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[Anonymous Coward]

the production of 1 kg beef costs 15,500 L water the production of 1 kg broken rice costs 3,400 L water the production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water the production of 1 kg wheat costs 1,300 L water

You vegans are worse than the religious and atheist zealots.

Also, I seriously doubt that the net liquid cost of 1kg of cow is 15,500 L. Think about the water cycle carefully for 60 seconds (specifically, think about where cow urine and milk goes.)

City boys...

[billybob_jcv]

...shouldn't talk about a world they don't understand. The modern farmer is not a hick chewing on a stalk of wheat and wasting natural resources. Farmers manage their resources, including their water & soil. They are using drip irrigation & water reclamation to produce more food more efficiently than ever before. They are also using soil analysis, GPS location and yield results to optimize crop rotation and soil amendment application. Can it get better? Of course. Does the rest of the world need to catch up with the leaders in the field? Absolutely. But don't for a minute believe that agribusiness isn't just as high-tech as every other industry in the world.

Oh, and for the hippies telling me to stop eating beef and that I should live on homegrown lentils, twigs and leaves: fuck-off - I'm an omnivore - I'll eat anything that doesn't eat me first.
 

Great Lakes State

[tverbeek]

All I know is that no matter what happens with the auto industry, I'm not leaving Michigan. With the world's largest supply of liquid nonsaline water, it may become difficult to defend militarily, but at least we won't ever go thirsty.

There is an easy way to help

[gr8_phk]

Most farmers do everything they can to get rain water to run off the fields so they don't flood and over-water the crops. Then they pump water out of the ground and apply it to the fields as needed. The rain water then dumps very quickly into the rivers and causes flooding down stream. A simple way to take care of this is to dig a large basin (1-2 percent the area of the fields and say 20-30 feet deep) to collect the rain water, then pump that back onto the fields as needed and only when it's dry would they need to pump water from the deep aquifer. It would help all of the problems, but would cost a bit to set up. Oh, and this would re-apply the fertilizer that washes away when it rains - which is another problem both down-stream and as a cost to farmers and a natural resource issue (phosphorous).

All those problems come down to poor resource management.

Re:There is an easy way to help

[vladilinsky]

It is funny I have been attempting to do something very similar to this for my land. But have hit quite a few road blocks, first it was explained to me from the resource management people here in Alberta Canada that it is Illegal to store rain water that way. I can not take rain water that could potential go to someone else's land and keep it for myself. Which i begrudgingly admit is understandable. That is what it is considered if I were to make a water collection pit. Second they analyze the amount of surface area in any collection pit and calculate the evaporation, which is (surprisingly to me) very high. On that basis too they disallow the idea.

Water management comes down to, if you want more water available to use you need to have swamps, the natural way for the land to store (and clean) water without evaporative loses or unfairly keeping water from your neighbors. Ironically they are the very thing farmers have been doing their best to get rid of.

To sum up, land with swamps = good for the land, good for the water, good for the water table, bad for large mechanized efficient farming.

This has been my opinion on the matter taken from, talking with people employed by the environment ministry, research (google), talking with other farmers, and experience on my own farm.

Re:There is an easy way to help

[Suddenly_Dead]

Water management comes down to, if you want more water available to use you need to have swamps, the natural way for the land to store (and clean) water without evaporative loses or unfairly keeping water from your neighbors. Ironically they are the very thing farmers have been doing their best to get rid of.

The loss of swamps, sloughs, and wetlands in Manitoba (and upstream), and the installation of drainage ditches everywhere was largely responsible for our flooding this last year; that flooding is no doubt occur again and again unless we find a way to fix our mess. It's all totally trashed Lake Winnipeg too.

Re:There is an easy way to help

[Anonymous Coward]

Your plan has a MAJOR flaw. In your system, as you take water out of the deep aquifer, it is not being replenished. Why? Because you are gathering up its source by pumping it all out into a large basin. This is one reason the central US deep aquifers are being depleted. The Mississippi has been rerouted and "contained" to not flow into the large natural flood plains that it once did many years ago. Those flood plains were a critical source of future deep ground water.

