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Food Inflation Watch: California Farmers' Water Costs Surge 700% After Government Cuts Supply
When we reported on the government's decisiosn to withhold irrigation water to California for the first time in 54 years, we warned there would be consequences: farmers are hit hardest as "they're all on pins and needles trying to figure out how they're going to get through this." Fields will go unplanted (supply lower mean food prices higher), or farmers will pay top dollar for water that's on the market (and those costs can only be passed on via higher food prices). Sure enough, as Bloomberg reports, farmers in California’s Central Valley, the world’s most productive agricultural region, are paying as much as 10 times more for water than they did before the state’s record drought cut supply.
As Bloomberg Briefs' Alison Vekshin reports,
Costs soared to $1,100 per acre-foot from $140 a year ago in the Fresno-based Westlands Water District, which represents 700 farms, said Gayle Holman, a spokeswoman. North of Sacramento, the Western Canal Water District is selling it for double the usual price: $500 per acre-foot, about 326,000 gallons.
The most severe water shortages are in the San Joaquin Valley, in an area from Bakersfield to Patterson and Chowchilla, said Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition, a Sacramento-based group representing farmers and most agricultural irrigation districts in California.
The drought gripping the state that supplies half the fruits, vegetables and nuts consumed in the U.S. has led federal and state providers to curtail the water they distribute to farmers. That’s prompted districts representing growers to buy and sell for escalated prices from other parts of the state.
The drought threatens to boost produce costs that are already elevated following a December frost, according to the U.S. Agriculture Department. The price of fresh fruit is forecast to rise as much as 6 percent this year, the department said last month.
Dairy products, of which California is the biggest producer, may rise as much as 4 percent. After three years of record-low rainfall, 82 percent of the state is experiencing extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a federal website.
The rising prices are “a function of supply and demand in a very dry year and the fact that there are a lot of competing uses for water in California,’’ said Mat Maucieri, a spokesman for the Bureau of Reclamation.
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Seems like it's time for The Fed to print some more rain...
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not much water used in Soylent Green
Checkmate.
Quit floating the water through the aqueduct system to Los Angeles and points south for car washes and wet tee shirt contests, FFS.
Yes, there's a water shortage but State and Federal meddling and fucking about for political purposes are making this 1,000's of times worse than it already is. And further problems cause by further meddling will be met with further political solutions and further crop shortages.
Believe me, folks, I know as I've family members in the Ag biz ....
Up close and personal
Those people down south have the resources, same as anybody else, to build large scale desal operations to take care of their "needs"
Not all their "wants", but their "needs".
I mean fuck me... just when we're gonna have more than enough New Labor to pick the crops, there will be no crops to pick
Only the government....
another reason that Northren California wants to break off from Southern California.
Yep
California's grow some good weed though.
Tahoe OG kush is a gnarly strand.
Save the weed people.
Recent serious stories in many CA news papers and local telly about how the pot farms are contributing to the water shortage.... just like electric cars to the road tax revenues.
Aaaaarrrrtagghhhh!
lawns in arid places are next to the stupidest thing we've ever done. Next may be "modern agriculture." Before corporate giants took it over, food was actually (and wisely) spread out all over this country not slammed into one arid state with an artifical water system designed to fail. Small farmers had millions of tiny catch ponds that captured and held rain water when it fell and used it in dry times when it didn't. Land and nature were never meant to grow one plant for hundreds of acres. The simple idea is insane, expensive, toxic and destined to fail. Add Monsanto and you've created suicide.
Conserve water or perish.
So says the United Nations.
http://www.planbeconomics.com/2013/10/conserve-water-or-perish-warns-un-...
Not as fucking dumb as Albuquerque and Rio Rancho have been for the past couple of decades. Conserve water so we can grow so that we can conserve even more water.
Last one out turn off the lights... Electicity is expensive as hell in Ca...
Let's build some fuckin' dams, on the one hand, and price the water a little closer to a causal relationship between cost and price, on the other hand. California hippies like the current governor Moonbeam halted the well planned CWP back when California had half the population it does now. If we had those reservoirs, we'd have more water to bridge this drought.
You mean like.. 'Cadillac Deserted'?
"Land and nature were never meant to grow one plant for hundreds of acres."
Yup. I tried Three Sisters planting this year, and while I fucked up the timing a bit (I'll still be able to recover,) I've had hardly any squash bugs on the squash. They get to the corn, find more corn, get confused and leave to my summer squash or my neighbor's squash.
