Flooded rice field in California's Sacramento Valley
When people talk about conserving water in California, it’s always about turning off your yard sprinklers, taking shorter showers or shaving without the water running. We fret about watering golf courses and lawns in the suburbs. In presentations at schools, at Rotary clubs and on public service announcements, we’re continually told that, as dwellers in a semi-arid state, we must conserve water. All true. But what we don’t hear about is conservation on the farm. And that’s where we need it most.
Most urban Californians have no idea that agriculture uses about four times as much water as cities. Farmers know it, but they don’t talk about it much. All cities and suburbs combined in California use between 8 million to 9 million acre feet a year. Agriculture uses 34 million acre feet. An acre foot is how the West measures big amounts of water. It’s an acre one foot deep, or 325,851.4 gallons. 
The largest water projects in California are dedicated to agriculture. The federal Central Valley Project delivers 7 million acre-feet of water a year to grow thirsty cotton, rice, alfalfa and other crops. The All-American Canal in Imperial County delivers at least 4.4 million acre-feet, of which 3.8 million acre-feet go to ag. By contrast, the notorious Los Angeles Aqueduct of Owens Valley/Chinatown fame provides only around 200,000 acre feet a year to Los Angeles. The total that city uses is about 650,000 acre feet. Alfalfa – hay — uses between 4 million to 5.5 million acre feet a year.
Cities have been successful in conservation in recent years. But conservation on the farm is much harder because nothing grows in California if you don’t water it. The amount of field crops, vegetables, fruits and nuts we produce directly correlates to how much water we use. Remember, like California cities, there is nothing natural about California agriculture. The Central Valley was a vast marshy place with only seasonal rainfall that we drained and now use to grow water-intensive crops. The Imperial Valley is one of the hottest places in the country with almost no rainfall at all. Without water taken from rivers and poured on the dirt, there would be no California ag.
Don’t get me wrong, California’s rural-based agriculture is very important. The Golden State is the nation’s breadbasket. But California’s urban-based manufacturing is even more important. In 2006, the California gross domestic product for crop and animal production was $15 billion. For manufacturing, it was $172 billion. California needs all of its industries to survive and thrive. So when we talk about conservation, let’s start the conversation with the biggest user – agriculture. After that, we can talk about three-minute showers.
Reports used in this blog post:
February 15, 2009 at 12:06 am |
>>Don’t get me wrong, California’s rural-based agriculture is very important. The Golden State is the nation’s breadbasket. But California’s urban-based manufacturing is even more important.
Who are you kidding Jim? When I was a school kid in California back when the City of Los Angeles’s population was less that 2.5 million people we learned that the central valley was the nation’s bread basket and manufacturing was big then. Since then the population of Los Angeles has grown to 4 million people, manufacturing has shrunk by 50% (I’m in aerospace manufacturing and it along with it so has the supplier base which is but a fraction of what it was back in the 70’s).
Farming has been asked to do more with less water year after year going as far as to fallow land in order to keep pace with multiple growing urban centers. California’s quality of life has degraded much since then because agriculture has failed to meet our needs and the the needs of the entire nation.
The City of Los Angeles water ceiling once reached 707,500 acre feet and has only averaged 626,000 acre feet per year since 1970 all the while city leaders have encouraged growth on an extraordinary scale. Particularly in the last 5 years.
Today Los Angeles has set goals of 17,000 units per year or 7,100 acre feet of water per year. These growth goals are based soley on California Department of Finance desktop projections and not on the ability of the infrastruture to provide the cities needs.
Clearly, L.A. has not been able to meet those expected goals and that is why we are seeing emergency water ordinances imposed on residents and the inability to fill the states surface storage.
The fact of the matter is, water conservation in California needs to begin with urban planning. Do we have enough widgets (water) to make the part (supply the region)? If not, then we need to lower our production expectations. Mother nature is not the kind of producer that can be cajoled into meeting supply by waving dollar bills around.
City planners and elected city leaders need to acknowledge that growth has its limits and when we reach those limits, growth has be assigned to other regions with more sufficient resources.
Southern California is frankly “built out.”
February 15, 2009 at 12:57 am |
Urban residents should be conserving. But we have to rethink an ag industry that uses such vast amounts of water on crops such as alfalfa, cotton and rice. We cannot ignore the fact that urban manufacturing — like ag — also depends on water. And urban manufacturing, though it may have declined, remains a much more economically productive industry than ag. I’m not against city dwellers conserving water. I’m saying that everybody, including ag, needs to dramatically change their water use.
February 15, 2009 at 10:14 am |
Both urban residents and agriculture have been making extraordinary inroads in conserving. However all of the gains they’ve made have been outstripped by policies that have encouraged housing production in the 6 county region of Southern California. 6 years ago we could be refilling surface reservours such as Diamond Valley but today we have been drawing upon it without any ability to repay.
A similar problem has occured in Atlanta, Georgia who’s sole water source is Lake Lanier. That lake has dropped to critical levels in the last two years due to no real conservation efforts (no rules on low flush toilets, etc) but mostly to a huge housing expansion without any eye on the regions ability to provide new housing any -new- water.
