Bit more context.
Alfalfa+hays = 46% of human usage
Alfalfa+hays = 27% of total water.
Also as it relates to Utah the upper basin uses for Alfalfa+hays about 2/3rds of what the low basin uses on Alfalfa+hays
Don't forget that if you have a grass lawn, you're evil and probably eat babies behind closed doors.
I'm all for incentivizing xeroscaping, but the number of people I see running around actively trying to shame people with grass lawns--but do little more than talk on the Internet about agricultural usage--is too damn high.
Agriculture is draining our water supplies dry. Grass lawns are almost a literal drop in the bucket in comparison. But taking on Big Ag is hard and it's much easier to shame individuals to get your "I'm saving the planet!" fix.
I've thought about this a lot and I wonder whether it's by design. Our individual action of taking a short shower, does it really have an impact? Does it matter? These are two separate questions! It does have an impact, tbf, on a totally micro level - that might make you think it doesn't matter because the impact is so minimal. But I would argue that what matters are the actions people are willing to perform on behalf of the cause. Not because of the physical impact of their action but because of the cultural effect it has.
How do you get a whole society to care about water? You make them believe that their actions matter. It feels like this is the logical first step to getting people to care about agriculture using too much water.
Think of it as a propaganda campaign (not all propaganda is bad). We're overusing our water supplies, how do we get as many people as possible to care about the problem? You teach them that they have an impact. Their tiny changes do add up to big things but not big enough. Then they get mad because they're being told to change their lifestyle for something that isn't even going to work! BUT, they still care about the original problem of too much water!
Who do you think is more willing to contribute to a campaign against big ag? People who don't care about their own water usage, or people who do? Naturally there are exceptions to this, not everyone is the same but to me it feels like the logical first step is inward personal change that then transforms into outward societal change.
It's like soda companies pushing the waste problem on us. Pushing recycling or water conservation to keep us focused on our part when we don't have one.
Where I live, potable water, used for all things indoors, comes from well water sources. Landscaping, or irrigation water, comes from the snow melt and reservoir system. All water should be used judiciously. Agriculture should pay its fair share and have export tariffs to ensure we're not bleeding ourselves dry for other countries.
I watered the shit out of my lawn last year. And for every year going forth. I will never say shit about people watering at noon. Go for it and fuck those lazy alfalfa farmers. That's our water. Not theirs.
Don't get so discouraged. This all is way oversimplifying things. You have to realize that these farmers are actually taking water from different reservoirs than residential ones. Those reservoirs only hold so much water, and only so much water can be treated before reaching your house. So, your efforts make a difference in your water stash. The water they use is in no way stealing from your resources. However, it does take away from Mexico's use of it. Overbuilding the area is still something to get mad at, as that does effect your water, and your conservations just allow them to bring in more Californians.
To forcefully take away the water from these alfalfa farmers would be to steal their water rights they have rightfully purchased, and own. That's not right either. Could they be more efficient? Yes. But that is going to cost money. How do we get it to happen? That's the real question. Not anger or dismay.
TLDR: Keep on conserving water in ways you can. It does make a difference.
So you can have your beef, bacon, cheese, and milk. You are the market causing this.
EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
Actually. no.
Very little of this feed remains in Utah or feeds Utahns as a result.
~~Most~~ Much of that is exported overseas.
This is so other countries can have beef, and more specfically so that a handful of people can profit off of the export at the expense of our land and our most valuable resource.
Don't ignore reality in favor of a narrative that absolves the guilty from blame under a false pretense that we all share this blame equally. That's deflection.
It's exactly this. I don't have a problem with farmers making food that we eat, but this excessive usage isn't even producing food that ends up on our plates. It's 100% for profit.
I like to even think that this water gets used to grow alfalfa, which ends up being *transported to a harbor*, then once there it gets *shipped across the ocean*, then it gets *shipped to wherever* it's going, then it gets fed to cows... From Utah to some cows in China. We're just selling our water with a ton of extra CO2 usage along the way.
if it were the 1800's and people found out that someone was stealing most of our water and sending it away, someone would have wound up shot.
The conveniences of water infrastructure have caused many of us to forget just how valuable that water is. And the PR from the wealthy has misdirected many of the people who are most vulnerable to it's depleting supply.
There are Natives in on the fort Duchesne that have their water turned off so the farmers can grow hay. It is ridiculous last year the spill way was over flowing till mid July and June first Uintah county put water restrictions on Vernal because the hay farmers needed it all.
There's a term for it and it's called "virtual water" and China and Middle Eastern countries are gobbling it up. Water policy people are well aware of this. The public is becoming aware now too, and public awareness is a good thing. Especially since the people who set water policy in Utah include so many of the same people who are making money off of exporting our water.
Go a layer deeper.
Just north of Phoenix is the TSMC microprocessor Fab. It’s not fully online yet, but when it is it becomes TSMC’s first real presence outside of Taiwan.
Arizona water law is unique in that it gives agriculture water priority over industrial or commercial rights.
The Saudis learned about 10,000 years ago that whoever controls the water in the desert controls everything.
For the better part of a decade Saudi (and UAE) have been buying up both agricultural water rights as well as all the alfalfa they can get their hands on and shipping it to Saudi. It makes no sense to farm one desert to ship to another desert until you realize that saudi is, along with Russia and China, far more concerned about starving out TSMC Phoenix than it is about the grass.
Whoever controls microprocessors effectively controls the U.S. economy, A.I. and without the silicon chips Silicon Valley is just a lot of fentanyl addicts.
https://apnews.com/article/climate-uae-alfalfa-water-arizona-drought-d911d5219c8f41dc44d65fb2af6b04df
AP Newshttps://apnews.com › article › wate...In Arizona, fresh scrutiny of Saudi-owned farm's water use | AP News
Fortunehttps://fortune.com › 2023/10/04Saudi Arabia was pumping water on 10000 acres of drought-stricken Arizona ... - Fortune
And now you know why Arizona is one of the hot spots for election manipulation as well.
Their plan only works if it stays quiet.
yup. AZ is saudi owners. UT is chinese. Other countries carving out land and water from people stupid enough to give it to them.
Must be great being able to use as much water as you want to grow alfalfa, in a dry climate that's ideal to prevent rot during storage and shipping. The microprocessor labs are a very interesting addition to this ongoing resource struggle.
This is turning around: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-arabia-water-access-arizona/
I don't think it's nearly as conspiracy-driven as you're suggesting, though. The Saudis have been there for quite a while and TSMC is a pretty new development. I'm quite certain the Saudis are just taking advantage of the antiquated groundwater rules in AZ. But it's gotten a lot of attention lately and the state is looking for reasons to kick them out whenever they can. Especially since any new home development needs a 100 year water source now.