I got bit by a squash bug last night while watering. It was probably a good thing, as I wouldn't have otherwise known there were any around until the cucumber plants went missing. Hurt like hell, though. May have been aggravated by my cauterizing it with my cigarette.
We've been really lucky on the squash bug front down here for once. Thank goodness.
What's killing me this year is that damn cucumber bore 'worm'. My dreams of a pantry full of homemade pickles are quickly fading.
Anyone know what to plant nearby to deter those bastards?
I've had great sucess with the following method; find the spot where the worm is (look for excretment trails, and they are usually just above that area), stick a long straight pin it a few spots in that area (you are trying to penetrate the worm, thereby killing it). Check it the next day, if no excrement trails, you have killed the worm. If you did not kill the worm, it's time to perform surgery. Take a sharp knife and make an incision in the area you think the worm is, pull the worm out with your knife. They will be one to 2 worms. Once you've killed the worms, place dirt and mulch over the site and water. The areas will then form roots and the plant will continue to produce.
Based on the tone, you still don't see it is by design.
And don't forget the lush golf courses for the rich corporate types
There are a few towns in California that would not have a service sector to speak of if not for the weed business. Wonder what they would collect in sales tax if not for pot growers? That, along with other cash-green businesses, are keeping some towns afloat.
But the pot growers are evil. We should stop those evil growers from consuming water! Especially since so many of them grow in locations such as Humboldt County and Southern Oregon, where water is so scarce....
I think we should give all the water to solar energy producation and fracking operations. That would allow us to rule the world by being energy sufficient, and give us the power to force Putin into submission.
farm in an arid region, risk ending up in a desert. you are now there.
So water went up 700% but dairy products will only go up 4% with the amount of water that cows drink, really?
In California cows are fed a lot of corn. It takes a lot of water to grow the corn. Ditto alfalfa.
Yep... Is reality.
Reality also is that there's goodly amount of water for Ag, but is shipped to urban areas.
If everybody paid same per "unit feet" the voters would go berserk.... but no lawns, etc.
This way they can feel it in food prices, no starve, but be told about an emergency, needs more government intrusion, regulation and higher taxes, etc.
Is part of the manipulation into the NWO's Agenda 21, etc, etc, etc, etc,
Do not take this lightly. CA either supplies directly most of the fruit, veggies and nuts to the USofA, etc., or at a minimum, sets the Ag prices at the margin.
You folks at your NYC fancy restaurants, only reason your veggies are so fresh is they're air freighted to you. Otherwise the peons eat the crap off a rail cars and trucks, across the country.
No shit, Sherlocks.
Hell, as another example, sardines caught in Monterey Bay* (lots and lots, guys) are trucked to Salinas for cleaning and flown on ice to Asia as a delicacy.
Screw this up and starve, Bitchez.
*they still haven't found John Denver's head
No lawns? "The city will fine me $500 if I don't keep a greem lawn? But the state will fine me $500 if I do."
That alone should explain where we are and what to light on fire.
Well, the CA Dept of Education has to pay for that $50 million in routers and servers that their IT department buys every year to justify their budget, which are sitting in closets, never to be used.
Oh, so fucking true. A fellow who'd worked (consultant) for the state once reported that CA has in excess of $7 billion in material purchased every year that is declared surplus, unneeded, junk, etc., and sold off. Interestingly, the sales contracts are never widely circulated. Nudge nudge wink wink.
And he said that is entirely similar, same practices, etc., in just about every other state.
No shit.
Oh, he was never retained after the initial report was submitted.
Rug meet sweep, sweep, meet rug
You self aggrandizement at work
Speaking of consultants for CA...I've known several who worked for the state and quite often it takes up to 4 MONTHS to get paid for their work. Just regular IT folks who work alongside state employees.
But oh, when an actual EMPLOYEE gets furloughed for 3 days and month, holy shit the sky is falling!!!
In the last drought here in Texas, I and everyone I knew just watered at 3-4 in the morning when the water nazis were not around. Fuck that shit you were talking about the city vs. the state.
Also, you can water during the day if you use soaker hoses and don't let any water drip or flow onto any pavement. Fuck the government nazis!
Exactly...spoken from a true Central Valley resident (like I used to be).
Never let a crsis go to waste. What a money maker, $500 fines for watering your lawns or otherwise wasting water. Apparently it's more egregious than red light violations, which are "only" $483 + court fees and administrative costs, of course, at least in the Ebay.
Don't forget all the tomato losses from all the college students crashing big rigs while running illegal 20 hour shifts at the behest of their employers, while the CHP looks the other way.
