1ºI would like to communicate to you another aspect of this topic. To be specific I would like to point out a subject that many farmers don't like to speak about, because it can affect their precious profits. The subject is "the use of California water to produce produce, like tree nuts, that is mostly imported to other country's". In other words, the sale (via tree nut production) of California water to other countries.
To help explain this topic, we'll use Californian almonds as an example.
Let's start by breaking down the numbers.
- It takes 1 gallon of water to produce 1 almond.
- There are roughly 400 almonds in a pound. That means 400 gallons of water are needed to produce 1 pound of almonds.
- In 2020 California exported 1.6 billion pounds of almonds to other countries. (Note worthy is the fact that 2020 was a drought year).
- If 400 gallons of water is needed to produce 1 pound of almonds, and 1.6 billion pounds of almonds were exported last year, then that means that 640 billion gallons of California water was sold to other countries during a drought year. (That's a lot of water).
Now let's compare that number to the average consumption of water used by the population of California in 2020.
- The average person uses 200 gallons of water per year. (This is a generous number)
- The population of California is 39.5 million.
- That means that in 2020 the population of California consumed 7.9 billion gallons of water.
Let's summarize the numbers.
640 billion gallons (used for production of California almonds that were exported to other counties) divided by 7.9 billion gallons (total consumption of water by the population of California). This equals 81.
That means that 81 times the amount of California water being consumed by Californians is being sold to other countries in the form of almonds. Imagine what that number would be if we included all of the other tree nuts produced in California, and then exported to other countries for profit.
This isn't just as innocent as selling tree nuts to other countries. We are in essence selling California water to other countries during a drought.
To be honest, tree nuts are not a staple of American food and consumption. With that in mind, and the fact that we are in a drought, perhaps it would benefit Californians to establish regulation that help to limit the use of drought water for production of tree nuts meant for export to other nations (strictly for profits).
Please investigate further into this topic. I'm sure that if more Californians knew about this, then they would want California law makers to establish regulations that can cap the amount of tree nuts produced and exported by California. Such measures could positively affect available water in California, there by benefiting the greater population of California.