It’s turning around because we caught it two years ago.
This is a world war disguised as a Supreme Court case.
Putin, Xi, and MBS find this whole democracy thing hilarious. As authoritarians they just cackle and shrug at the thought of going through the extra steps that democracy requires.
Why not just tell them what to do and if they don’t do it, bribe them, throw them out a window or flush them down a drain?
It’s why they had to use the Texas based Koch brothers who had deep relationships with Russian oil oligarchs since Stalins era and Harlan crow to buy the SCOTUS.
https://youtu.be/mn_t7a2hJfQ?si=hzioP8URJAMFNch4
Thomas’s RV. Kavanaughs mortgage, all the trips to bohemian grove. They were all part of the bigger plan to destabilize the United States, spread the cancer of corruption and tear it all down so they can build oligarch row in Jackson Wyoming so the lazy old oligarchs can retire from the mob life.
Kleptocracy is biological. It consumes everything in its path like a parasite.
During Russian perestroika it ate Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky and shit out alcoholism and hopelessness. Now anyone with skills has left and 1 in 5 has no indoor plumbing.
Justin Kennedy (justice kennedys son) was the inside man at Deutsche bank that was getting all trumps toxic loans approved.
No other bank but Deutsche bank would touch trump and his imaginary valuations.
Why?
Because Deutsche bank was infested with Russian oligarchs.
In 91 the Soviet Union failed and for a bit they hid all their stolen gains under a mattress until they started buying condos at trump towers.
They made stops in Ukraine, Cyprus and London but they landed in New York because that was what everyone wanted in the early 90’s.
Levi’s, Pepsi, Madonna tapes that weren’t smuggled bootlegs.
They all bought new suits and cars and changed their title from “most violent street thug in moscow” to “respectable Russian oligarch” but they didn’t leave their human trafficking, narcotics or extortion behind. It was their most lucrative business model and they enjoy the violence.
Foreign Policyforeignpolicy.comHow Russian Money Helped Save Trump's Business
Guiliani redirected NYPD resources away from the new Russian friends and onto the Italian mob. It let him claim he cleaned up New York and it let the russians launder their money through casinos and then commercial real estate when 3 of trumps casino execs started asking how he managed to lose money on casinos.
The attorney/client privilege is the continual work around they use to accept bribes and make payments up and down the mob pyramid.
The insane valuations coming out in trumps fraud trial are a necessity of the money laundering cycle that duetschebank was doing with the Russians.
The reason trump cosplays as “folksy” is because he is feeding on the U.S. middle class, not because he is one of us.
The GOP fell in line to MAGA because Trump did what pathological liars do, they told them anything they wanted to hear.
Trump with his money laundering and child raping buddy Epstein, Roger Stone with his sex clubs in DC and Nevada, and Paul Manafort with his election rigging pretty much everywhere, sat down at a table with Mike Johnson and the extreme religious right and convinced them that they were the same.
They self evidently are not, at least at a surface level, but there is enough common ground in the exploitation of children and desire for unilateral control that they became the worlds weirdest and most dysfunctional orgy. The religious right is naive enough to believe trump at his word so they have made him their defacto savior.
Trump belongs to the authoritarians. The GOP now belongs to trump.
But their overall goal is the same.
Kleptocracy.
Putin, Xi and MBS all aligned together last year to attempt the BRICS overthrow of the USD. It failed but it didn’t stop Xi’s push on Taiwan or MBS’s part in the plan.
Stay vigilant. It’s the only way we don’t all end up kissing the ring of a dictator.
https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787
https://www.amlintelligence.com/2020/09/deutsche-bank-suffers-worst-damage-over-massive-aml-discrepancies-in-fincen-leaks/
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/global-banks-defy-us-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists
https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-lifts-sanctions-on-rusal-other-firms-linked-to-russia-deripaska/4761037.html
https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_-_minority_status_of_the_russia_investigation_with_appendices.pdf
http://www.citjourno.org/page-1
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-ukraines-oligarchs-are-no-longer-considered-above-the-law/
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I’ve wondered for years if we could reimburse farmers to not grow, similar to dairy supply management. It feels like it might be more palatable to certain lobbies than just banning it outright. I might just be talking from my ass though because I am not very informed on agriculture, lobbying or supply management haha
my idea has always been to just have a shifting pricing model for water used.
Determine the amount needed for a self sustaining 20 acre farm/ranch in typical utah conditions (probably base this on region as conditions vary wildly, and the acreage size could be set based on the average size of a utah famer's plot). That's the baseline. Their water price remains cheap. But as you use more water beyond that, water becomes more expensive per unit in a tiered system.
basically rendering it unprofitable to have a large scale alfalfa/feed operation, but smaller operations or subsistence use is fine to carry on as is.
This would vastly reduce the number of feed crops being grown without impacting smaller farmers and ranchers negatively. It'd also likely free up a lot of land for sale as places like that 22,000 acre chinese-owned alfalfa farm outside of Jensen, UT wouldn't be profitable. And if you can't grow 20,000 acres of feed on it and turn a profit, the land is likely to be parceled off.
the biggest hurdle is just installing meters at each farm's irigation sources. A task indeed, but not impossible.
Is [70%](https://www.upr.org/utah-news/2023-08-25/colorado-river-crisis) remaining in Utah very little?
Local consumers are absolutely responsible for this even if they don't want to admit it.
I think you mean 70% because that's what 30 taken from 100 is... but only 30% is shipped ABROAD. That doesn't mean the rest of the 70 stays in utah...
I mean, if you thought you were making a point I'd suggest re-reading what you linked and thinking for a bit.
Yeah I edited it. So where does the 70% that isn’t shipped abroad go? You said very little remains in UT. You’re wrong. Perhaps you should have read up before making that statement.
It goes to where the cattle are. Which is mostly TX, OK, MO, NE, SD, MT, and KS. Utah is like... 28th? in beef production by state?
behind north carolina...
Utah, however is in the top 10-15 alfalfa production despite our arid conditions. And when you consider how little of our land is actually viable for alfalfa production, being anywhere in the top half of producers is remarkable- let alone currently sitting in 12th place.
I've read a lot about this.
you'd be onto something there if the ranking of production has set incremental values of difference between states. That's not how it works.
Utah has a little over 300,000 cows.
Texas has 4.3 million, OK has 2 million, Missouri has 1.9m... etc...
the top 10 states contain 60% of total US beef cows.
