| To be fair to the farmers, it's more of an issue of which crops they're growing. The southern Central Valley used to be a big producer of cotton and sugar beets, and the further north near Fresno has always been tree fruit and some vegetables, while the western valley was much more sparsely cultivated (source: mom grew up in a small town near Bakersfield, dad near Fresno, I grew up working on the farm every summer). These days the southern central valley is almost all almonds, which are huge consumers of water, and they are used for nut milk, of all things. Dairies have also expanded in the past few decades. Cows drink a ton of water and eat alfalfa, which needs crazy amounts of water to grow. The biggest thing we city people can do is completely cease drink almond milk and drastically cut our cow milk consumption. Dairy and almonds are the two biggest line items in California's water budget. Agriculture in the state would be much more sustainable if we shifted farmers to different crops. I submit to you that soy and oat milk are both delicious and can replace cow's milk in most recipes. There's not yet a good cheese made from these yet, unfortunately. |
https://www.capradio.org/articles/2022/05/09/a-billion-pound...
So, I mean, you might as well stop drinking almond milk in protest. IMO almond milk is disgusting anyway. But it's a pretty roundabout way to make a difference. And Chinese almond consumption will probably keep growing as their people get richer.
I think this problem requires a political solution; we should charge farmers more money for water to encourage marginal almond farmers to switch to other crops and make it easier for farmers elsewhere in the world to grow almonds.