[kickout]

Those costs are known, and outside of California and Nebraska, almost no crops are irrigated.

As far as transporting crops to markets? That's actually a success story. Rail hauls most of the crops from Montana to the PNW (if exporting to China). Rail is dirt cheap and efficient, as any true HN reader will know. :)

[stonogo]

For context, the "almost no crops" that are irrigated comprises about fifty-five million acres, a little over 7% of cropland & pastures. Removing pastures from this data is difficult, but since we're only looking at three hundred million acres primary cropland in the US, we can confidently approximate between a tenth and a sixth of primary crops are irrigated.

1 - https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/report...

[kickout]

I believe around 50% of that 55M acres are hay/forage/pasture. Nebraska and Colorado are easily top players. I underestimated the delta. Point remains there isn’t a ton a irrigated production for commodity crops (corn/soy/wheat/cotton)

[thehappypm]

Do you know if things like sprinklers count as irrigation? I grew up spending a lot of time in Delaware which is tons of farmland, and I remember seeing lots of weird watering devices and sprinklers.

[kickout]

Yes, they absolutely do.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/june/understanding...