"If everybody paid same per "unit feet" the voters would go berserk.... but no lawns"
The homeowner pays a LOT more for an acre foot of water to water his (useless) lawn than the farmer pays. Figure it out -- how many acres of lawn does the average homeowner have? Maybe a twentieth of an acre? A foot of water on it should be enough for the year if he doesn't send too much down the gutter (which he usually does). That's only $50 for a year if water's $1,000/acre-foot. I pay that much every month.
California has very strange and unusual water laws compared with the rest of the dry country. Some groups get lots of water for a pittance, others pay much more if they can get it. It's all in the water RIGHTS.
Check out JG Boswell Co. They own a lot of water rights that are now worth a fortune. They use a lot of it growing cotton. Yum!
A great read on this: Cadillac Desert
Raising the cost of water from $1,100 per acre-foot from $140 a year ago rather than rationing because of the drought makes water districts no different from ambulance chasers.
To sell water to the highest capable bidder effectively eliminates the smaller operations.
I wish anyone understood/cared knukles. This great state...
Many do understand and do care.
Few Zerohedgers seem to.
This is the implementation of Agenda 21 and Neo-fuedelism. The weather is being manipulated to a great degree by NWO elements of the federal government who are sculpting the population distribution and impeding food production. It is done to drive people from the rural areas to later buy up the land for pennies on the dollar. It is done to also impoverish the population and drive them into the cities.
Again, the drought is induced. It is called weather modification.
If you don't know that you're just talking out your ass.
And that is the truth of the matter.
Was just in the Central Valley. They are pissed and the land sits unused in some places. The new dust bowl.
FORWARD SOVIET!
I thought NJ was the garden state
Hah ha ha haha ha
NJ good at raising ghettos and poverty
..and taxes
More like the Garbage State!
No water in Claifornia?....IT WAS PUTIN!
Putin did it!
(sorry I'm only writing what they told me to write)
Food is getting more expensive but just wait when there is no food left ...
Time to start eating Alpo, but what will Fido eat?
Don't worry. Our Dear Leader is working on an executive order to add pets to the EBT Food Stamp program.
Yes, and the FF's purebred Portuguese Water Dog rorm show bloodlines gifted by Ted Kennedy (? or other prominent politician) made sure that there were no pound puppies in the palace.
The prince was ghastly, yet the peasantry cried, nonetheless
Old Teddy was a dog fucker, too? Not that surprised...
FORWARD SOVIET!
Q: What did Obama say after eating a sled dog?
A: It tastes like mush.
You.
food companies are substituting real food with wood pulp. Read your food labels, anything that has "Cellulose" and/or derivative thereof is wood pulp, no nutrional value at all for humans.
I , nowadays, go to the end game. They want higher prices, this will do it.. What does a drought in cal hv to do with snow in colo. Which had a load last year. Great year for skiing
We need some research into cheaper desalination and iceberg towing.
NOW!
Trouble, right here in (no) River City.
Maybe tow the icebergs in with monorails.
what ice bergs lol earth 1 man 0
Is this what they call the food pyrimid,,I bet dog and cat food is thru the roof too....granys like the stuff...good on a cracker
Are the recipients of aqueduct water paying 10x also? I still see green lawns in Pasadena and San Marino. That water gets pumped a few hundred miles...and that pumping is not cheap either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Aqueduct
NO THEY HAVE NOT
NO THEY ARE NOT
They're still getting their allocations and prices in those areas for household water have not gone up that much.
What's happening is they (state and feds) take so much water and allocate it to "regions"/"uses". They divert form the Central and SJ and Inland Valleys to the cities. Thus the bidding within the valleys for less water causes the prices there to spike.... for the Ag users
This is not market price suppl and demand, this is central planning price control and shortages.
ObamaCare, communist central planning. Worked out so fucking well in Russia, Eastern Europe and China, they're still doing it as rousing successes...
FUCK ME
Yeah, Ive got family in the south end. This is insane
That shit still blows my mind. People that grow good for the entire country get their rates raised that much, and people in places like LA and the rest don't see their prices go up to water their lawn or fill their swimming pools. Rather than market forces and supply and demand, we get centrally planned bullshit which will just lead to us all being equally fucked.
must see
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-18/electrical-grid-may-well-be-nex...
And every tribesman does their best Monty Burns "excellent" and they drive futures ever higher on the news.
Middle class gets squeezed even more. NYC billionaires buy more yachts.