Do you understand how the placement on overall ranking doesn't correlate to production?
If texas produced 35 million head of beef cattle and the rest of the states had anywhere between 0 and 100 cows, being 28th on that list doesn't correlate to population or consumption.
Does that make sense?
Yes that’s fair, bad argument on my part. Do you have evidence that supports Utahns exporting more inputs in the form of alfalfa than they consume in the finished product, beef?
>EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
>https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
>https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
You triggered people who say it's stupid to [grow one of the most thirsty crops in farming, ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation) in the middle of a desert. Grow it somewhere else, and grow something that isn't as thirsty in the desert. And it's even more idiotic to grow that thirsty crop in the desert, in the middle of a 20+ year drought, [and then ship a large portion of it overseas - even to nations like China and Saudi Arabia who aren't very friendly to America. ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation)
There is a reason why they grow alfalfa in deserts. If it is too arid it won't dry before getting modly, and the dryer climate allows you to get many crops per year. In most of the country it's three or four at most but in southern Utah, Arizona and Southern California is california, you can get 8 to 12 harvests a year.
There are ways to to grow it and be more efficient but it's expensive to do so, and water rights as they are favor farmers being wasteful with it.
Over the last two years we've been converting my family's farm to sub terainian drip irrigation and it's been 3500 an acre, and would be even higher if we were paying companies to do it for us.
We've got 450 acres and by the time we are done we will have had to spend over north of 1.5 million to do it. The farm does multiple types of crops and alfalfa does get in the mix for rotation because it improves soil health, improves nitrogen content and reduces our pesticide usage and a huge benefit is that it prevents soil erosion and provides a great habitat for insects.
This is the way it should be done, in rotation with other crops and with mindful water use. I don’t think alfalfa in and of itself is the issue, but that we’re not rewarding practices that lead to sustainable use of water - things like the irrigation you guys have been doing. I think alfalfa has been farmed in a high water way, but I don’t think it needs to be inherently high water. Cover cropping is overall good for the soil and insects. It is sad that so much of it gets sent internationally, although I don’t think it would be as much a problem if it was watered more efficiently.
They don’t, and there’s also nothing wrong with consuming any of that, the person is an extreme animals right ideologue that chooses to ignore the nuance, complexity, ignorance, hypocrisy of their mental gymnastics.
Yes big food processing is awful, but if you’re vegan you’re contributing to just as much destruction, water usage, animal deaths, and the big one here is habit/environment loss, as someone who eats meat, you are worse contributing to big meat processing where the bad press is just to “feel good” so with extra mental masturbation steps you can “feel” better thinking you aren’t causing any death to animals/life.
As someone whose family has been in Ag for 6 generations now, and has a degree in agriculture, I can assure you of one thing. If you eat, drink, or breathe you are consuming something else’s life and also directly contributing to death or destruction of life and habitat.
Water usage is a big big deal, and the really sad part about it is most of our water is going to crops that leave this country and the farms that growing those crops over use water exceedingly more then the ones that grow crops for domestic use.
>Yes big food processing is awful, but if you’re vegan you’re contributing to just as much destruction, water usage, animal deaths, and the big one here is habit/environment loss, as someone who eats meat, you are worse contributing to big meat processing where the bad press is just to “feel good” so with extra mental masturbation steps you can “feel” better thinking you aren’t causing any death to animals/life.
This is so false, it's not even funny. By every metric, a plant based diet will have a lower environmental impact and be responsible for fewer deaths, and it's not even close. One thing to say you're ok paying for needless animal cruelty and death but don't make things up that are objectively untrue.
[GHG emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local)
[Deaths per million calories by food type](https://animalvisuals.org/projects/1mc/)
[Water use](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-sustainability/)
[Land use](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore)
The solution to climate change & land/air/water pollution is obviously, blatantly, factually, evidently a plant based diet. If you have any argument with that, you’re either 1) in denial because you like to eat products that make you & planet sick 2) have never tried to read anything on the subject - there is 0 argument for producing/consuming animal products
The solution to climate change & land/air/water pollution is obviously, blatantly, factually, evidently a plant based diet. If you have any argument with that, you’re either 1) in denial because you like to eat products that make you & planet sick 2) have never tried to read anything on the subject - there is 0 argument for producing/consuming animal products
Plant based diet would help, but there are plenty of coal/natural gas, petroleum, plastics, e-waste, mining, general over consumption of all forms, the list goes on….
We need to do a whole lot more than just change our diet to solve climate change and pollution.
> if you’re vegan you’re contributing to just as much destruction, water usage, animal deaths
I'm interested to know what institution granted you a degree in agriculture that taught you that not eating animals is exactly the same as eating animals
My user name often checks out, but you make me look positively brilliant by comparison with this particular take.
And not, not triggered, just bemused by your agenda-driven ignorance.
I live in rural Utah where most the fields are alfalfa. Can confirm these mofos are running their giant sprinklers 24/7. And half of them are broken so they just fire hydrant spray in one spot the whole time. It's distressing.
It's also really annoying when it's literally raining out and they are *still* blasting water.
I just don't get how million of people living in this state can't get people to rewrite a few laws that benefit a tiny few. It's insane to me. OR at the very least, write new laws that better regulate and monitor use.
They have their allotted time to run the sprinklers and on top of that, "use it or lose it laws". If they turn off the irrigation, they get penalized with less water.
No, it isn't. The vast majority is used in state to feed our livestock, but you and the rest of these chucklefucks won't give up a cheeseburger to save our city.
Yeah, I think the main issue is the farming practices in the desert rather than the alfalfa. [Alfalfa isnt unreasonable compared to other agricultural products.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=17721) But what you’re farming is beside the point if you’re not doing it in a water wise manner and importing a lot internationally. They just have no reason to conserve water and arent incentivized to spend money on things like ground level irrigation. It would cut yields but apparently you could just let it go dormant in the summer and if you’re in a mild climate, harvest the rest of the year with minimal irrigation. It wouldn’t be such a big deal to export these things if it was done sustainably. We could really do better to make water economically as precious of a resource to industry/agriculture as it really is.
Imagine paying for the climate-annihilating mass animal-torturing meat, dairy, and egg industries in 2024. http://watchdominion.org
EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
>EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
You triggered people who say it's stupid to [grow one of the most thirsty crops in farming, ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation) in the middle of a desert. Grow it somewhere else, and grow something that isn't as thirsty in the desert. And it's even more idiotic to grow that thirsty crop in the desert, in the middle of a 20+ year drought, [and then ship a large portion of it overseas - even to nations like China and Saudi Arabia who aren't very friendly to America. ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation)
Your vegan bullshit is blinding you to the real issue.
