Residential water use just a ‘drop in the bucket’; what about agricultural use?

From The Plank blog, more reaction to the New York Times Magazine article on water and the west. This time, the author makes an important point not made a lot in the water debate:

Still, what’s missing from this picture? As Gertner notes in passing, it’s farming, and not residential areas, that consumes the vast majority of water in the region (90 percent of Colorado’s water goes toward agriculture). You’d think, then, that inefficient agriculture practices would get most of the scrutiny here. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, most irrigated farmland in the area—in California, Colorado, and Wyoming—is watered via flood irrigation, the least efficient method out there. Basically, farmers dig a bunch of trenches and dump water in them. In the short run, it’s cheap and easy; in the long run, it tends to waste water and deplete topsoil.

Subsidies are part of the problem here: Large farms often qualify for taxpayer- subsidized irrigation water, paying as little as 10 percent of the full cost. That, in turn, discourages conservation: “A 1997 study by researchers at Cornell University suggests that more than 50 percent of irrigation water never reaches crops because of losses during pumping and transport.” The subsidies also encourage farmers to grow water-guzzling crops like alfalfa, a crop that sucks up about 20 percent of California’s water but comprises only a tiny part of the economy (it’s mostly used to feed cows). I’d like to see more on the subject, but this seems like a major place to focus on, no?

To read the full text of the The Plank blog, click here.

I would agree. In California, according to DWR, agriculture uses 80% of the developed water. According to the California Farm Water Coalition, this is actually 43% agriculture, 46% environmental uses. Either way, agriculture uses the majority of the water here in California, so why don’t we hear more about agricultural conservation? Good question.

DWR says this about it:

California’s population growth and greater awareness of environmental water requirements has increased the pressure on California agriculture to use water more efficiently and to make more water available for urban and environmental uses. Decreasing agricultural water use is difficult for several reasons. First, California agricultural water use when considered on a broad regional scale, for the most part, is very efficient. Individual fields and farms in some regions may have low efficiencies, but water that is not used on one farm or field is often used on a nearby farm or field. Secondly, for most crops, production and yield is directly related to crop water use. A decrease in applied water will often directly decrease yield. The key is management strategies that improve water use efficiency without decreasing yield.

There are technologies and management strategies available that conserve water while maintaining yield and production standards. These technologies and management strategies like improved irrigation scheduling and crop specific irrigation management often not only conserve water, but also save energy and decrease growers costs.

The Political Animal Blog from CBS News has this to say:

Reducing agricultural water use by 20% would basically solve all our problems, but it can’t be done because water rights are controlled by an almost impenetrable maze of local water districts, Spanish land grants, English common law, multi-state compacts, acts of Congress, court rulings at every level imaginable, overlapping jurisdictions, and local, state and federal environmental regulations. And that’s not even counting the vast corporate lobbying forces that would be at work even if the legal Gordion knot weren’t.

So it’s hopeless, I guess. But that doesn’t stop me from bitching about it. And it sure doesn’t justify this massive Bush administration giveaway to California agribusiness, which has to be read to be believed.

To read the full text of the Political Animal Blog from CBS News, click here.

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