Around Los Banos (mid/south Central Valley) 25% of the land is fallow. So, 25% less food; "No inflation here; move along."
The bathrooms. Why the hell is that placed named the bathrooms? Driven through probably 200 times.
If you lived there, you'd understand.
Why is it called The Toilets? Go there. You'll understand.
It's the toilet of the Central Valley, well, one of the many, many toilets.
Thi =s is fahking retahhhhted.. I have 2 springs, both licensed by DHHS for sale to the public here in Maine but cannot sell a drop....
Yes these clowns are farming in the desert... Let em dry up and blow away..
Anyone interested in buying water let me know
As I have posted previously, I am a full time vegetable grower. Why you would start a farm where there is no good rain and/or irrigation is beyond me. Fuck them, hopefully makes my products grown, harvested and sold by Americans here in America more valuable..
reason #537 why fertile land with decent rainfall will become one of the most valuable hard assets.
News flash!!! You need more than water to grow vegetables for half the country. You also need damn fine soil, which the Ca Central Valley has plenty off. If water was the only factor, Seattle could grow crap for the entire world.
KEY Ingredient is SUNSHINE, lots of it, you bring the water in and voila bountiful crops. I have been to Maine, mostly cloudy and short summers, good luck getting good crop yields lol. Just like a car you need sparks and gas to make it move. Same thing with ag, you need sun and water. That is why Brazil is ag dynamo. Lots of sun and water too.
check out Elliot Coleman, he does some pretty interesting growing in Maine. The major problem with modern Ag is not a lack of sunshine. The last time I checked a lot of the western world lives in some pretty high lattitudes. The major problem is centralization, toxic chemicals, topsoil destruction, GMOs, too many animals and plants of the same kind in one crowded place and idiotc water use that destroys the acquifers and the water quality. Perhaps the worst of all is reducing the natural diversity and nutrient quality of hundered of plants to GMO corn and soy for man and animal alike.....
California's Central Valley is just west of the Siera Nevada Mountain Range and stretches approximately 450 miles. The mountain range is usually filled with snow and in the Summer, it melts thus providing hundreds of streams and rivers pouring westward into the valley. This valley is one of the most fertile valleys and produces roughly 8 percent of the nation's agricultural output by value. A couple years ago the devilcRAT leadership in Congress and the State voted to strip the water from the farmers due to a manufactured environmental cause concerning the Delta Smelt. Combine this with the fact that winters have been pretty dry has created this problem.
I live in San Diego County and this county as been building and filling resoviours with water and essentially has not issue with water. I believe this problem is mostly man caused and blaming farmers in the Central Valley at this point in time is simply not true.
There's been a lot of almond trees planted these last few years on land that's never had anything but grass on it.
It takes over a gallon of water to make EACH almond.
Sounds like this might cause inflation to surge to 1.01% according to official government figures.
Can't be right, the evil marijuana growers are using up all the water.
http://pixelusmaximus.com/gazelle/weed-blamed-for-california-drought/
Well, this works out very well for Gubamint..... they no longer include the cost of food in their statistics for inflation...... KEEP THE LIES A COMIN........
I've been following this to the extent that it's possible in the news, but it seems like, although there's a serious rainfall and melt shortage - running water, there's still a pretty large groundwater resource that's going to postpone any real crisis until either the rain comes or the acquifers are depleted. Anybody who's there have any insight on this?
Also, WTF is the deal with 'green law' bylaws in residential neighborhoods. How the fuck is anybody outside California going to take this 'we have a drought' situation seriously when there are these stories of people getting fined because they're not watering their fucking lawns. Are your municipal bureaucrats and politicians really that stupid, or is the whole water crisis overblown?
I live in San Diego County.... while the State of kalifornia says to limit watering your yard a maximum 3 times per week at no more than 10 minutes per valve, my homeowners association walks around and citing me and my neighbors for brown grass... FUCK THEM......
Can you paint it green?
That would be fucking perfect. A painting the roses red moment.
We can go a few years without water literally running out. But similar to oil, you don't have to run out to cause a crises. As soon as it stops being cheap and abundant, it's over. But, I'm told that Hetch-Hetchy reservoir which supplies San Francisco with water, has one more year of reserves before it's on like donkey kong.
Not to worry. We are only 1 year away from another arkstorm.
quote: "...the government's decisiosn to withhold irrigation water to California for the first time in 54 years..."
Welcome to Marxism. Death rained upon you by the fucking State.
