Water?
“We’re out of it.”
Losing farms and ag production due to water shortages. Impacts to grocery prices. Existential issue.
There are ways to adapt, but it requires will, and money.
Report from WFAA, Dallas.
Below, Texas’ last sugar caine mill closes. Water the issue.
“The Commissioner” is pulling no punches, he sounds like a conservationist when he talks about water, but the food trade balance has to, surely, wake up some Americans. Last year importing $16Bn worth of food, this year $42Bn, and what the hell is that doing to food prices everywhere?
Pull quote, “we’re Texans, we can take care of ourselves, we gotta quit whining about Mexico not paying their water bill and we’ve gotta do something about it ourselves”
Considering how much farmland we waste on stock feed and ethanol, we’ve got a lot of buffer in terms of increasing food production for humans.
“Considering how much farmland we waste on stock feed and ethanol…”
Agree with you about ethanol.
But how much land is devoted to “stock feed” is very tricky. According to a UN FAO scientist, 99%+ of what a US beef cow eats is NOT edible by humans. Humans eat grains. That means that there is a hell of a lot of various grains that are consumed by chickens, who get all of their nutrients from grain. I doubt that Americans are going to give up eating chickens, and globally, the amount of chicken meat is the same or more than beef and buffalo meat. In the US, we consume 23 million tons of chicken, and only 13 million tons of beef.
This also means that US beef cows are eating a whole lot of crop residues from human food crops. Much of the ballyhoo about beef feed and how much farmland is devoted to cows must be counting at least some of these human crops as going (solely) to beef.
You also framed this as farmland “wasted” on stock feed. Stock feed is not “wasted” – it produces over 63% of our protein in the US. This is high-quality food, not a waste. Unless you think you can wave a magic wand and convert every American into a vegetarian, you should reconsider how you frame this issue.
“must be counting” Or aren’t. Assumptions aren’t helpful
Really? We’re going to adjudicate this all over again?
“The idea of converting “marginal” or unused land is basically a promise to produce something from nothing. All too often, that simply means that the costs are hidden.”
Some of the feed eaten by cattle is not edible by humans. The rest is, & a lot of what’s not is grown on land which could be wilderness, or producing something more sustainable, healthy, & egalitarian, since by nature or use, beef is one of the foods most responsible for high rates of heart disease & other deadly & debilitating conditions.
12% of Americans eat half of all beef consumed, mostly men, 50-65
Study: “Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming”
So the argument that meat is a valuable protein goes out the window; at such concentrations the shadow takes over & the value becomes harm.
Cows emit about 6% of global GHGs; US cows emit 3%, but it only appears small because we eat meat from elsewhere…and because we’re so phenomenally wasteful in every way. Even so-called regenerative meat & dairy industries are supported by anti-wildlfe measures like fencing, poisoning, culling, and hunting, even to extinction and near-extinction. More than 1 million animals/year are killed.
“The Myth of Regenerative Ranching” Sept. 23, 2021
Remember this? THINC, November 16, 2022
https://i0.wp.com/thinc.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-44.png?ssl=1
“Humans’ meat consumption pushing Earth’s biggest fauna toward extinction”
February 6, 2019
Oregon State University
At least 200 species of large animals are decreasing in number and more than 150 are under threat of extinction, according to new research that suggests humans’ meat consumption habits are primarily to blame.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190206101055.htm
Meat-Eaters Are The Number One Cause Of Worldwide Species Extinction, New Study Warns
A meat-inclusive diet often comes with a side of environmental caveats, including livestock’s contribution to global warming, its contribution to deforestation, and the stress it places on a bevy of…
Archive, Thinkprogress
“Some of the feed eaten by cattle is not edible by humans. The rest is..”
Did you misread what I wrote? 99%+ of what US beef cows is NOT edible by humans. Yet you go on and on about beef, mixing in global figures to malign beef. Globally, the vast majority of GHG from cattle is from 3rd world countries, yet you try to apply global figures to suggest changes in US agriculture. That doesn’t make sense.
You blithely ignore that meat and dairy provide 63% of US protein intake which is NOT all about beef:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/49849663737/in/album-72157714202939482
And, as always, you cite livestock GHG emissions stats as if they are sacrosanct. I have explained here multiple times that these figures, which all use GWP100 and treat cow methane exactly the same as fossil fuel methane, are wildly inaccurate, because cow methane is not nearly as bad for the environment as fossil methane, because it is a biogas. Its carbon comes from CO2 just scrubbed from the air. It does NOT have tens of thousands of years of CO2 warming on it’s ledger, while fossil fuel methane DOES. Use your brain, man, to think, not just cut and paste hit pieces.
