In California drought, almonds are the villain
When water becomes scarce, these H20-guzzling little nuts are agricultural enemy No. 1
Environmentalists have long attacked Big Oil. California’s drought has created a new villain: Big Almond.
It takes nearly four litres of water to produce each solitary almond. Nobody seemed to care when water was plentiful.
But now that water is so scarce that the government is forcing average residents to cut back, the healthy little nut has become agricultural enemy No. 1.
Its sudden scoundrel turn — from guilt-free snack to destroyer of the earth in a matter of months — is somewhat arbitrary. Each tomato and head of lettuce requires more water, each pistachio almost as much.
But the almond’s small size, high retail price and easy-to-communicate water consumption — one U.S. gallon per one nut — have made it a handy example for activists and urbanites who believe agriculture has been given a free ride by state politicians.
Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown ordered an unprecedented 25-percent cut in water consumption by cities and towns. He imposed no cuts on the agriculture sector, which uses 80 per cent of the state’s surface water.
Brown said farmers have already been hammered by the drought; one state-funded study found 17,000 job losses last year alone. Environmentalist Adam Keats, though, said the governor’s agriculture exception is a capitulation to the big businesses that grow lucrative tree crops such as almonds: “a crop that makes no rational sense to provide water for.”
“We’ve allowed them to establish a statewide policy saying, ‘Hey, we’ll give you an unlimited amount of water, you can do whatever you want with it — even if it doesn’t contribute that much to our economy, it doesn’t employ a lot of people, it uses more water than it should, and it doesn’t feed a lot of people.’ That’s a problem,” said Keats, head of the California Water Law Project at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Farmers say they have enough water issues without any new cuts. The agriculture sector is not getting off unscathed by the drought, said Kurt Schwabe, professor of environmental economics and policy at the University of California: farmers have been forced to adjust to major reductions in their water allocations from the federal and state governments.
“Numerous farms,” Schwabe said, “are experiencing much more than a 25-per-cent reduction in water allocations. In many cases, agricultural land owners in the Central Valley, for instance, are getting zero water de- liveries. It’s likely that the statewide average reduction in water allocations to agriculture will be reduced by about 50 per cent this year.”
Those allocations are not the only sources of water to farms. Many farmers can and do turn to pumping groundwater, another environmental concern. But the cuts create “a challenge to get by or make do,” said Bryce Lundberg, an executive at the rice grower Lundberg Family Farms.
Lundberg faces a 50-per-cent cut — “a blessing,” he said, given that some farmers are getting nothing. “Our goal will be to maintain enough stock to make it through to the next year. And hopefully next year is a wet year,” he said.
The almond has become California’s second most-lucrative crop, but growers are feeling as much beleaguered as blessed.
David Doll, a farm adviser at the University of California Cooperative Extension who works with almond growers, said the almond doesn’t deserve “as much of a target as is on its back.”
The industry, he said, has reduced its water use by about 30 per cent over the last 30 years. At 0.8 litres of water per calorie produced, the almond is actually more efficient than the average food crop.
And the one gallon of water, he said, produces not just the edible almond but a hull and shell that are used as livestock feed, reducing the need for water-consuming corn and alfalfa.