Southern California water restrictions take effect Wednesday amid severe drought

Consumers in California pay around 1 penny per gallon of water. Farmers pay an average of $70 per &quot;acre-foot&quot; which is around 325000 gallons. So farmers get their water for roughly 30x cheaper than consumers. Agriculture is also around 80% of the water used in the state.<p>I&#x27;m frustrated when news articles ignore what, to me, are the most basic facts of the issue. Consumer water use is a small part of water consumption and already has huge surcharges to discourage excess water use. It seems like &quot;efficiency theater&quot; to add even more restrictions to watering your lawn in LA. It&#x27;s like a distraction to make people argue about it and feel like they are suffering for water efficiency and feel like the government is doing something, when there&#x27;s a simpler solution of &quot;charge farmers more for water use&quot; that would be more fair, more effective, and less disruptive to Californians overall.

To be fair to the farmers, it&#x27;s more of an issue of <i>which crops</i> they&#x27;re growing.<p>The southern Central Valley used to be a big producer of cotton and sugar beets, and the further north near Fresno has always been tree fruit and some vegetables, while the western valley was much more sparsely cultivated (source: mom grew up in a small town near Bakersfield, dad near Fresno, I grew up working on the farm every summer).<p>These days the southern central valley is almost all almonds, which are <i>huge</i> consumers of water, and they are used for <i>nut milk</i>, of all things. Dairies have also expanded in the past few decades. Cows drink a ton of water and eat alfalfa, which needs crazy amounts of water to grow.<p>The biggest thing we city people can do is completely cease drink almond milk and drastically cut our cow milk consumption. Dairy and almonds are the two biggest line items in California&#x27;s water budget. Agriculture in the state would be much more sustainable if we shifted farmers to different crops.<p>I submit to you that soy and oat milk are both delicious and can replace cow&#x27;s milk in most recipes. There&#x27;s not yet a good cheese made from these yet, unfortunately.

When there’s a mismatch between capacity and load, price increases bring the two back into balance (incentivizing additional capacity and reducing load). But if price increases are not permitted, keeping water cheaper than it should be, then yes, people will waste it.<p>If price increases were permitted, additional capacity would make economic sense, such as desalination plants and aqueducts. And load would decrease. People would save water and some would move out of state. California’s population has increased more than its water supply, which has remained largely static I imagine.