Plenty In Cleveland

[CycleFreak]

After a record-breaking 6-1/2 FEET of rain in 2011, water is more than plentiful in the Cleveland area. Please take some. Actually, take a lot. We're drowning over here!

Re:Plenty In Cleveland

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just mother nature trying to clean her pits. ;)

(Sorry... Cleveland isn't that bad, but I couldn't resist.)

water scarcity promotion

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to see here. Just another dominant social theme: water scarcity. I guess they already have a solution for that, but it requires more global governance.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really funny. He presents a lot of data but you call him worse than religious and atheist zealots. Your only argument, on the other side, is that you somehow doubt that the data posted is true. It's incredible how people can be so blind and emotional when it comes to defend their lifestyle.

pumping the virtual water takes water too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtual water is a nasty little beast -- pumping it takes fuel (trucks, trains ships) -- making fuel takes water. Go read The Big Thirst -- it's interesting.

We'll never change our water habits until water becomes sufficiently expensive.

The obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious solution and what's best for the environment is to eliminate agriculture. If we eliminate agriculture that will reduce consumption by eliminating consumers. By eliminating consumers the amount of harmful byproducts like CO2 from automobiles, power plants, and breathing can also be reduced. And without consumers the world will be a much more sustainable and ecologically balanced place. It's the only socially, morally, and ethically responsible solution.

greenhouses save 50% of water

[G3ckoG33k]

In the article "Comparison of Water Consumption between. Greenhouse and Outdoor Cultivation"
http://www.itc.nl/library/papers_2006/msc/wrem/mpusia.pdf

we can see that greenhouses save some 50% of water compared to outdoor cultivation (on page 11).

That mean we can 'readily' half the agricultural water consumption. Imagine greenhouses the size of Nebraska...

Green idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an idea about how we can treat our planet better.

Instead of wasting all our fresh water on crops that we eventually burn in our vehicles, how about we burn that black oily substance that comes from decayed creatures? It certainly isn't doing the planet any good lying deep under rocks.

All vehicles that can run on 100% petroleum-based fuels should be given a special sticker to show others how environmentally-conscience the owner is.

Total bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Any and all shortages and other problems, like contamination, are due to allowing economists instead of engineers manage water distribution.

Hydroponics

[Chuckles08]

One simple way to use less water in agriculture is to employ hydroponics. These systems can use up to 90% less water than traditional farming. Another point is that the development of better (cheaper/more efficient led lighting) is beginning to tip the balance in terms of economics since produce can now be grown indoors 24/7.

beware the border crossing

[Anonymous Coward]

The notation that water is flowing across international borders is sure to be a harbinger of UN panels, treaties and other power grabs.

"Just" dig a 20-30 foot pool?

[sirwired]

A 20-30 foot deep pool comprising 2% of arable land would be prohibitively expensive. In areas with a high water table, you'll have to keep it from caving in; also you are going to need to blast rock in many parts of the country, and the pool is going to have to be lined with something expensive (either concrete or a thick plastic liner). You'll also need to dredge that thing on a regular basis, as ag runoff is rather silt-laden.

Theoretically possible? Sure.

But "an easy way to help"? Nope.

Yeah, kill yourself, save the planet.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not enough of anything according to the freaks in charge..
So just kill yourself and save the planet!
Lies all lies..
Enjoy hippies!
Moderator bury this down where nobody but YOU will have seen it!

We just need more desalination

[flyingfsck]

There is no shortage of water on this planet. Just a shortage of cheap water.

Wow really?

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Because a plant that absorbs water means the water is gone FOREVER.

The seed industry served a purpose until the 1950s

[nido]

Archer Daniel Midland was founded as a linseed-crushing business. Linseed oil and most of the seed industry's other products were used by the paint industry.

