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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."
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.
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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
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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.
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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?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
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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.
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.