I’ve always thought it funny that people put down landscape fabric and expect it to stop all weeds, as if they are immerging from the center of the earth or something. Weed seeds are blown in from your neighbors crappy back yard, and will germinate in your gravel the next time it rains a few drops.
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If I remember, it also takes a ton of electricity.
Eat Mor Chikin!
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I think you’re both correct, but if there’s a will there’s a way. We know it can be done, now how can it be done more efficiently and cost effectively? I also realize the West Coast isn’t exactly a bastion for less govt, but perhaps less govt may help the market roll better for reverse osmosis.
I want to drain my pool and refill it for no reason at all.
Ok, first I have to get a pool…
Seriously though, In Salt Lake Valley there is a lot of secondary water that could be used for irrigation that right now isn’t being used at all because the farms it served are gone, and nobody is going to pay to clean that water up for culinary use. Add to it the reuse water that could be used for outdoor irrigation and really the pressure our culinary water systems are experiencing will reduce.
If the ag folks upgrade their irrigation techniques, even more water could be saved or used or other outdoor uses.
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Great points. It just shows how many angles there are to the problem.
For me, often, the weeds are not coming through the barrier, it’s the silt/dirt that has settled on top of the barrier from which the weeds are growing. Real easy to pull as the roots are just that shallow.
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They don’t need to completely switch to a different livelihood but they can start by switching to less water intensive crops. Just by switching to Timothy grass from alfalfa saves quite a bit of water. And I know that other grasses use even less water. That change covers the cattle feed piece.
A cash crop switch to something like hemp could replace the alfalfa export crop. There are plenty of other places in the US and that have better conditions for growing alfalfa which do not require the level of irrigation that Utah requires. Lots of farms near my uncle’s farm in Alberta grow alfalfa without irrigation at all.
Another option is to grow Canola which I know requires less water than alfalfa and is a very valuable crop. It would probably take a company like Richardson oil seed setting up a crushing facility in Utah but that is not a huge stretch really.
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Interesting ideas, @guba. I know nothing about farming so I learned a lot. I imagine the farm lobby will have different ideas. I also don’t know how the government can control what a farmer grows, as long as it’s legal. Maybe they just need to make it more attractive to grow other crops.
I wonder if the golf courses have lobbyists. It’s astonishing how much water they consume. They ought to be higher on the list of reform targets than farming.
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I think the biggest and easiest way for government to influence the types of crops grown in Utah is to change how much farmers pay for water. Currently the low cost of water offers no incentive to adjust away from water intensive crops. If the state collected the true full cost of irrigation water it would likely lead to crop changes or changes in irrigation practices. It’s easy to say of course but hard to do in practice because farmers have a lot of influence in Utah Republican party politics.
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I read a couple sources today that said 7-8% of the population has been on a golf course in the past year.
Spending 25% of our overall water resources to provide an optional recreation activity for that subset of the population seems completely insane to this non-golfer.
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I’m a very casual golfer and I question the way that golf courses are setup here. You could still have good courses with a lot less water use than current practice.
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Although we have some farmland (where someone else grows alfalfa) I’m not a farmer and have no real dog in the fight. So I looked around and found this. It’s just interesting. Read the summary on the first page. (Link is below graphic.)
Last time I looked, the gub’ment pays farmers to not grow and then to grow specific crops. That gub’ment handout remains sacrosanct. Maybe we need to get rid of those gub’ment handouts altogether.
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I.E., not much.
You said what I was thinking.
Ah yes, farm subsidies. I don’t see them going away, just paying for different crops. Kale! Arugula!
(My very favorite line from the 2008 election was when candidate Obama said in Iowa, “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”)
But as you noted earlier in this conversation, in some places in Utah and also here in Oregon, families depend on traditional ways of making a living, farming, virtually oblivious to what is happening around the world. Okay, I guess I get it. But hey, at some point, you have to be better informed. Only that is elitist thinking.
Remember the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, who railed against collectivism – as farmers used to be particularly in the late 19th century – in The Road to Serfdom, publishing in the US in 1944. You know, just as the USG under Roosevelt, a Democrat, mobilized an astonishing amount of economic resources, like historic levels to win WWII. Cliff Notes – Hayek: “Planning leads to dictatorship.” The purpose of government is to secure individual rights, and little else. Period.
I’m not suggesting this mind you, but perhaps its high time for the USG to get out of the farming business. BTW, some of the most successful farmers I know around Bend, grow stuff like arugula. You don’t have to farm a commodity crop such as alfalfa or wheat or corn using designer seed you can’t hold over to next season by contract with the seed producer to be a successful farmer.
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You’ve reminded me of one thing I actually know about alfalfa. It’s perennial. Once the field is planted, if you take care of it it stays planted. At least that’s what I understand. So it’s relatively inexpensive to grow.
Sorry, I was aware of that…my bad. So, yeah, I get it.
To the larger point, as you have made today, how we always did things may under the growing threat of less water may need to be examined. My fear is that once the government gets involved, even if right minded, another backlash issue is created. How can we avoid that?