California Farmers To Forgo Planting: Sell Water To Thirsty Cities Instead
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 03.31.08
In Georgia, we noted, some folks like to "borrow" water for free instead of offering to pay the neighbors. Quite a different political culture than Southern California.
Thirsty Southern California cities are turning to water-rich farmers on the eastern edge of Riverside County for additional supplies to make up for the ongoing drought and other restrictions on the life-sustaining resource.Starting this summer, farmers in the Palo Verde Valley along the Colorado River will forgo planting crops on nearly 26,000 acres, the most land yet under a little-known fallowing agreement with Metropolitan Water District. The pact will double the amount now being sent to MWD and its 18 million urban customers. In exchange, MWD will pay the farmers $16.8 million each year for 115,000 acre-feet of water -- almost 37.5 billion gallons.
We should mention that the Colorado River Aqueduct project, drawing water from behind the Parker Dam, was built as a New Deal project. (Interestingly, so was Lake Lanier, in Georgia, built at Federal taxpayer expense.)
Aside: When we last posted about the New Deal - looking for a New Green Deal in the future - several commenter's pointed out that certain US economists feel that such Public Works Administration funded projects slowed down recovery from the Great Depression. That sort of thinking begs the question of what they would drink in Southern California if the aqueduct had not been built. Or where the US would have gotten its winter vegetables and fruits from for the last 60 years.
Via:: The Press Enterprise, "Colorado River farmers skip crops, send water to Southern California instead" Image credit::Colorado River Farmers Coalition, Colorado River Aqueduct
Where will we get our vegetables and fruits now if the water is not being used for food? I mean, this obviously leads to a massive downfall in domestic food production.
Perhaps another way to describe this would be...
"Water shortage in the Southwest US begins shutting down agriculture."
And here we are with no local food preservation capacity and California deciding to let land go fallow. Don't imagine that is going to help the high cost of food. Dang, cabbage for dinner again.
i look at the photo and i think of evaporation losses, too
i look at the photo and i think of evaporation losses, too
all I have to say is: you can't eat money
The New Deal probably DID slow recovery. And if the demand for winter vegetables or water was high enough, the market would've demanded construction of the aqueduct at some point. The federal government didn't need to make that one happen. I'm slightly curious as to why this blog supports that action anyway. Making that land arable was one of the most costly and probably environmentally unfriendly actions the government concocted. It seems to me that this is an area where free market and green types would agree, but I guess the shot at capitalism was more important to you.
=== author's response follows ===
I'm personally a capitalist at heart, though I favorregulatory incentives both pro and con, in interest of the greater social good.
By my reading, a minority of published US economists made the argument, in hindsight, that the ND slowed the recovery, and also that a clear majority of social historians wriote that it did not slow recovery. So we are left to speculate.
Adding in the fact that economists of the time did not really foresee the crash coming and that we are facing the collapse of living systems on earth due to over population and drought and climate change, my preference would be to set the ideological aside for the pragmatic. Water after all is a public good in most of the world.
Out here in California, we often argue about how to distribute limited water supplies to our growing cities and vital farms without destroying what is left of our rivers and wetlands. For the most part, using the market to create a level playing field can lead to vast improvements in irrigation. We see transfers from willing sellers as a positive thing since they encourage more efficient use of our limited supply. While sometimes fields are fallowed, transfers often mean growing the same crop on the same land but using less water - one Ag guy recently told me they had recently put in almost enough drip irrigation strips to reach the moon.
We do not see transfers as a panacea - we need to make sure local communities are protected and that no one sells water they are not entitles to. But we do think transfers are a big part of the solution.
For anyone who is interested, we are blogging about stuff out west at http://environmentaldefenseblogs.org/waterfront/
This is a deal worthy of Milo Minderbinder.
1) The CA taxpayers spend a fortune on the California Water Project to move water from Northern California to Southern California.
2) California taxpayers subsidize the water sales to farmers to boost an important industry, agriculture, huge in California.
3) Farmers turn around and sell the twice subsidized water back to the taxpayers instead of growing crops.
All this without the help of Joseph Heller, RIP.
John K.
I agree that the Central Valley Project subsidies are a huge problem. We have fought them for decades, and managed to increase the price of CVP water in large of get hundreds of millions for restoration projects as well as water for wetlands, rivers and the Delta.
But CVP water is only about 10% of total statewide supplies and many of them are more likely to be buyers, not sellers. There are a few Minderbinder deals out there, but most are not.
Spreck
P.S. Thanks for the reminder about Milo, the famous small-time war profiteer from catch-22. I will probably use that reference next time it seems appropriate.
So basically farmers aren't going to grow food crops, so Californians can grow nice green grass in their lawn?
I would say "let them starve" but it's other states and other countries that will pay the price for this stupidity.