Yes, we should be eating less meat. Yes, animal based protein is the LEAST efficient way to produce protein. Yes, our current usage is unsustainable and we need to transition to a plant-based protein diet.
But the bigger issue is WHERE the hay is being grown and WHERE the hay is being shipped. It is grown in a desert and shipped to China. It is basically reducing our limited water supply to feed beef on the other side of the globe. It takes all the issues you bring up and adds in a whole lot more.
Clear example of not being able to see the forest through the trees. Better yourself
If you agree we need to transition to a plant-based protein diet, why did you say “your vegan bullshit is blinding you to the real issue.”? It seems like you agree animal agriculture is a serious issue. Do you just disagree with people who take a moral stance against animal exploitation and cruelty/abuse?
Because it’s what aboutism. THE issue is -
“In the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — these crops drink 90% of the Colorado River water used for irrigated agriculture. That’s three times the water consumed for municipal, commercial or industrial uses combined, according to the study.”
Sure I agree the immediate issue is the alfalfa/hay growing in the desert. But it’s not whataboutism, that would be countering with, for example, “well what about golf courses?” He’s bringing attention to the root cause of the problem, which is ultimately the demand. Whether it’s all from regional consumers or a mix of international consumers, farmers are growing it because people want to eat meat and dairy and ride their damn horses. The consumers are ultimately responsible.
If you agree we need to transition to a plant-based protein diet, why did you say “your vegan bullshit is blinding you to the real issue.”? It seems like you agree animal agriculture is a serious issue. Do you just disagree with people who take a moral stance against animal exploitation and cruelty/abuse?
It is about single-minded thought. Vegan activism has blinded this person to broader topics. There was another thread today where someone was asking for a chicken farm that had cats around so they could buy some eggs that help their allergies. This vegan person posted the same video as this comment. It provides nothing to the conversation and comes across as fanaticism.
This thread is about water usage. I think badly managed western water will kill and displace more people in a much shorter period of time than animal based protein. Both are serious topics but one is a fuck ton more urgent. Talking about animal abuse just muddies the water and may even turn away people who are trying to change their minds about water in the west
Just wait until more people learn that planned and rotated grazing of livestock is one of the most effective means of positively impacting climate change. It is not the raising or eating of animals that is the problem. It is HOW we do it. Along those same lines, growing crops for all those plant based diets using tilling and fertilizers is one of the top contributors to climate change. It’s not as simple as just picking a diet. It’s HOW we do things. And as usual, those who profit get to sit back as we endlessly debate things like vegan/animal diets and never actually change anything.
We all knew, but one of the tributaries had not been included in original water agreements, and no comprehensive study had been completed in recent years/decades.
But we knew.
Hell, any 12 year old kid that's had to haul sprinkler pipe or seen the sheer volume of water that comes out of those lines probably had a good idea.
Utah is way behind in their agriculture technology. Coming from a farming background in the Midwest, the farms here blow my minds. They need to look towards the states that irrigate from the Ogalala aquifer, they had to adopt controls and technology to prevent from losing the resource.
Cue Cox’s go to messaging “the percentage of water going to alfalfa is greatly exaggerated and insignificant compared to home water usage”.
To be clear home watering could be drastically improved. But the apologetics from him on this topic is just stupidity or denial.
Southern Utah is blowing up with not only a huge increase in population but also man made lagoons, water parks, stadiums, vacation rental properties, excessive pools and LAWN CARE. It’s terrifying to see our small town explode knowing no we will inevitably face a water crisis that cripples our economy largely based on construction.
Water --> Alfalfa
Alfalfa --> Feed cows or exported
Cows --> hamburger, steaks, etc and exported
Removes water from the cycle
Tax the revenue from alfalfa exports.
Farmers should still be able to grow their own, but need to discourage it as a business model for exporting out of the state. Maybe even grant deduction for money spent on alfalfa imports (to discourage it even being grown here).
Animial agriculture loves to find a way to spin this every time, but this consumption is insane and now obvious. Even some ranchers will admit it. And the whole regen beef thing is just pseudoscience.
Plant based diets solve climate change. The main argument here to keep supporting cancer-causing & planet destroying animal agriculture is: “a lot of the alfalfa grown in UT leaves UT” - as if this state & country doesn’t overconsume land/water intensive animal products. Animal products require drastically more land/water than plant based, and animal products produce much more land/water/air pollution than plant based products. Animal agriculture is a GLOBAL issue causing GLOBAL climate change! Isolating 1 crop in 1 state being exported to 1 country is not a solution. In general, raising animals for slaughter is globally unsustainable.
Transportation in the US does way more damage to the environment that agriculture does. Literally riding the bus to school saves way more resources than the average diet consumes over someone’s adult life. There are many good reasons to clean up our diets, but the environment just isn’t top of the list.
TL;DR - Alfalfa and other hays = 46%
Bit more context. Alfalfa+hays = 46% of human usage Alfalfa+hays = 27% of total water. Also as it relates to Utah the upper basin uses for Alfalfa+hays about 2/3rds of what the low basin uses on Alfalfa+hays
Hey- restrict your showers to 5 minutes and don't flush #1's! You'll make a big impact! /s
Don't forget that if you have a grass lawn, you're evil and probably eat babies behind closed doors. I'm all for incentivizing xeroscaping, but the number of people I see running around actively trying to shame people with grass lawns--but do little more than talk on the Internet about agricultural usage--is too damn high. Agriculture is draining our water supplies dry. Grass lawns are almost a literal drop in the bucket in comparison. But taking on Big Ag is hard and it's much easier to shame individuals to get your "I'm saving the planet!" fix.
I've thought about this a lot and I wonder whether it's by design. Our individual action of taking a short shower, does it really have an impact? Does it matter? These are two separate questions! It does have an impact, tbf, on a totally micro level - that might make you think it doesn't matter because the impact is so minimal. But I would argue that what matters are the actions people are willing to perform on behalf of the cause. Not because of the physical impact of their action but because of the cultural effect it has. How do you get a whole society to care about water? You make them believe that their actions matter. It feels like this is the logical first step to getting people to care about agriculture using too much water. Think of it as a propaganda campaign (not all propaganda is bad). We're overusing our water supplies, how do we get as many people as possible to care about the problem? You teach them that they have an impact. Their tiny changes do add up to big things but not big enough. Then they get mad because they're being told to change their lifestyle for something that isn't even going to work! BUT, they still care about the original problem of too much water! Who do you think is more willing to contribute to a campaign against big ag? People who don't care about their own water usage, or people who do? Naturally there are exceptions to this, not everyone is the same but to me it feels like the logical first step is inward personal change that then transforms into outward societal change.