No doubt all the farmers will be looking to government to solve their water problems. If not for tax payer spending to build many water systems, the farmers could never have farmed that dry valley. Read Steinbecks books, he wrote about those areas in the eras from late 1800's to middle 1900's. Drought was nearly every other year. Every decade or so a mass drought hit and made rich men poor. It is all in his stories. But government used public money to get water to farmers. If one of those mass droughts Steinbeck wrote about is here again, then blame god.
Manufactured crisis. Environmentalists stop the construction of dams in the name of biodiversity.
What has biodiversity done for you lately? Species die and new ones mutate. Big deal. We are the highest form of life and saving a useless species at a huge human cost is immoral.
"What has biodiversity done for you lately?"
Other than make your species evolve?
In economic terms, think of biodiversity as a free market with plenty of resiliency and redundancy. Now we've taken away most of that in modern economic systems. How are they doing?
'We are the highest form of life'
you are sure of this? lol
California may be short of water, but that's not stopping them from requiring more ethanol in the motor fuel.
It takes a lot of water to make a gallon of ethanol.
ethenol is the most corrupt, energy wasting fuel product we've ever created. We now grow more corn for fuel than food. Idiotic.
Meanwhile San Joaquin aquifers have only dropped 10% after two years 2010 and 2011 of record rainfall and especially snow pack with 2011 having sierra snowpack at 175% of normal. Translation= The Government is lying . Yes AGAIN. And that drop of 10% is the highest drop amongst CA aquifers which you would expect where water is used the most. Other CA aquifers have seen little drop if any at all
All Hype Machine
keep posting. A LOT of people are risking fines for water in Socal- and it's the same excuse with everyone.
The homeowners are just NOW catching on.
I wish I could show you pictures, but the golf course at Hope's ranch is starting to get bone dry. The grass is still green though.
Situation normal, all fucked up
Water is now a speculative commodity.
http://fortune.com/2014/06/25/water-futures-markets/
Started by the Aussies, who export raw goods to CHina- and are not known to be the sharpest tools in the shed.
"Waterfind’s service works much like any other electronic futures exchange, with a few twists. The firm does not have a formal clearinghouse, as U.S. exchanges do, but one of its units acts in that capacity. The wide variety of custom delivery dates, locations, and prices on the contracts recall what’s known on Wall Street as a “bespoke, over-the-counter” derivatives market, where banks design financial contracts to specific requirements of the buyers or sellers. Unlike those markets, however, Waterfind displays quotes to all parties—one of the defining traits of an exchange. Waterfind also acts as a broker on some of the trades, though the majority of its clients now trade on their own."
All of the boomer realtors and flippers wanted Quantitative Easing. The bullshit part is that their karma is a negative externality.
of course oil companies are involved:
Bob Poole, a spokesman for Santa Maria Energy, a small oil producer in Santa Barbara County, said that oil companies must navigate the politics of drought in California. Santa Maria is planning to build an eight-mile pipeline to bring treated wastewater to its oil fields, where it injects steam and gas into rock to push out the oil in a process known as cyclic steaming.
The company chose to use treated wastewater, which is cheaper than freshwater, Mr. Poole said, adding, “We also felt that it was very important politically.”
In Kern County, oil producers and farmers have coexisted peacefully for decades, but that balance has changed in recent years. Advances in drilling technology have led oil companies to move into agricultural areas. In Shafter, just north of here, dozens of new oil fields are next to almond orchards and other crops. The possible eventual exploitation of a huge untapped oil reserve called the Monterey Shale, which lies under Kern County’s prime farmland, could mean the kind of intense fracking carried out in Texas and North Dakota.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/us/california-drought-chevron-oil-fiel...
they wanted price inelastic taxes for oil, then tobacco.. Now WATER.I just posted pics of Los Angeles flood this Feburary.
http://economicasylum.blogspot.com/2014/07/californias-drought.html
Where was the drought?
I just posted pics of Los Angeles flood this Feburary.
http://economicasylum.blogspot.com/2014/07/californias-drought.html
Where was the drought?
JG Boswell Company
Symbol (BWEL) - Pink Sheet Stock
One of the largest farmers in the San Joaquin.
Mucho land and riparian water rights.
On a tear lately.
Check it.
surely we can frack our way out of this. right?
http://consumerist.com/2014/07/18/california-city-will-fine-couple-500-f...