Then the paint industry figured out how to make their products from petroleum, and ADM became obsolete.

Around the same time, agribusiness was experimenting with thyroid poisons, to make their animals fatter with less feed. These were carcinogenic to the animals, and to the people who ate them too. But they found that corn and soybeans served essentially the same purpose, and that's how the meat industry switched to seeds. This is according to one of Ray Peat's articles...

Sterlize everyone until

[Anonymous Coward]

the world population is at a sustainable level, maybe 200 M or so. It's the only way to save the earth.

Misleading numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

The average family of 4 uses about 1/3 of an acre-foot of water per year. That's roughly 100k gallons, for a family of 4, or 25k gallons per person. An "olympic-sized" swimming pool is roughly 600k gallons, which is 24 times what an "average person" uses in a year.

I live in the west where water usage is metered and highly regulated. NOBODY uses anywhere CLOSE to 600k gallons a year for personal consumption. When you start off a summary with a wildly inaccurate statistic like that it makes it really hard to take anything that follows seriously.

Body's are buried

[Stan92057]

Body's are buried air tight container so our body's are not allowed to give back what is has taken over the years. By my guess that might be a Glaser or 2 of water buried.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[sexconker]

the production of 1 kg beef costs 15,500 L water the production of 1 kg broken rice costs 3,400 L water the production of 1 kg eggs costs 3,300 L water the production of 1 kg wheat costs 1,300 L water

You vegans are worse than the religious and atheist zealots.

Also, I seriously doubt that the net liquid cost of 1kg of cow is 15,500 L. Think about the water cycle carefully for 60 seconds (specifically, think about where cow urine and milk goes.)

It's vegan logic at it's finest. Same sort of crap that they use to tell people that if their piss is yellow, they're not drinking their necessary 2 gallons of water a day. These are the same morons wwho will measure their piss to find out that they're excreting 95%+ of the water they take in, and then reach the conclusion that they need to drink 3 gallons of water a day to prevent dehydration.

Peak Water

[Phoenix666]

We. Are. At. Peak. Water! C'mon, people, at the rate we're consuming water there will be none left for future generations. Won't someone please think of the children?

Re:We don't want groundwater, it traps precious ga

[lgw]

actually trying to transfer precious groundwater back into the sky

If only there were some natural mechanism by which precious water might fall from the sky back to earth! But then the sandworms would die, and as we all know, the spice must flow!

Here's an idea: stop making ethanol out of corn!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is so absurdly inefficient, it's disgraceful that we even came up with the idea ... and even more disgraceful that we're subsidizing it and placing tariffs on imported ethanol (which is typically made from more efficient things, like sugar cane).

Hopefully the idiots we have in congress will realize this and not be bribed into renewing the subsidies later this year.

No. 92% of exploitation of water is agriculture

[Anonymous Coward]

The figures aren't talking about rainfall, they're talking about irrigation and industrial and household use.

Water USe is Not Organic's fault

[Tekfactory]

Where does it say that something has to waste water to be organic?

There is no reason I can't feed my plants with a dripline, in a greenhouse and recover a lot of my water and still not use proscribed chemicals or pesticiedes.

Some greenhouses use predatory insects (spiders) instead of pesticides.

Re:Water USe is Not Organic's fault

[Luckyo]

Organic farming is essentially usage of less efficient, old farming methods coupled with lack of use of oil-based fertilisers. These, among other flaws, force farmers to use more water for irrigating the same field, mostly due to inefficiencies when compared to more efficient modern agriculture.

Re:Are americans actually retaining that much wate

[Anonymous Coward]

hurr

People really do think that way

[Sycraft-fu]

They seem to have this idea that water is actually used up, not recycled. You can see it in things like people whining about the "virtual water" that coffee requires. They moan about the massive amount of water that goes in to growing the coffee for one cup. One cup of "actual" water, gallons of "virtual" water.

