[testfoobar]

We use a lot of water growing nuts in California.

From 2015: https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts...

"it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state’s almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount of water that California uses annually to produce almond exports would provide water for all Los Angeles homes and businesses for almost three years."

[tzs]

That gallon of water to grow one almond or the 5 gallons for one walnut obviously does not actually end up in that almond or walnut. Only a tiny amount of water is in the nut itself, and so exported from the state when the nut is exported.

Some of it will end up in the ground and eventually become part of the water table in that region, eventually coming back out via wells to be reused.

A lot of it will be transpired into the air by the plant. Some of that will condense out and end up in the ground. The winds in those areas tend to blow toward the Sierra Nevada mountains to the east. I suspect a lot of that water ends up rain on the west side of those mountains, where much of it makes its way back to the farming regions.

Some will be broken down in chemical reactions in the plant, with the H and O being combined with other elements to form various compounds. It would take someone with a much more extensive knowledge of plant biology than I have to say what happens to those compounds and if any of the H and O used for them ends up as water again later.

I've never seen any analysis that actually looks at where the water goes after the nut is produced.

[colechristensen]

The argument question you are looking for is “does irrigation increase water supply through evaporation and rainfall?”

Of course the atoms are conserved. Any plant matter that is consumed by humans or burned will end up back as water while it isn’t tied up in your body or buried.

Certainly some will go to groundwater and some will evaporate and get locally precipitated... but depending on weather patterns some water vapor will leave the state and rain down past the mountains or into the sea.

A large ecological transformation could be undertaken to plant forests and other plants to increase water capacity and make more water cycle locally, but that kind of transformation would be terrificly expensive and environmentally controversial. (but could work in places... there are a lot of rainforests out there where if you burned them down they would be deserts.)

[s1artibartfast]

This is poor logic influenced by the politics of the LA aqueduct and water project.

Nuts are calorie dense, and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie. Food simply requires a lot of water. For example, A 5 oz glass of wine takes 34 gallons. A head of iceberg lettuce takes 16 gallons of water.

You will note that the motherJones article compares almond water things like home use, not other food sources.

[colechristensen]

This is also poor logic.

Many crops around the world receive zero irrigation, the only water they get comes from rain. Much of the cereal grains (not all, but still much) are grown without irrigation.

In Iowa we drain the land by putting porous pipes a few feet down which are interlinked and drain into the rivers. If we didn’t, the water table comes up all the way to the surface and much of the land would be ephemeral ponds for significant portions of the year.

[s1artibartfast]

The faulty logic as I see it is to focus on nut crops opposed to all crops in California, irrigated or otherwise.

The problem is political because California has water rights and the legislature does not want buy the water rights from farmers or use eminent domain to seize them with fair compensation.

[daveevad]

> In Iowa we drain the land by putting porous pipes a few feet down which are interlinked and drain into the rivers.

That is a fascinating. How extensive and interlinked are those pipes?

[colechristensen]

Pipes as little as 30 to a few hundred feet apart. There are parts of the state where they're literally everywhere.

Here's some drainage basics:

https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/drainage/files/2015/09/Basic_...

There is extensive law regarding drainage and interconnection obligations between landowners, Iowa is pretty flat, there just has to be a path between your fields and a local river. All of the roads are edged with drainage ditches, there are bigger much deeper ditches where necessary to direct water.

http://publications.iowa.gov/19966/1/IADOT_tr_497_Iowa_Drain...

[ramraj07]

Can you give more sources? First time I see someone refuting that growing almonds is a water shit show

[npsimons]

It's not so much that almonds aren't water intense, as that things like beef and dairy (which are also heavily produced in California) are so much worse: https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths

Yet we never see beef or dairy demonized the way almonds are.

Believe me, there are better plant milks than almond milk (pretty much any of them), but dairy has such a higher impact on the environment (as does beef), it's incredibly disingenuous and hypocritical to complain about almonds before addressing dairy and beef.

[npsimons]

> and most foods require as much if not more water per calorie.

Yup. Beef and dairy are far worse, yet almonds get shit on: https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths

[tuatoru]

This is also poor logic. Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring.

A snack size serving of almonds is around 20 of them, representing about 20 gallons. A side dish of lettuce is probably about half of one, 8 gallons.

That said, California's water is probably best used in high value add industries like semiconductor manufacturing.

[tzs]

> That said, California's water is probably best used in high value add industries like semiconductor manufacturing.

California has some of the best soil for farming in the country (or even the world). A gallon of water used for agriculture in California will be more effective than a gallon used for agriculture in most other places.

As far as I know there is nothing that makes California a great place for semiconductor manufacturing. A gallon of water used for semiconductors in California isn't more effective than a gallon used for semiconductor manufacturing anywhere else.

That argues for prioritizing in California water for agriculture over water for semiconductors.

