Household use is 5 million acre feet/ year in CA. Almond use is 6.8 million acre feet. Alfalfa and other crops to feed cattle is about 8 million acre feet.
An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, or how much water it takes to cover an acre in a foot of water.
That is a data center investment hype blog. It’s also dishonest to compare resources used growing food to resources used so that Chase in accounting can generate a nude image of someone, fake reports, etc.
I love almonds but we should not be unsustainably subsidizing their production by allowing farmers to massively deplete aquifers with little costs borne on their part because their great great great grandpappy happened to settle early enough to get a disproportionate share of the water rights. If they have to shoulder that cost then they have a reason to grow more water efficient crops rather than spamming almonds.
Farmers effectively mining out the groundwater below them can be really bad in areas that recharge those aquifers very slowly, particularly since that changes the soil to be more compacted such that instead of filtering down and recharging the groundwater the water instead piles up on the surface and runs off as floodwaters to areas unfortunate enough to be downstream.
Absolutely true for all of that (and I talked about some of these issues in my earlier comment), but anyone listening to data center bros telling them x crop is SO bad because it consumes SO much water is listening to a wolf talk about how the sheep don’t eat enough. They aren’t interested in restoring the ecosystem, they want that water for themselves.
Ok, but they give sources and get into the numbers, and out of all the articles on the first page of seach results about the comparison that I looked at it seemed like the best source. The point isn’t that almonds are worse than data centers, I just don’t think the specific claim that almonds use less water than data centers is true and so I am refuting it. I didn’t find any sources that tried to support that claim, but I’d read them if you know of any.
One of those things provides food and drink products for people, and the other is degrading our collective ability to think critically while providing literally nothing of value.
Yes, almond farming is an issue, but it’s not even on the same level
If you want to put the comparison into its larger context that’s great, I just think it’s important to not pretend like the numbers are something other than they are.
Isn’t CA craziest water user the almond industry? Other than data center bullshit.
Household use is 5 million acre feet/ year in CA. Almond use is 6.8 million acre feet. Alfalfa and other crops to feed cattle is about 8 million acre feet.
An acre foot is 325,851 gallons, or how much water it takes to cover an acre in a foot of water.
As long as animal agriculture exists in the state that’ll pretty much always be a bigger water user. But they’re not low water plants for sure.
Supposedly the almond farming industry uses somewhere between several times more to dozens of times more water than data centers
That is a data center investment hype blog. It’s also dishonest to compare resources used growing food to resources used so that Chase in accounting can generate a nude image of someone, fake reports, etc.
I love almonds but we should not be unsustainably subsidizing their production by allowing farmers to massively deplete aquifers with little costs borne on their part because their great great great grandpappy happened to settle early enough to get a disproportionate share of the water rights. If they have to shoulder that cost then they have a reason to grow more water efficient crops rather than spamming almonds.
Farmers effectively mining out the groundwater below them can be really bad in areas that recharge those aquifers very slowly, particularly since that changes the soil to be more compacted such that instead of filtering down and recharging the groundwater the water instead piles up on the surface and runs off as floodwaters to areas unfortunate enough to be downstream.
Absolutely true for all of that (and I talked about some of these issues in my earlier comment), but anyone listening to data center bros telling them x crop is SO bad because it consumes SO much water is listening to a wolf talk about how the sheep don’t eat enough. They aren’t interested in restoring the ecosystem, they want that water for themselves.
Ok, but they give sources and get into the numbers, and out of all the articles on the first page of seach results about the comparison that I looked at it seemed like the best source. The point isn’t that almonds are worse than data centers, I just don’t think the specific claim that almonds use less water than data centers is true and so I am refuting it. I didn’t find any sources that tried to support that claim, but I’d read them if you know of any.
One of those things provides food and drink products for people, and the other is degrading our collective ability to think critically while providing literally nothing of value.
Yes, almond farming is an issue, but it’s not even on the same level
If you want to put the comparison into its larger context that’s great, I just think it’s important to not pretend like the numbers are something other than they are.