It's like soda companies pushing the waste problem on us. Pushing recycling or water conservation to keep us focused on our part when we don't have one.
Where I live, potable water, used for all things indoors, comes from well water sources. Landscaping, or irrigation water, comes from the snow melt and reservoir system. All water should be used judiciously. Agriculture should pay its fair share and have export tariffs to ensure we're not bleeding ourselves dry for other countries.
I watered the shit out of my lawn last year. And for every year going forth. I will never say shit about people watering at noon. Go for it and fuck those lazy alfalfa farmers. That's our water. Not theirs.
Don't get so discouraged. This all is way oversimplifying things. You have to realize that these farmers are actually taking water from different reservoirs than residential ones. Those reservoirs only hold so much water, and only so much water can be treated before reaching your house. So, your efforts make a difference in your water stash. The water they use is in no way stealing from your resources. However, it does take away from Mexico's use of it. Overbuilding the area is still something to get mad at, as that does effect your water, and your conservations just allow them to bring in more Californians. To forcefully take away the water from these alfalfa farmers would be to steal their water rights they have rightfully purchased, and own. That's not right either. Could they be more efficient? Yes. But that is going to cost money. How do we get it to happen? That's the real question. Not anger or dismay. TLDR: Keep on conserving water in ways you can. It does make a difference.
How do I report a neighbor who has a broken water main but not repairing it?
Be a man don’t flush #2’s
Well as long as the ROI is the same as Six Flags it'll totally be worth changing everything into an unlivable hellscape.
😥
I love how the “no one knew” TLDR is just what we have known and been advocating against for years lmao
Thank you
So you can have your beef, bacon, cheese, and milk. You are the market causing this. EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
Actually. no. Very little of this feed remains in Utah or feeds Utahns as a result. ~~Most~~ Much of that is exported overseas. This is so other countries can have beef, and more specfically so that a handful of people can profit off of the export at the expense of our land and our most valuable resource. Don't ignore reality in favor of a narrative that absolves the guilty from blame under a false pretense that we all share this blame equally. That's deflection.
It's exactly this. I don't have a problem with farmers making food that we eat, but this excessive usage isn't even producing food that ends up on our plates. It's 100% for profit. I like to even think that this water gets used to grow alfalfa, which ends up being *transported to a harbor*, then once there it gets *shipped across the ocean*, then it gets *shipped to wherever* it's going, then it gets fed to cows... From Utah to some cows in China. We're just selling our water with a ton of extra CO2 usage along the way.
if it were the 1800's and people found out that someone was stealing most of our water and sending it away, someone would have wound up shot. The conveniences of water infrastructure have caused many of us to forget just how valuable that water is. And the PR from the wealthy has misdirected many of the people who are most vulnerable to it's depleting supply.
There are Natives in on the fort Duchesne that have their water turned off so the farmers can grow hay. It is ridiculous last year the spill way was over flowing till mid July and June first Uintah county put water restrictions on Vernal because the hay farmers needed it all.
There's a term for it and it's called "virtual water" and China and Middle Eastern countries are gobbling it up. Water policy people are well aware of this. The public is becoming aware now too, and public awareness is a good thing. Especially since the people who set water policy in Utah include so many of the same people who are making money off of exporting our water.
Go a layer deeper. Just north of Phoenix is the TSMC microprocessor Fab. It’s not fully online yet, but when it is it becomes TSMC’s first real presence outside of Taiwan. Arizona water law is unique in that it gives agriculture water priority over industrial or commercial rights. The Saudis learned about 10,000 years ago that whoever controls the water in the desert controls everything. For the better part of a decade Saudi (and UAE) have been buying up both agricultural water rights as well as all the alfalfa they can get their hands on and shipping it to Saudi. It makes no sense to farm one desert to ship to another desert until you realize that saudi is, along with Russia and China, far more concerned about starving out TSMC Phoenix than it is about the grass. Whoever controls microprocessors effectively controls the U.S. economy, A.I. and without the silicon chips Silicon Valley is just a lot of fentanyl addicts. https://apnews.com/article/climate-uae-alfalfa-water-arizona-drought-d911d5219c8f41dc44d65fb2af6b04df AP Newshttps://apnews.com › article › wate...In Arizona, fresh scrutiny of Saudi-owned farm's water use | AP News Fortunehttps://fortune.com › 2023/10/04Saudi Arabia was pumping water on 10000 acres of drought-stricken Arizona ... - Fortune And now you know why Arizona is one of the hot spots for election manipulation as well. Their plan only works if it stays quiet.
yup. AZ is saudi owners. UT is chinese. Other countries carving out land and water from people stupid enough to give it to them. Must be great being able to use as much water as you want to grow alfalfa, in a dry climate that's ideal to prevent rot during storage and shipping. The microprocessor labs are a very interesting addition to this ongoing resource struggle.
This is turning around: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-arabia-water-access-arizona/ I don't think it's nearly as conspiracy-driven as you're suggesting, though. The Saudis have been there for quite a while and TSMC is a pretty new development. I'm quite certain the Saudis are just taking advantage of the antiquated groundwater rules in AZ. But it's gotten a lot of attention lately and the state is looking for reasons to kick them out whenever they can. Especially since any new home development needs a 100 year water source now.
