{"id":7315,"date":"2015-04-15T05:55:51","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T10:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7315"},"modified":"2015-04-15T05:55:51","modified_gmt":"2015-04-15T10:55:51","slug":"making-every-drop-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=7315","title":{"rendered":"Making Every Drop Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making Every Drop Count<\/a><\/h3>\n

Last week, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order requiring urban centers to reduce their water consumption by 25%. With the driest winter on record and only a\u00a0one-year supply of water<\/a>\u00a0stored in the state\u2019s reservoirs, many are questioning whether the burden of conservation should fall so heavily on cities, when no restrictions have been placed on agriculture, which uses 80% of the state\u2019s water but generates only\u00a02% of its economic activity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite these criticisms, the Governor has\u00a0defended his position<\/a>: \u201cThe farmers have fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of land\u2026They\u2019re not watering their lawn or taking longer showers. They\u2019re providing most of the fruits and vegetables of\u00a0America.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s true. California produces over half of the country\u2019s fruits and vegetables: roughly 71% of the country\u2019s spinach, 90% of its broccoli, 97% of its plums, and 99% of its walnuts\u2014and that\u2019s justthe tip of the fruit (and vegetable) bowl<\/a>. It\u2019s also true that those crops require billions of gallons of water. But are all farms at fault in this water\u00a0crisis?<\/p>\n

Practices, Practices,\u00a0Practices<\/h2>\n

In the drought blame game, almonds have become a \u201cposter crop\u201d for the excesses of agricultural water use. Articles have pointed to how\u00a0water-intensive<\/a>\u00a0almonds are to grow and have told dark tales of greedy\u00a0investors<\/a>\u00a0buying up land and draining California\u2019s water to grow almond monocrops for\u00a0export.<\/p>\n

Before you run off and boycott almonds, it\u2019s important to note that not all almond farms follow this model. Take Greg Massa of\u00a0Massa Organics<\/a>, a diversified family farm in the Sacramento Valley. A fourth-generation farmer, Massa and his wife, Raquel Krach, grow organic almonds and rice, along with raising pork and lamb. They sell mostly at farmers markets in northern\u00a0California.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making Every Drop Count Last week, Governor Jerry Brown issued an executive order requiring urban centers to reduce their water consumption by 25%. With the driest winter on record and only a\u00a0one-year supply of water\u00a0stored in the state\u2019s reservoirs, many are questioning whether the burden of conservation should fall so heavily on cities, when no […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[20,101,220,1912,3973,866,4572],"class_list":["post-7315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-agriculture","tag-california","tag-drought","tag-food-production","tag-jerry-brown","tag-water","tag-water-conservation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7316,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7315\/revisions\/7316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}