As the State of California enters its fourth full year of a historic drought, residents are scrambling to conserve water.
The Governor of California was forced to impose mandatory restrictions on water usage by nearly 25%.
As residents and authorities track every possible way water is being spent, questions are being raised about some of the uses of water in the state.
Where Does All That Water Go?
Can you imagine life without water? We need water to drink. But we also need it for washing, cooking, making all the stuff we need from factories, and even to grow our food.
Did you know that the biggest consumers of water in California are farms? Agriculture uses 80% of all the developed water supply in the state!
One crop stands out for consuming more water than all the showering, dish-washing, and other indoor household water used by California’s 39 million people. Almonds. It may surprise you to know that it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond!
Almond groves soak up 10% of California’s entire water supply. It is not that almonds are bigger water guzzlers than other crops. It is that almonds are very lucrative and their demand has exploded by 80% -- especially from China. This has led to an increase in almond plantations in the state.
But a bigger culprit that consumes even more water in California is alfalfa. They are the primary crops in pasture lands that feed cattle. Did you know that harvested hay is not only used for grazing by local cattle but even exported to places like China?
No Impact On Agriculture?
So, if agriculture uses 4 times more water than households, why is it that farmers are not being forced to cut back their water use?
It turns out that California is a huge farming state and the country depends a lot on its agriculture. California supplies more than two-thirds of the fruits and nuts and half the vegetables in the country. It does seem like a lot, but here is another fact. Agriculture makes up about $50 billion of California's $2 trillion economy!
Water is a big issue in California, and water rights go all the way back to the early settlers. Water laws were written up to favor the first landowners and farmers who would dig channels to divert water. Anybody who prospected for water had first and complete rights to the water according to the laws. So if you own land, you may still not have access to the water flowing through your property, because somebody else had dug or diverted water to their lands before you came along. So it now belongs to them! These landowners make a powerful lobby.
The question that residents in California are asking today is, do we really need to grow hay and almond to export while lawns dry away and humans cut back essential consumption in towns and cities?