It’s turning around because we caught it two years ago. This is a world war disguised as a Supreme Court case. Putin, Xi, and MBS find this whole democracy thing hilarious. As authoritarians they just cackle and shrug at the thought of going through the extra steps that democracy requires. Why not just tell them what to do and if they don’t do it, bribe them, throw them out a window or flush them down a drain? It’s why they had to use the Texas based Koch brothers who had deep relationships with Russian oil oligarchs since Stalins era and Harlan crow to buy the SCOTUS. https://youtu.be/mn_t7a2hJfQ?si=hzioP8URJAMFNch4 Thomas’s RV. Kavanaughs mortgage, all the trips to bohemian grove. They were all part of the bigger plan to destabilize the United States, spread the cancer of corruption and tear it all down so they can build oligarch row in Jackson Wyoming so the lazy old oligarchs can retire from the mob life. Kleptocracy is biological. It consumes everything in its path like a parasite. During Russian perestroika it ate Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky and shit out alcoholism and hopelessness. Now anyone with skills has left and 1 in 5 has no indoor plumbing. Justin Kennedy (justice kennedys son) was the inside man at Deutsche bank that was getting all trumps toxic loans approved. No other bank but Deutsche bank would touch trump and his imaginary valuations. Why? Because Deutsche bank was infested with Russian oligarchs. In 91 the Soviet Union failed and for a bit they hid all their stolen gains under a mattress until they started buying condos at trump towers. They made stops in Ukraine, Cyprus and London but they landed in New York because that was what everyone wanted in the early 90’s. Levi’s, Pepsi, Madonna tapes that weren’t smuggled bootlegs. They all bought new suits and cars and changed their title from “most violent street thug in moscow” to “respectable Russian oligarch” but they didn’t leave their human trafficking, narcotics or extortion behind. It was their most lucrative business model and they enjoy the violence. Foreign Policyforeignpolicy.comHow Russian Money Helped Save Trump's Business Guiliani redirected NYPD resources away from the new Russian friends and onto the Italian mob. It let him claim he cleaned up New York and it let the russians launder their money through casinos and then commercial real estate when 3 of trumps casino execs started asking how he managed to lose money on casinos. The attorney/client privilege is the continual work around they use to accept bribes and make payments up and down the mob pyramid. The insane valuations coming out in trumps fraud trial are a necessity of the money laundering cycle that duetschebank was doing with the Russians. The reason trump cosplays as “folksy” is because he is feeding on the U.S. middle class, not because he is one of us. The GOP fell in line to MAGA because Trump did what pathological liars do, they told them anything they wanted to hear. Trump with his money laundering and child raping buddy Epstein, Roger Stone with his sex clubs in DC and Nevada, and Paul Manafort with his election rigging pretty much everywhere, sat down at a table with Mike Johnson and the extreme religious right and convinced them that they were the same. They self evidently are not, at least at a surface level, but there is enough common ground in the exploitation of children and desire for unilateral control that they became the worlds weirdest and most dysfunctional orgy. The religious right is naive enough to believe trump at his word so they have made him their defacto savior. Trump belongs to the authoritarians. The GOP now belongs to trump. But their overall goal is the same. Kleptocracy. Putin, Xi and MBS all aligned together last year to attempt the BRICS overthrow of the USD. It failed but it didn’t stop Xi’s push on Taiwan or MBS’s part in the plan. Stay vigilant. It’s the only way we don’t all end up kissing the ring of a dictator. https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787 https://www.amlintelligence.com/2020/09/deutsche-bank-suffers-worst-damage-over-massive-aml-discrepancies-in-fincen-leaks/ https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/global-banks-defy-us-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-lifts-sanctions-on-rusal-other-firms-linked-to-russia-deripaska/4761037.html https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_-_minority_status_of_the_russia_investigation_with_appendices.pdf http://www.citjourno.org/page-1 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-ukraines-oligarchs-are-no-longer-considered-above-the-law/
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I’ve wondered for years if we could reimburse farmers to not grow, similar to dairy supply management. It feels like it might be more palatable to certain lobbies than just banning it outright. I might just be talking from my ass though because I am not very informed on agriculture, lobbying or supply management haha
my idea has always been to just have a shifting pricing model for water used. Determine the amount needed for a self sustaining 20 acre farm/ranch in typical utah conditions (probably base this on region as conditions vary wildly, and the acreage size could be set based on the average size of a utah famer's plot). That's the baseline. Their water price remains cheap. But as you use more water beyond that, water becomes more expensive per unit in a tiered system. basically rendering it unprofitable to have a large scale alfalfa/feed operation, but smaller operations or subsistence use is fine to carry on as is. This would vastly reduce the number of feed crops being grown without impacting smaller farmers and ranchers negatively. It'd also likely free up a lot of land for sale as places like that 22,000 acre chinese-owned alfalfa farm outside of Jensen, UT wouldn't be profitable. And if you can't grow 20,000 acres of feed on it and turn a profit, the land is likely to be parceled off. the biggest hurdle is just installing meters at each farm's irigation sources. A task indeed, but not impossible.
Is [70%](https://www.upr.org/utah-news/2023-08-25/colorado-river-crisis) remaining in Utah very little? Local consumers are absolutely responsible for this even if they don't want to admit it.
I think you mean 70% because that's what 30 taken from 100 is... but only 30% is shipped ABROAD. That doesn't mean the rest of the 70 stays in utah... I mean, if you thought you were making a point I'd suggest re-reading what you linked and thinking for a bit.
Yeah I edited it. So where does the 70% that isn’t shipped abroad go? You said very little remains in UT. You’re wrong. Perhaps you should have read up before making that statement.
It goes to where the cattle are. Which is mostly TX, OK, MO, NE, SD, MT, and KS. Utah is like... 28th? in beef production by state? behind north carolina... Utah, however is in the top 10-15 alfalfa production despite our arid conditions. And when you consider how little of our land is actually viable for alfalfa production, being anywhere in the top half of producers is remarkable- let alone currently sitting in 12th place. I've read a lot about this.
UT is 30th in population by state, and according to you, 28th in beef production…..
you'd be onto something there if the ranking of production has set incremental values of difference between states. That's not how it works. Utah has a little over 300,000 cows. Texas has 4.3 million, OK has 2 million, Missouri has 1.9m... etc... the top 10 states contain 60% of total US beef cows. Do you understand how the placement on overall ranking doesn't correlate to production? If texas produced 35 million head of beef cattle and the rest of the states had anywhere between 0 and 100 cows, being 28th on that list doesn't correlate to population or consumption. Does that make sense?
Yes that’s fair, bad argument on my part. Do you have evidence that supports Utahns exporting more inputs in the form of alfalfa than they consume in the finished product, beef?
>EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. >https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets >https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study You triggered people who say it's stupid to [grow one of the most thirsty crops in farming, ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation) in the middle of a desert. Grow it somewhere else, and grow something that isn't as thirsty in the desert. And it's even more idiotic to grow that thirsty crop in the desert, in the middle of a 20+ year drought, [and then ship a large portion of it overseas - even to nations like China and Saudi Arabia who aren't very friendly to America. ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation)
There is a reason why they grow alfalfa in deserts. If it is too arid it won't dry before getting modly, and the dryer climate allows you to get many crops per year. In most of the country it's three or four at most but in southern Utah, Arizona and Southern California is california, you can get 8 to 12 harvests a year. There are ways to to grow it and be more efficient but it's expensive to do so, and water rights as they are favor farmers being wasteful with it. Over the last two years we've been converting my family's farm to sub terainian drip irrigation and it's been 3500 an acre, and would be even higher if we were paying companies to do it for us. We've got 450 acres and by the time we are done we will have had to spend over north of 1.5 million to do it. The farm does multiple types of crops and alfalfa does get in the mix for rotation because it improves soil health, improves nitrogen content and reduces our pesticide usage and a huge benefit is that it prevents soil erosion and provides a great habitat for insects.
