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New Food & Water Watch Research Reveals Outsized Water Cost of Almonds and Pistachios in CA [1]
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Date: 2022-07-22
I’ve written about the gargantuan water needs of nut crops like almonds and pistachios grown by billionaire agribusiness tycoons like Stewart and Lynda Resnick in the San Joaquin Valley for many years, but new Food & Water Watch research has zeroed in on the precise water cost of a boom period in the expansion of those crops.
Between 2017 and 2021, almond bearing acres grew by 32 percent and pistachio acres increased by 63 percent, according to the new report.
“That expansion necessitated the withdrawal of an extra 523 billion gallons of water for irrigation — enough water to supply nearly four million households with enough water for an entire year. In a megadrought where small farmers and households are struggling to survive, those numbers are sobering,” the group revealed.
The report revealed the following in almond and pistachio acreage trends:
● Despite dwindling water supplies and years of intense droughts, thirsty almond acreage in California has increased steadily since the 1990s.
● An estimated 1,640,000 acres were dedicated to almonds in 2021 in California according to the USDA (1,320,000 acres producing almonds, and 320,000 not yet bearing acres).
● According to 2021 USDA Census data, 409,000 acres were pistachio bearing acres – a 64 percent increase in bearing acres compared to 2017.
● Total almond and pistachio bearing and non-bearing acres in 2021 amounted to more than 2,700 square miles.
● Almond and pistachio orchards are permanent and need to be watered year-round, which is becoming increasingly difficult with limited water resources.
● Small farmers who do not have senior water rights or the capital to drill deeper wells to pump large amounts of groundwater must make difficult decisions with their limited water.
● The continuation of the intense drought in 2022, high water prices and a myriad of other factors are prompting some farmers to reconsider their water allocation towards the thirsty crop.
How does this impact the current climate crisis? Food and Water Watch highlights the following data:
Warmer temperatures mean crops require more water to make up for the additional water lost via evapotranspiration.
The Public Policy Institute of California estimated that crop water demands increased by 8 percent in 2021 – in response to average temperatures that year being nearly 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the average annual temperature during the 20th century.
Because surface water is drying up during the drought, state and federal water projects are delivering less and less water to farmers. Insufficient surface water, lack of groundwater regulations and advancing technology have led large agribusinesses to pump groundwater at an alarming rate for years.
Groundwater accounts for 30 percent of water used by California agriculture in wet years, and a staggering 80 percent of water in dry years.
“The majority of these crops are grown in the San Joaquin Valley, an arid landscape where 683 wells have gone dry this year alone — a 123 percent increase from last year,” the group states. “Unlike industrial agribusiness, most small farmers and residents in the Central Valley who rely on private wells for daily water use can’t afford to drill ever deeper in search of groundwater. And while Governor Gavin Newsom dodges mandatory action on the drought, that unequal access is likely to grow.”
According to a 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service, almonds and pistachios require an average of 3.5 acre-feet of water (about 1.1 million gallons) applied per acre of nut trees annually.
Read the complete research findings here.
At the same time as voluntary water conservation has failed so far in California, the Governor has been moving forward with the Big Ag-backed Delta Tunnel, voluntary water agreements and the construction of Sites Reservoir. These projects will only worsen the ecological collapse in the San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary and hasten the extinction of endangered Sacramento River spring and winter-run chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and long fin smelt and green sturgeon.
The Governor’s support of these projects is no surprise, since Stewart and Lynda Resnick, major promoters of the Delta Tunnel and increased water pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, have donated a total of $366,800 to Governor Gavin Newsom since 2018, including $250,000 to the campaign to fight the Governor’s recall.
Newsom received a total of $755,198 in donations from agribusiness in the 2018 election cycle, based on the data from www.followthemoney.org. That figure includes a combined $116,800 from Stewart and Lynda Resnick and $58,400 from E.J. Gallo, combined with $579,998 in the agriculture donations category.
The Resnicks, nicknamed “the Koch Brothers of California” by activists, have contributed many millions of dollars to candidates from both sides of the political aisle and to proposition campaigns so they can continue selling back public water to the public at a huge profit while promoting legislation and other efforts to weaken laws protecting fish, wildlife and water. The Resnicks are considered the largest tree fruit growers in the world.
The Resnicks have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to not only Newsom, but to Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other governors in California.
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