[UncleOxidant]

The South Bay area where Silicon Valley is has some of the best of that best soil. Deep loamy soil that really doesn't need much or any preparation and in that climate you can grow just about anything. I'm a gardener and I always try go grow a garden wherever I've lived, when I lived in the south Bay the soil was just the best I've seen anywhere by a long ways - it was so easy to dig and it was quite rich. That's why it was known as the Valley of Heart's Delight way back when it was an agricultural area.

Also there's much actual semiconductor manufacturing in Silicon Valley anymore.

[mixmastamyk]

That industry led to lots of chemical dumping in the area, so watch out.

[MarkSweep]

I’ve heard people say it makes chilis extra spicy.

[digitalsushi]

I believe I read once that it takes about 920 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of almond milk.

edit: i am apparently worse than an almond milk drinker, since coffee uses even more water at 1,056:1.

and learning even more, cow-milk is about 2000 gallons of water to make a gallon of milk!

so i really have no idea about any of this and its all surprising

https://shamelesshousewife.wordpress.com/tag/how-much-water-...

[cornel_io]

Sure, but water isn't scarce everywhere, so optimization for water cost is not like carbon footprint where it all gets blown into the atmosphere and is bad. Many regions don't need to worry about water at all so it's basically free.

[dragonwriter]

Diverting high quality agricultural soil is even more expensive than diverting water, though.

Irrigating California deserts and semi-arid regions for agriculture isn’t just some kind of random vanity project.

[WillPostForFood]

Nuts are not a calorie crop, they are a relatively high-cost garnish/flavouring.

Honestly not sure if you are joking or just being glib? Nuts are extremely calorie dense.

Almonds - 165 calories per oz

Iceberg - 4 calories per oz

Romaine - 5 calories per oz

[tsimionescu]

They are, but outside things like almond milk almond flour, which are not often consumed, people don't base their diets on almonds, they are used as flavoring much more than they are eaten for their nutritional value (unlike rice or wheat or even lettuce).

[WillPostForFood]

I would have agreed a decade ago, but with the rise of low carb and keto diets, almonds and other nuts have become a major part of diets for a lot of people.

[tuatoru]

I'm saying that mosts nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc.) are not consumed purely for their calorific value. We have potatoes, grains, and vegetable oils for that.

Nuts are primarily used to add flavouring to a meal based on (say) rice, or as snacks rather than full meals.

[dragonwriter]

> I'm saying that mosts nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, etc.) are not consumed purely for their calorific value.

Most food isn’t consumed purely for its caloric value, but the calorie density of nuts means that they are often a major source of calories as consumed.

> Nuts are primarily used to add flavouring to a meal based on (say) rice

Arguably, preference for the flavor is a result of them being used for a long time to add additional fat and protein calories to a meal based on rice. They don’t have to be the major component to be significant that way, since rice has little protein and less fat and is far less calorie dense than nuts are.

> or as snacks rather than full meals.

Snacks tend to be eaten largely to fill a caloric demand (not necessarily need, as it can be in people habituated to surplus) and a nut-based snack may be a bigger calorie chunk than a “full meal” of less calorie dense foods the same person eats.

[vinay427]

Why not just compare their water usage by calorie/kcal? Nuts can easily be the largest energy source in a meal or used as a standalone snack because they're so calorie-dense.

https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-...

[harles]

I’m always dumbfounded when almonds are pointed to as poor water usage. It’s an order of magnitude less egregious than meat and dairy on a per serving basis.

[colechristensen]

It matters where that water comes from. A lot of meat and dairy come from places where water is in abundance and comes mostly or entirely from rain. I grew up on a farm where irrigation was something you saw on TV and would have to drive hundreds of miles to see any at all. We had pipes in the ground to drain water into the river. Most of our crop made its way to animal feed and involved not a drop of water that wasnt rain.

[missedthecue]

A cow grown in Wyoming or Michigan, where they have more water than they know what to do with is less of a problem than water intensive plants grown in California, where people paint their lawns because it's illegal to water them.

[kibibyte]

California dairy is totally a thing though. We had this TV ad campaign decades ago that always ended with "great milk comes from happy cows; happy cows come from California". Also, Harris Ranch is a pretty decently sized cattle farm down near Coalinga (you know that you're getting close to it when you smell the cow poop while driving down I-5).

The missing information from these almonds vs cows debate is how big the two respective industries are in California. (I don't actually know this answer, so I'm curious if anyone knows.)

[npsimons]

See this: https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths

[npsimons]

Shh, you'll upset the meat eaters, beef/dairy shills, and people who have been brainwashed by the almond hit pieces put out by the beef/dairy shills.

[npsimons]

Beef and dairy are by far worse than almonds, in every conceivable way, yet we don't hear people bitching about production of those in California: https://www.truthordrought.com/almond-milk-myths

[musicale]

Regardless of what the product is, perhaps California should not be subsidizing water exports.