Goverment always flourishes fines people if they water their lawn and fines them if they don't water their lawn.
http://naturalresources.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=5921 Billions of gallons of California river water flow directly into Ocean to protect smelt bait fish. Environmentalists also fighting building of desalinization plants on California coast.
yes , i cannot wait to read the zh article a year from now talking about how terrible the idea of price controls and rationing is when wall street is going to invest in warehousing these foods, and then creating a futures market for everyone of these foods, dwarfing the underlying contracts being physically delivered, and will jack up the prices on all futures ----JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN.
the problem with scarcity and finance is that the so called 'efficient market' is leveraged as a fools ideology.
in efficient markets, the price of food is 'supposed to go up' because people want to EAT FOOD. but wall street knows this, and then uses cheap money to take advantage of efficient markets, by making them even 'more' yokeable with inflated specualtive dollars.
it is as if there are two types of money. money that real people use to buy real things and moeny on wall street that is fast and furious.
if the two types of money were simply separate , it would make it easier to deal with the abusive behavior of wall street. but they are not. and 'greed is good' just means that fast money fuck you money will fill the little guys mouth with shit instead of food. ---because there's more profit in it.
it's essentially a giant FUCK YOU tax that is levied by new york elites instead of DC. that's all really....
Turns out around 85% of Cali water usage is farmers. The plebs down south only suck 15.
Farmers waste an awful lot of water feeding all you useless cocksuckers.
Not that I wouldn't turn the spigot off for LA and let them drink each other's precious bodily fluids.
Can I get a plus one for the strangelove reference? Because I was going to say piss.
something that must be acknowledged in relation to this west coast drought is that it's deliberate. i lived in san francisco for a few years, and noticed how dramatic aerosol spraying created weather patterns in other places and staved off local rain. often, the massive spraying of heavy metals and other toxic dreck in those miltrails 'they' sprayed off of the pacific coast would create weather patterns that would in turn wreak havoc on the midwest or east coast a few days later, causing epic tornadoes, floods, etc. essentially those other areas would get the rain that we would normally receive, causing catastrophe. then, after the miltrails passed, the weather would be gorgeous in san francisco for about a few days, almost like los angeles. no clouds, no trails, pure azure sky. then some day once again trails would commence spaced at 60 degrees and parallel. once again weather systems would hit elsewhere, rinse, repeat.
with the gouging of prices and crazy laws, seems like once again it's speculators and control systems that will make a killing and kill. elephant in the room.
Government owned water. Anyone see a problem with this?
Government owned water.
Government owned land through the BLM.
Government owned homes through Fannie and Freddie.
We need only government owned jobs and we can declare the Marxist transformation complete.
Better if Homo Monachus (cause he sure as hell ain't Sapiens) went extinct.
The price of certain foods could take some wild swings. Prices under the pressure of changes in supply and demand can be a lot like a carnival ride. By this I mean fast and abrupt swings can take place and often we see prices go to unimaginable extremes. It would be better to say changes in "supply or demand" because we should highlight and fully realize the market works best when at least one side of the equation remains somewhat stable. More on this subject in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/02/inflation-can-effect-supply-and-d...
Im sure the Fracking companies have no broblem finding water!
This California water/farming problem is as it should be. When they have to pay the real cost of water, truck farming will return to the rest of the nation. Hauling celery across the nation makes ZERO economic sense.
Sorry Farmers,
The Liberal National Socialist elite only believe in an Urban-Serfdom lifestyle.
When people are spread out, and have the means to support themselves, they are too hard to control.
The reason I do not see this as a normal water supply issue, is because there is a monopoly supplier of water, who also has a monopoly on force - the government.
I think everyone can agree that the farmers need to bid for water against other farmers up stream.
This is what I am talking about:
"What's happening is they (state and feds) take so much water and allocate it to "regions"/"uses". They divert form the Central and SJ and Inland Valleys to the cities. Thus the bidding within the valleys for less water causes the prices there to spike.... for the Ag users"
ONLY the farmers in California are getting dramatically increased prices - because the monopoly provider prefers the urban lifestyle.
The government should pull the eminent domain card on all Nestlé water producing properties in California.
It isn't as if Nestlé is paying taxes anyway, probably.
[accidupe]
Farmers are a huge user of water, and a very inefficient user of water at the same time.
Maybe they will take some steps to increase water efficiency now?
It won't get them 700% in savings though.
California needs to raise price of farming water. Presently it makes sense to grow friggin rice in Northern CA. Rice Paddies!!!!
I knew my decision to avoid eating vegetables was a smart move. I remain "over-weight" in my allocation of candy bars, soda, and JBX tacos.
Everyone knows that rising food prices don't count as inflation.