Almonds are nutritious and yummy.
To meet demand, locally and around the world, California farmers have covered some 1,600,000 acres in almond trees (if all in one place, the orchard would be a square 50 with sides measuring 50 miles).
An almond croissant with a cappuccino can be an irresistible combination.
Many have criticized growing almonds in California for using too much water in a semi-arid state. After all, it take a gallon to grow a single nut.
It’s important to realize, however, that it simply takes a lot of water to grow food (albeit some foods more than others). Most of us consume far more water through the food we eat than we use in our homes. Agricultural water use in California is roughly 4 times as high as urban use.
In recent decades, California farmers have increasingly turned to almonds and other nuts. Trees do need to be watered every year, so many farmers will plant some acreage in row crops, such as tomatoes, which can be fallowed in dry years. That’s the life of the California farmer, at least many of them.
Almond trees blooming in Chowchilla
There are, however, egregious examples of abuse – unsustainable investments in almonds and other nuts that knowingly deplete the groundwater table, literally undermine other farmers, dry up local communities and cause land subsidence. Bloomberg’s recent article, Groundwater Gold Rush: Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink, is an excellent and compelling story of how groundwater is still out there for the taking without regard to the consequences.
Noted Arizona State hydrologist Jay Famiglietti puts it mildly, possibly with a bit of sarcasm: “To knowingly go into a region like that and drill deeper wells really tests the limits of corporate ethics. This is coming at us at 100 miles an hour.”
It’s inexcusable.
There ought to be a law. Well, there is, but California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act does not require sustainability until 2040. That’s “the best the legislature could do” when it passed the law in 2014. Sadly, by the time 2040 rolls around, some of the damage will be irreversible.
As Bloomberg points out, the average depth of wells drilled by institutional investors is over 1000 feet. They are sucking the land dry.
Note also, the 110,000 acres planted by the investors in Bloomberg’s article use more water than all the customers in San Francisco’s regional water system.
It’s hard to imagine any elected official defending this abuse of California’s groundwater basins. Yet, collectively, it’s a problem our legislature has been unable to solve.
Hetch Hetchy is a similar example. No one would defend damming a national park today. Many politicians know restoration is the right thing, but are reluctant to take action. Restore Hetch Hetchy is looking for elected officials with the courage to do what we all know is right.
