Sunday, October 26, 2014

What About Agriculture?

The article does address that water is not conserved effectively, but there were serious blunders in the reading material. At one point the article stated "And they are legion: California has granted rights to five times its average annual flow of surface water. These restrictions have perverse consequences.", which makes no sense to me. Either the article missed a key point of what exactly the restrictions are or granting too much water rights that exceed annual flow of surface water by five times is apparently a restrictions. This appears to point to the bias of the author. I understand that I am somewhat critical, but it appears as if the premise of the post was for an attack on farmers. The author kept on bringing up California as if the state making up 12% of the nation's population is the determinant of the policies that need to be taken with regard to water for the entire nation. I have been in Southern California for a few weeks this summer and can attest that there is a huge drought, but there was still much water being used to spray many lawns that would simply dry up in the dry heat. There is an incredible amount of attacking farmers that require water to produce food, so if irrigation would discontinue in dry regions then how would much of the food we eat today be grown? This is a rhetorical question, so do not bother answering.  The arguments presented were very one-sided, so they are likely to demonstrate either the convictions of the author or possibly interest groups he may represent. It's very difficult for me to just believe everything written on the internet because the solutions to the problem were not very clear. Raising the price of water may sound like a great idea, but what about the rising costs of agricultural products and shortages of them associated with such a change? How popular would the change be if there are millions of Americans that can afford to purchase food? I believe raising the cost of water can be a very unpopular move, even though many economists may acclaim such a move. Thus, blaming the pricing system of water simply appears to point towards incompetence or bias in favor of certain interests groups being backed by them. The article should discuss the costs of relocating agriculture and present the positions of the other side such as the position of farmers before making hasty solutions to the problem that is much more complicated than the article attempts to make it appear. 

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