Additionally, methane is not a “stock gas”. It is removed from the atmosphere in 12 years, while its breakdown product, CO2 remains for tens of thousands of years. This partially explains why all those stats are inaccurate in another way. Methane from a stable source does not accumulate. Its contribution to warming does not continue to grow after 12 years. And the beef industry in the US has a herd size that is much smaller than it used to be. It is quite possible that it is methane-negative over the past 50 years.
GWP100 vs GWP* :
https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/gwp-star-better-way-measuring-methane-and-how-it-impacts-global-temperatures
What’s clear is that I don’t believe your unsupported claims & you ignored the facts I presented.
12% of Americans eat half of all beef consumed, mostly men, 50-65.
Study: “Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming”
I understand there is no more talking sense to meat addicts than there is in talking to climate denying delayalists, ARFs (anti-renewable fanatics), auntyBEVs, election deniers, birthers or any of the other delusional fantasists. Your cherry picking, distortions, & use of nonsensical arguments has gotten to be almost hilarious at this point, but sad just the same.
The survival of civilization depends on radically changing so many things; they all depend on starting to heal the complex psychological condition manifesting, for 1 thing, as an addiction to domination & sadism & other symptoms of the thing best called Wetiko disease. Specifically, symptoms include being addicted to destroying by burning fuels, smashing atoms, “conquering” lands, countries, & people/s, & ruling over women, children, other races & religions, animals… Hierarchy & competition are what are sacrosanct, & the “losers”—by whatever definition or criteria—are projected onto/scapegoated, despised, dehumanized, & destroyed. Eaten, which bizarrely, ends up recalling the projection & re-internalizing the despised. Oops.
“Cows emit about 6% of global GHGs; US cows emit 3%…”
This does not seem possible at all. 5.8% of global GHG emissions are from “Livestock” as a whole not just cows. And again, these stats use the GWP100, which makes them inflated by at least a factor of 3.
The US beef herd size ( 92 million) is a small fraction of the global beef herd (Brazil alone has 234 million) and US beef is the least likely to produce methane emissions. US beef produces only 1.9% of total US CO2-eq emissions. And, again, that 1.9% is based on the GWP100, so it is inflated:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/33335275208/in/album-72157714202939482
According to the EPA, US Livestock as a whole had a contribution of 0.5% of global total GHG emissions in 2017:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/49866270547/in/album-72157714202939482
“Cows emit about 6% of global GHGs; US cows emit 3%…”
According to the EPA, US livestock (as a whole) contributes 0.5% of total global GHG emissions. And that is based on the GWP100 which inaccurately inflates methane:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/96198796@N05/49866270547/in/album-72157714202939482
How nice for them. They won’t miss much if farmers stick with planting only crops that won’t be used to feed animals. And letting ruminants and fowl into the field to eat the post-harvest remnants has always been a good idea.
There should be no subsidy of any kind for crops grown for animal feed. If people want to eat more expensive forms of protein, so be it. I can get my full suite of amino acids from a tasty dish of seasoned rice and beans. Food for non-humans (Fluffy, Spot, Elsie the cow, gazillions of chickens and pigs, etc.) should be a separate supply chain with minimal Department of Ag support. Let ruminants graze on unprocessed land.
People can still eat all of the wild and ag-waste-fed cattle, sheep and goats they want.
“Unless you think you can wave a magic wand and convert every American into a vegetarian, you should reconsider how you frame this issue.”
I don’t need to dance around the unsustainability of those crops grown for stock feed (especially those notoriously grown with subsidized or limited water). People can still choose to do wasteful things (I dye my hair different colors, I drink a lot of cow’s milk, my house is bigger than I need), but it’s almost 2025 and too many people don’t know any of this.
My hope is to get the average American consumer to consider less meat, driving, water consumption, etc. as an alternative to how they live now.
In his book The Heat Will Kill You First, Jeff Goodell has a chapter (“Magic Valley”) on the changes to the agriculture along the Rio Grande. Part of the problem is not just water, but heat, both in terms of evaporation and the increase in the overnight low temperature.
Note that that the only culprit in the loss of Texas sugar cane is Mexico stealing the water.
https://www.fao.org/4/s2022e/s2022e02.htm
CHAPTER 2: CROP WATER NEEDS
From Table 5, as near as I can suss out, sugarcane is by far the thirstiest (1500-2500mm over the total growing period) even compared to banana (1200-2200mm), citrus (900-1200), or alfalfa (800-1600).