Of course they seem to forget that all coffee has to be grown in an area of the world known as the coffee belt and is normally grown in areas called rain forests. That "rain" part is not for show, it rains 300+ days a year in those places.

I guess they think the coffee beans suck the water up and it vanishes for good.

Superman - Lake Vostok

[THE_WELL_HUNG_OYSTER]

Can't we get Superman to bring as a few icebergs or a bit of Lake Vostok?

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[Tyndmyr]

Yay, I can substitute protein with a giant pile of carbs. That's JUST what Americans need...

You keep saying that

[Tekfactory]

So if I build a vertical greenhouse with soilless gardening techniques, provide the allowed nutrients in my drip irrigation from decomposed seaweed and other organic sources, am I still organic?

Using NEW controlled environment agriculture methods I can grow 100 times the product per square foot as a traditional farm or even a "modern agriculture" farm, my crops are always in season 365 days a year and I use no industrial chemicals in production.

Are you still going to bang the drum that Organic means intentionally flawed and inefficient farming?

Re:You keep saying that

[Luckyo]

Sure, but you will be that one exception in the field of those who will be doing exactly what I described above, so yes, I will "bang that drum". Or more accurately, call the things what they are, rather then as what they are in someone's pipe dream.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[MarkRose]

No thanks. I'd much rather eat free-range animals. They fertilize the soil and "farm" the soil without inputs or fuel. That's far better than using fossil fuels and fertilizers to produce and harvest grains. I do my part by limiting my consumption of factory/industrial food.

Hmm I dunno...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do questions make shitty headlines?

Cut the culture war rhetoric

[Geof]

for fuck's sake, put away the Poli-Sci 101 talk.

"...where is the government mandated shift..." "Where are the government demands" "The war here is..."

Socio-political bullshit.

If you have a disagreement with the post's claims, make your argument. If you find the language unclear, ask for clarification. If you think there are unreasonable insinuations being made, call them out. That's what I intend to do with your post.

To me, the above complaint doesn't look like a rational problem with the argument: it looks like an ideological problem with where you think it's coming from. Perhaps you think all academics are out-of-touch elites whose expertise should therefore be disregarded. Perhaps you think poli-sci students are liberty-hating "liberals" (according to the warped American definition of the word). If so, foolish caricaturing and stereotyping only looks good if you're preaching to the choir. It has no bearing on the validity of either argument.

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope so. I'm just sick of reasoned debate being jettisoned for ideological reasons of tribal identity and taste.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[beforewisdom]

I think you posted a reply meant for someone else in response to my comment about Meatless Monday and reducing water.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[beforewisdom]

It is from Wikipedia, which to my knowledge isn't a vegan organization.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[beforewisdom]

You can buy a low sugar cereal in just about any supermarket. Cows milk isn't high carb. You can also got non-sweetened soy or almond milk. You can buy whole grain bread for your lunch, peanut butter without sugar and you can buy 100% fruit jelly The carbs in pasta are extremely low glycemic If all of that wasn't true, you could still pick many other easy meals for a Meatless Monday

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[beforewisdom]

I don't things happen like that in the real world anymore. There may be a few boutique livestock farms that operate like that and sell meat few people can afford. Most meat comes from animals kept in factory farms whose waste is just dumped ( can't be used for fertilizer because of the toxins in the feed ). Lastly, it takes about 11 pounds of wheat to produce one pound of beef. Similar ratios exist for other meats and other palatable to humans plant products. If you are interested in saving fossil fuels and fertilizer, the easy choice is to eat your wheat/plants directly ( whole grain pasta, whole grain bread, cereal, etc ) instead of filtering it through a cow where you have to use...........and grow, and use resources for 11 times more.

Re:Want To Use Less Water? Do Meatless Mondays

[sexconker]

Wikipedia copied it from somewhere else that either practices or believes that vegan logic.