There is no water scarcity in California, only misallocation. The vast majority of our water is heavily subsidized and used for agriculture, and a substantial amount of those crops are grown for export, yet agricultural exports makes up an insignificant part of California's economy.

We could end all California water scarcity talk today, with no impact to food availability for Americans, by curtailing the international export of just two California crops: almonds and alfalfa.

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SCUSKU 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anecdotally, my friend's grandma was an almond farmer. As they drove past a river in the Central Valley, she exclaimed "Why is there water in that river?! Those could be watering my almond trees!"

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dclowd9901 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In Arizona we grow alfalfa as well -- it's mind boggling to me that in places where water is so scarce we use so much of it on such a low value crop.

	▲	crooked-v an hour ago \| parent [-]
		That alfalfa gets extensively exported as livestock feed... and alfalfa is literally mostly water by weight. So the arrangement is literally shipping out local groundwater in bulk to other countries.

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kccqzy 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So why hasn’t that been done? Have some representatives and senators set limits on almond exports. Surely they wouldn’t be voted out in the next election given how farmers are outnumbered.

	▲	patmorgan23 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Because farmers are making money off of exporting and have significant lobbying power

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coryrc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Almonds are climate-appropriate product and valuable. Alfalfa can cheaply be grown off rainwater in the Midwest and it alone frees up sufficient water.

	▲	kenhwang 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The problem is alfalfa is expensive to transport (heavy due to desired moisture content). So while it can be cheaply grown in the Midwest, it can't be cheaply transported from the Midwest to where buyers of alfalfa are (typically overseas). Alfalfa is also a staple for crop rotation, so any farming operation will still grow some alfalfa to maintain rotation for good soil health (or during bad condition seasons since it's hardier to poor conditions and not a permanent crop). If alfalfa cannot be exported (through policy or economic conditions), the low price attracts more livestock production in-state (which would be even worse for water use). Those things makes it a hard crop to target for sustainability and export.

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weaksauce 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

to put this to numbers... the exports are just about 0.5% of california's GDP. so yeah pretty much a rounding error.

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chrisrogers 3 hours ago | parent [-]

0.5% is a far cry from a rounding error..

	▲	panzagl 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		0.5% is like the literal definition of a rounding error.