Hertsgaard, who lives in the Bay Area, points out a well known if not often mentioned fact: that California agriculture consumes 80% of the state's developed water.
That fact alone is worth focusing on. For it means that no amount of reduced lawn care or shorter showers is going to be enough to deal with a drought that is being magnified and extended by global heating. Not if agriculture is left out of the response.
California agriculture is immensely important to the food supply not only of the U.S. but other countries, including China, especially in particular crops like tomatoes, strawberries, almonds--and pistachios, which Hertsgaard chooses as the symbol of an industry raking in profits because they pay so little for so much water.
And while California agriculture is very important to the state, it constitutes just 2% of its gross domestic product, Hertsgaard writes. He chronicles recent efforts to reform water rights practices, an arcane but very important system since before the days depicted in Chinatown. But political and economic interests have successfully limited reforms.
Meanwhile, the thirstiest crops have continued to expand in production and acreage. Hertsgaard writes;
One striking aspect of California’s water emergency is how few voices in positions of authority have been willing to state the obvious. To plant increasing amounts of water-intensive crops in a desert would be questionable in the best of times. To continue doing so in the middle of a historic drought, even as scientists warn that climate change will increase the frequency and severity of future droughts, seems nothing less than reckless.
On Sunday, the Guardian quoted Governor Brown responding to charges that agriculture is being left out of his latest round of cutbacks, although it did not say to whom Brown was responding or where. “The farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres,” Brown said. “They’re pulling up vines and trees. Farmworkers are out of work. There are people in agriculture areas that are really suffering.”
Brown said shutting down agriculture production in the state was possible but “that would displace hundreds of thousands of people, and I don’t think it’s needed.” “If things continue to at this level, that’s probably going to be examined,” he said.
Some areas of agriculture are hurting, and of course those who are suffering tend to be the lowest paid workers. But according to Hertsgaard, some agricultural industries are doing very well for themselves and their stockholders.
California has had long droughts before. But at least two things are different. First and most important: 30% of the yearly water supply dried up when the Sierras could not retain the snow that fell in December, to a significant degree because it got too warm. With some variation year to year, it's simply not going to stop getting hotter.
And second, California agriculture was not quite the scale of industry it is now, especially in its control by large corporations with their particular economic and political power within a system that doesn't care what a corporation does or makes or how, as long as it makes money from one quarter to the next.
So yeah, things probably are going to continue at this level at least, and agriculture is probably going to need to be examined. As in a lot more.
No comments:
Post a Comment