Agriculture and Its Drain on California

Tyler Strawn

PLT 311

3/5/2015

Professor Fox

Controversial Topic: Agriculture is wasting all of California's water

        H20 - two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. This substance also known as water is one of the most essential elements to life and the topic of many issues across the world. In recent years water has been a controversial issue in California with the amount of water in certain crucial reservoirs being low and a drought that has plagued California over the past 10 years. California has needed large amounts of water to satisfy the needs of a growing population as well as the Agricultural businesses. According to the CDFA California is home to 80,500 farms and ranches which have contributed to 15 percent of national revenues for crops. Agriculture business is crucial to California’s economy but the excessive amounts of water needed have brought up questions regarding the wastefulness of the current Agriculture system.

        According to Erick Holthaus, a writer for Slate online magazine, California is the most productive agricultural state in the union in which it uses 80 percent of California’s water. This is because of California’s unique climate which allows the state to grow crops such as almonds, avocados, broccoli, and grapes which cannot be grown in other states. These crops are seasonal and are ideally grown in California’s spring, summer, and fall months which normally receive little precipitation so they are forced to irrigate water. California Agriculture is irrigating 43 million acre-feet of water to supplement for the lack of rain flow. This is an enormous amount of water for crops so farmers must use it sparingly but contrary to existing efforts farmers have planted more Almonds and Alfalfa, which are California’s most water intensive crops, all for monetary gains. Professor Robert Glennon of Arizona College of Law studied the problem on found out that "A hundred billion gallons of water per year is being exported in the form of alfalfa from California… It's enough for a year's supply (water) for a million families.” Although money is important to California’s economy the people that live here need this water for essential purposes.

        Every argument has two sides and some believe that California needs the agriculture business needs to continue as is. According to Victor Davis Hanson of the LA Times the water use is not very severe stating that “Even with 37 million people and the nation's most irrigation-intensive agriculture, the state usually has enough water for both people and crops.” Recent government regulations have made growing crops difficult in California over the past years halting water deliveries which destroyed crops, cut jobs and reduced the overall agriculture production. With California being the sole producer of 12 different commodities such as “almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, raisins, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes and walnuts,” it is important that government policies and regulations reflect the needs for unique agricultural variety in California.