One of the biggest problems I find is in the relationship between the planning culture and utilities. Housing policy is being made without any critical review by utility chiefs. They are essentially ‘yes’ men.
City officials: “We have 17,000 new units being built this year that need connections”
Utility chief: “You got it”
So while we are averaging 626,000 AF of water and we we can’t meet the needs of people already here (emergency water ordinances have already been authorized), the city is adding 40,000 more people. The result is even harsher regulations on the residents and so far not even a moratorium on further building.
February 15, 2009 at 10:56 am |
Granted, Dave, everything you say. Anyway, the recession has taken care of new urban building. But what about ag? Doesn’t ag have some part in creating a new water future for California?
February 15, 2009 at 11:02 am |
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February 16, 2009 at 12:02 am |
>>Anyway, the recession has taken care of new urban building.
It has for at least the next 2,3, 4 years but it will come back with a vengence. Maybe sooner if policy makers decide that the “stimulus package” also applies to urban housing.
>> But what about ag? Doesn’t ag have some part in creating a new water future for California?
Of course. But there has been an ongoing effort to conserve since 1987. All you have to do is look at all of the technologies being used today. Some at great cost to the ag business and subsequently the consumer. It seems to me that all the state is interested today is how much ag is willing to fallow land in order to redirect (re-conveyance) water for urban uses.
It’s easy to get lost in percentages and look at agriculture’s 42% slice of the states water supply and assume that they use more than they need or there is some fat to cut when compared to urban’s 11% usage.
I think a good example of that is in the California Water Plan 2005 vol 2, Table 3-1 where you see flood irrigation dropping from 67% to 51%, sprinklers increasing from 24% to 29% and more decisively, drip irrigation increasing from a mere 9% to 20% between 1990 and 2000. Ag seems to be doing its part. Take a look at this section at http://www.waterplan.water.ca.gov/docs/cwpu2005/vol2/v2complete.pdf
Ag is pretty simple; sun, soil and lots of water. A head of lettuce is 99% water and almost all other crops are pretty similar. Think of that head of lettuce as three bottles of bottled water. There is little way around to reducing Ag’s 42% unless you want to seriously reduce the number of heads of lettuce in a grocery aisle or worse, fallow all of our states agricultural industry. Goodbye, lettuce, goodbye apple and oranges, goodbye rice, barely, wheat and goodbye Chardonnay.
February 16, 2009 at 9:24 am |
And goodbye urban jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in California urban gross domestic product if water conservation in cities is the only answer.
February 19, 2009 at 12:02 pm |
Jim -
Interesting article, and interesting background. I like your approach to discuss policy instead of politics, and your approach to rely on facts. More about me on my web site linked above. As a high tech Bay Area entrepreneur relocated deep in the Central Valley (Tulare County), I am just starting to looking at some of these matters in order to identify possible solutions.
Of course there is going to be some tension making decisions and policy when there are limited resources available. That is the very definition of economics after all.
But I think you have failed your readers with what is either an incorrect statement or one disingenuously presented in your post, one that lies at the heart of the persuasiveness of your thesis.
You said: “In 2006, the California gross domestic product for crop and animal production was $15 billion”
This seems highly unlikely to me.
Here in Tulare County, in 2007 the gate prices for crops and animals was $4 billion alone. There are 2 neighboring counties with similar numbers – Kern and Fresno Counties. So already we see 80% of your number, and we have only looked at 3 counties.
Also, I think your use of the term GDP is misleading. “GDP for crop and animal production” would include all of the times that the money is circulated, we can limit it to the times is circulates in California if you want, but still…
In Tulare County alone, the $4B gate prices represents roughly what packers pay the farmers. The farmers pay most of that to labor and suppliers, who pay it to their labor and suppliers. Most of that stays in California, and is spent within the county at least once.
Not only that, but the $4 billion from the packers represents even greater payments from further along in the channel, processors, wholesalers and retailers let’s say. Some of that money is spent in state on transportation to market costs as well, and is spent in-state.
By the time you add up the actual GDP in Tulare County alone, I bet it easily reaches $15 billion, and there are no economic drivers here other then ag. Similarly for Kern and Fresno County, and already you are looking at $50 billion GDP with the rest of the state not accounted for at all.
As I said, it is fair to discuss allocation of limited resources as policy, but I expect better rhetoric from an experienced editorial writer from yourself, and you do your readers a disservice when you play fast and loose with facts and definitions while touting a fact based approach.
February 19, 2009 at 6:09 pm |
[...] Water conservation in California needs to begin down on the farm « Jim Gogek. [...]
February 23, 2009 at 11:18 am |
Idaho is using GIS maps to track the amount of water used by irrigated agriculture, which allows the state to track water usage history to aid drought planning. California and Georgia are also using technology to aid their water conservation efforts. Government Technology currently has an article about these efforts GIS Maps, Computerized Sprinklers Help Munis During Drought