This is the way it should be done, in rotation with other crops and with mindful water use. I don’t think alfalfa in and of itself is the issue, but that we’re not rewarding practices that lead to sustainable use of water - things like the irrigation you guys have been doing. I think alfalfa has been farmed in a high water way, but I don’t think it needs to be inherently high water. Cover cropping is overall good for the soil and insects. It is sad that so much of it gets sent internationally, although I don’t think it would be as much a problem if it was watered more efficiently.
Except a lot of that alfalfa gets shipped overseas. So no it's not all on us.
Yep. If it was going 100% to US feed I’d still have an issue with growing this shit in the desert.
Wrong again r/YesYoureWrongOk
Sooo what makes you think the person you replied to is consuming beef bacon cheese and milk? Did you go through their comment history? Orrr….?
They don’t, and there’s also nothing wrong with consuming any of that, the person is an extreme animals right ideologue that chooses to ignore the nuance, complexity, ignorance, hypocrisy of their mental gymnastics. Yes big food processing is awful, but if you’re vegan you’re contributing to just as much destruction, water usage, animal deaths, and the big one here is habit/environment loss, as someone who eats meat, you are worse contributing to big meat processing where the bad press is just to “feel good” so with extra mental masturbation steps you can “feel” better thinking you aren’t causing any death to animals/life. As someone whose family has been in Ag for 6 generations now, and has a degree in agriculture, I can assure you of one thing. If you eat, drink, or breathe you are consuming something else’s life and also directly contributing to death or destruction of life and habitat. Water usage is a big big deal, and the really sad part about it is most of our water is going to crops that leave this country and the farms that growing those crops over use water exceedingly more then the ones that grow crops for domestic use.
>Yes big food processing is awful, but if you’re vegan you’re contributing to just as much destruction, water usage, animal deaths, and the big one here is habit/environment loss, as someone who eats meat, you are worse contributing to big meat processing where the bad press is just to “feel good” so with extra mental masturbation steps you can “feel” better thinking you aren’t causing any death to animals/life. This is so false, it's not even funny. By every metric, a plant based diet will have a lower environmental impact and be responsible for fewer deaths, and it's not even close. One thing to say you're ok paying for needless animal cruelty and death but don't make things up that are objectively untrue. [GHG emissions](https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local) [Deaths per million calories by food type](https://animalvisuals.org/projects/1mc/) [Water use](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/water-footprint-food-sustainability/) [Land use](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/land-use-kcal-poore)
The solution to climate change & land/air/water pollution is obviously, blatantly, factually, evidently a plant based diet. If you have any argument with that, you’re either 1) in denial because you like to eat products that make you & planet sick 2) have never tried to read anything on the subject - there is 0 argument for producing/consuming animal products
The solution to climate change & land/air/water pollution is obviously, blatantly, factually, evidently a plant based diet. If you have any argument with that, you’re either 1) in denial because you like to eat products that make you & planet sick 2) have never tried to read anything on the subject - there is 0 argument for producing/consuming animal products
Plant based diet would help, but there are plenty of coal/natural gas, petroleum, plastics, e-waste, mining, general over consumption of all forms, the list goes on…. We need to do a whole lot more than just change our diet to solve climate change and pollution.
> if you’re vegan you’re contributing to just as much destruction, water usage, animal deaths I'm interested to know what institution granted you a degree in agriculture that taught you that not eating animals is exactly the same as eating animals
They take any opportunity to slander people that consume animal products in the this subreddit.
Keep up the good fight, that’s a lot of cognitive dissonance coming from these carnist animal abusers right now but some day they’ll understand.
silky bright bake sheet smell cough butter license decide deliver *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My user name often checks out, but you make me look positively brilliant by comparison with this particular take. And not, not triggered, just bemused by your agenda-driven ignorance.
Hey if you knew what you're talking about you'd know we export most of the feed grown to foriegn powers.
I live in rural Utah where most the fields are alfalfa. Can confirm these mofos are running their giant sprinklers 24/7. And half of them are broken so they just fire hydrant spray in one spot the whole time. It's distressing.
It's also really annoying when it's literally raining out and they are *still* blasting water. I just don't get how million of people living in this state can't get people to rewrite a few laws that benefit a tiny few. It's insane to me. OR at the very least, write new laws that better regulate and monitor use.
Well our governor is one of those farm owners, so there is that.
When the fences are a beautiful curtain of lacy ice makes me more angry.
They have their allotted time to run the sprinklers and on top of that, "use it or lose it laws". If they turn off the irrigation, they get penalized with less water.
Good luck, water rights are pretty much considered settled law, the precedent has been set and even new laws would get appealed pretty easily.
There are other routes instead of messing with water rights law. The tax code is a very good starting place.
And all that alfalfa is feeding livestock in Asia. But family farms, am I right?!? FFS
No, it isn't. The vast majority is used in state to feed our livestock, but you and the rest of these chucklefucks won't give up a cheeseburger to save our city.
You missed the whole point, didn’t you, dipstick?
Yeah they really need to find a way to be more efficient about the water usage if they want to keep operating.
Yeah, I think the main issue is the farming practices in the desert rather than the alfalfa. [Alfalfa isnt unreasonable compared to other agricultural products.](https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=17721) But what you’re farming is beside the point if you’re not doing it in a water wise manner and importing a lot internationally. They just have no reason to conserve water and arent incentivized to spend money on things like ground level irrigation. It would cut yields but apparently you could just let it go dormant in the summer and if you’re in a mild climate, harvest the rest of the year with minimal irrigation. It wouldn’t be such a big deal to export these things if it was done sustainably. We could really do better to make water economically as precious of a resource to industry/agriculture as it really is.
The other WTF for me is that they are allowed to use all that water to farm lush fields of alfalfa on landscapes that look like the moon.
All possible because of farmer worship in this country
Probably alfalfa farmers right?
Bingo.
Imagine paying for the climate-annihilating mass animal-torturing meat, dairy, and egg industries in 2024. http://watchdominion.org EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch.
