Bingo! And they produce more oil per acre than soybeans… and they taste awesome. I had some roasted C americana and hybrid nuts and they were awesome.
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What do you think their water should be used for instead?
If there was ever a time for the EPA to serve their purpose, “their” water (and western dams) will cease to exist as an idea, and salmon won’t go extinct.
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Maybe growing almonds commercially is good, maybe it’s not, but the development of something that once was a luxury becoming commonplace in general should be celebrated, not spurned. I like eating fresh citrus even though it can’t be grown anywhere close to me. Progress is good.
Even if it is “two steps forward one step back,” it is still one net step forward.
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Nature doesn’t care about our needs and desires. After reading all the concerns about drought in the West my town in the East received 2 inches of rain in 1/2 hr yesterday evening. So far in 2022 I’ve watered my lawn once and if I skipped it it wouldn’t have matter
since it rained two days later. I checked fruit, including tomatoes, this morning and there are no splits since the soil has been constantly wet without ever being watered by me.
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Personal opinion? How about for fish and water life… how about creating an ecosystem in which forests exist? That clean the air and evaporate moisture that someday creates rainfall.
Las Vegas Spanish translation- THE MEADOWS.
Las Vegas American translation- SIN CITY.
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What if drought in the West leads to higher precipitation in the East? South?
Newton’s Third Law - For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. “what goes up must come down”
The seven Colorado River states (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming) and Mexico divide up rights for 5.4 trillion gallons of river water each year — 1.4 trillion more than has actually flowed through the river each year on average since 2001 and 500 billion gallons a year more than the river produced, on average, long before the drought.
So i guess the question is… if you divert 5 trillion gallons over 7 states that are in extreme drought, and extreme heat and arid conditions… doesnt so many of those gallons evaporate into the atmosphere where its converted to rainfall?
If its not coming down there…where does it come down?
Are those 7 states exporting water as rainfall to the East? the South?
Instead of a MegaDrought… are we in the East in for MegaHumidity?
Where does it come from where does it go? - Cotton Eyed Joe
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A lot of the places having problems were initially deserts. There were no forests nor fishies there.
Interesting. Wonder how the sand got there if there wasnt water? If there was water…i wonder what grew there? If there was water…did it sustain life?
“The earliest settlers of the region are likely to have encountered a verdant landscape of springs and wetlands.”
If you were referring to when settlers arrived there a few hundred years ago…then yes you are correct.
Im referring to likely the Native Americans who lived there 15000 years ago… not us newcomers.
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That would make no sense at all. The problem is that we are diverting water for unsustainable practices and you suggest we divert water for a different unsustainable practice? Turning a 8,200-years old desert into a green landscape? The weather that sustained that landscape is no longer there.
Sorry that i dont make sense… i apologize. Maybe this helps?
Ever been to Vegas?
“America’s driest desert city is home to a man-made urban forest worthy of at least some national attention.”
"Out in the West, we create an urban forest where there wasn’t a forest before”
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I did not mean to be curt about it. I was just trying to point out that the problem is the unsustainable carting of water from one region to another. Whether that is to grow crops or to create a forest in a desert that is still unsustainable. And yes, Las Vegas is an unsustainable place. Common sense could cut their water consumption in half but then again; we have never been known for our common sense.
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Yes that does make some common sense…but then you are faced with those states currently being at the fastest growth rates. And to be honest the westward expansion was nothing but explosions of population.
Common sense says that humans use water…not make water…
The debate is unwinnable… what law forbids where citizens live? what law forbids building metropolis’ in deserts? what law forbids growing things that need water where there is no water?
You can open up a brewery or water park in a desert if you want… the sky is the limit my friend.
In my previous post…i think with the Farm Bill they plan on adding more trees to these desert cities. I think there is more current plans to do more forest work out west as well. So yes on top of everything else they are adding trees. There was some kind of funding for more trees to replace the forests burned in California i think. No clue if all of that means to pump more water…
Carting of water is gonna keep happening… aqueducts, canals, reservoirs, groundwater… u name it.
The Western US is growing in population…so more water will be demanded.
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I disagree that is futile, we squander an ungodly amount of water and then throw our hands in the air claiming that there isn’t anything we can do about it.
Avocado trees that take thousands of gallons of water; as I said the one behind my parent’s house has never been watered because it is growing where it is supposed to. If you do not have enough water in a region, you cannot afford to grow avocadoes there.
If you do not have enough water in a region, green lawns should be illegal.
If you do not have enough water in a region, quadruple the price of water beyond x number of gallons a month. That would get people saving water and money to invest in better technologies.
If I was in one of these places one of my first projects would have been to install a cistern. A 10’ by 10’ by 10’ box can hold 7480 gallons of water, chances are I would need a much smaller capacity.
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I guess the conundrum is… should we as a nation encourage and support farming and population spikes in areas that are in critical drought?
The dollar says yes. Crops sell for more than the cost of water.
Taxes and consumption of goods are worth more than the cost of water.
The only item up for debate is the morality of it all.
Here is something that is kind of sad.
I live in WV which is #2 in the cost of water at $91. I am surrounded by lots of water… and it rains alot here.
Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona water bills are half of mine at around $40. And they are in a megadrought where it will likely never recover.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/water-prices-by-state
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Actually the dollars say no. We are talking trading sort term gains for painful long term problems. A lot of places that established these cash crops now can’t afford to grow them, and can’t afford not to. They are faced with painful decisions of their own making.
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well short term gains are what an executive cares about really. they can make good gains a few quarters, get their bonus then quit with severance package. there’s no reason for them to care about the long term, of the business or anything else.
Kansas is a unique climate in the fact we tend to see things like drought or other extreme weather being in the center of the country. Kansas and other states were called the great american desert because it most certainly can be Great American Desert - Wikipedia .
First look at this map
https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx
Then look at this
https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/766
Called it the term news agencies call it which is megadrought. What he is saying and what many of us know is this is part of a larger drought cycle. What you may or may not know is land with value may have none in the future for agriculture.
Many of these counties that dry up wont just bounce back. Many are familiar with the San Joaquin County area drought it is very serious.
Parts of the world became drier than they have been in 1000 years and wont bounce back anytime soon but there will be times of rainfall where people get some relief
By 2050 drought is expected to impact 75% of the worlds population
We know the belief that Kansas could not be inhabited by civilized people was not totally true The Great American Desert – Legends of America but there is some truth to it which people will be reminded of as we continue to see weather changes back to more the way they have been historically. Many people think this is a drought but consider we just came out of an ultra wet period in history.
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It is not about the land being inhabitable but about population density and commercial extraction of calories from the land. Simply put there isn’t enough water to do whatever we want there.
The folks at the edge of the Atacama desert in Chile use fog catchers, long billowing nets that capture the fine fog that while too small to condensate on their own, the nets allows them to precipitate. That makes the land habitable, but you are not going to grow the population much nor plant avocadoes anytime soon.
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I always thought many of these crops were intentionally grown in desert climates because of reduced bug pressure in deserts. If that’s true, wouldn’t growing these crops in more hospitable climates lead to a significant increase in pesticide use?
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