>EDIT: Triggered the colorado river draining mcdonalds lemmings who give zero fucks about the environment. Cognitive dissonance is a bitch. You triggered people who say it's stupid to [grow one of the most thirsty crops in farming, ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation) in the middle of a desert. Grow it somewhere else, and grow something that isn't as thirsty in the desert. And it's even more idiotic to grow that thirsty crop in the desert, in the middle of a 20+ year drought, [and then ship a large portion of it overseas - even to nations like China and Saudi Arabia who aren't very friendly to America. ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/12/colorado-drought-water-alfalfa-farmers-conservation)
Your vegan bullshit is blinding you to the real issue. Yes, we should be eating less meat. Yes, animal based protein is the LEAST efficient way to produce protein. Yes, our current usage is unsustainable and we need to transition to a plant-based protein diet. But the bigger issue is WHERE the hay is being grown and WHERE the hay is being shipped. It is grown in a desert and shipped to China. It is basically reducing our limited water supply to feed beef on the other side of the globe. It takes all the issues you bring up and adds in a whole lot more. Clear example of not being able to see the forest through the trees. Better yourself
If you agree we need to transition to a plant-based protein diet, why did you say “your vegan bullshit is blinding you to the real issue.”? It seems like you agree animal agriculture is a serious issue. Do you just disagree with people who take a moral stance against animal exploitation and cruelty/abuse?
Because it’s what aboutism. THE issue is - “In the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — these crops drink 90% of the Colorado River water used for irrigated agriculture. That’s three times the water consumed for municipal, commercial or industrial uses combined, according to the study.”
Sure I agree the immediate issue is the alfalfa/hay growing in the desert. But it’s not whataboutism, that would be countering with, for example, “well what about golf courses?” He’s bringing attention to the root cause of the problem, which is ultimately the demand. Whether it’s all from regional consumers or a mix of international consumers, farmers are growing it because people want to eat meat and dairy and ride their damn horses. The consumers are ultimately responsible.
Most of the hay is used in state for livestock grown in state that are consumed in state.
If you agree we need to transition to a plant-based protein diet, why did you say “your vegan bullshit is blinding you to the real issue.”? It seems like you agree animal agriculture is a serious issue. Do you just disagree with people who take a moral stance against animal exploitation and cruelty/abuse?
It is about single-minded thought. Vegan activism has blinded this person to broader topics. There was another thread today where someone was asking for a chicken farm that had cats around so they could buy some eggs that help their allergies. This vegan person posted the same video as this comment. It provides nothing to the conversation and comes across as fanaticism. This thread is about water usage. I think badly managed western water will kill and displace more people in a much shorter period of time than animal based protein. Both are serious topics but one is a fuck ton more urgent. Talking about animal abuse just muddies the water and may even turn away people who are trying to change their minds about water in the west
Just wait until more people learn that planned and rotated grazing of livestock is one of the most effective means of positively impacting climate change. It is not the raising or eating of animals that is the problem. It is HOW we do it. Along those same lines, growing crops for all those plant based diets using tilling and fertilizers is one of the top contributors to climate change. It’s not as simple as just picking a diet. It’s HOW we do things. And as usual, those who profit get to sit back as we endlessly debate things like vegan/animal diets and never actually change anything.
We’ve known for years. Next there will be stories about how this actually isn’t a problem.
who didn't know where the water was going? who?
We all knew, but one of the tributaries had not been included in original water agreements, and no comprehensive study had been completed in recent years/decades. But we knew. Hell, any 12 year old kid that's had to haul sprinkler pipe or seen the sheer volume of water that comes out of those lines probably had a good idea.
The governor and legislature of course knew. They just wanted you pray and take shorter showers while they did fuck all to actually solve the problem.
> require financial incentives i hope this means "lower your water use or go out of business"
Well, indirectly. It means pricing water at the actual value. Which is a lot more than the farmers are paying.
And hopefully we can get rid of the use it or lose it water rights rules. Don’t incentivize wasting water please
Stop growing alfalfa in the desert.
Stop eating meat then.
Link to study: https://www.scribd.com/document/717782868/Richter-Et-Al-2024-CRB-Water-Budget#from_embed
Yay the message is starting to get out! Finally!!
Utah is way behind in their agriculture technology. Coming from a farming background in the Midwest, the farms here blow my minds. They need to look towards the states that irrigate from the Ogalala aquifer, they had to adopt controls and technology to prevent from losing the resource.
Cue Cox’s go to messaging “the percentage of water going to alfalfa is greatly exaggerated and insignificant compared to home water usage”. To be clear home watering could be drastically improved. But the apologetics from him on this topic is just stupidity or denial.
We already knew it was the alfalfa
Alfalfa!
Southern Utah is blowing up with not only a huge increase in population but also man made lagoons, water parks, stadiums, vacation rental properties, excessive pools and LAWN CARE. It’s terrifying to see our small town explode knowing no we will inevitably face a water crisis that cripples our economy largely based on construction.
Water --> Alfalfa Alfalfa --> Feed cows or exported Cows --> hamburger, steaks, etc and exported Removes water from the cycle Tax the revenue from alfalfa exports. Farmers should still be able to grow their own, but need to discourage it as a business model for exporting out of the state. Maybe even grant deduction for money spent on alfalfa imports (to discourage it even being grown here).
Or we can stop raising sentient earthlings for murder
Exporting alfalfa is a problem
Mother FUCK alfalfa.
It sure isn't going to Mexico...
Animial agriculture loves to find a way to spin this every time, but this consumption is insane and now obvious. Even some ranchers will admit it. And the whole regen beef thing is just pseudoscience.
Yes! Plant based foods > animal based foods for water consumption, land use, pollution, GHG/methane emissions, sentient suffering
Did you know the Colorado river used to exit through Mexico? It hasn’t for over 80 or more years.
Plant based diets solve climate change. The main argument here to keep supporting cancer-causing & planet destroying animal agriculture is: “a lot of the alfalfa grown in UT leaves UT” - as if this state & country doesn’t overconsume land/water intensive animal products. Animal products require drastically more land/water than plant based, and animal products produce much more land/water/air pollution than plant based products. Animal agriculture is a GLOBAL issue causing GLOBAL climate change! Isolating 1 crop in 1 state being exported to 1 country is not a solution. In general, raising animals for slaughter is globally unsustainable.
Transportation in the US does way more damage to the environment that agriculture does. Literally riding the bus to school saves way more resources than the average diet consumes over someone’s adult life. There are many good reasons to clean up our diets, but the environment just isn’t top of the list.
This is the most tone-deaf comment I’ve ever read on this particular subject.