The supply of freshwater on this planet is limited
Only 3% of the earth’s water is fresh, and 2/3 of that supply is locked up in glaciers and icecaps. The race is on for that remaining 1%. During the last 70 years, the global population has tripled, but water withdrawals have increased over six fold! The world's six billion people today make use of over half of all the accessible freshwater contained in rivers, lakes and underground aquifers. Consider:
Simply extrapolating for population growth, by 2025 mankind will be claiming some 70% of the world’s freshwater supply. Factoring in the increasing per capita water consumption, then by the year 2025 mankind may be using over 90 percent of all available freshwater. This would leave just 10 percent of the freshwater for the rest of the world's species. And, if some of mankind’s water withdrawals fail to return the water, undamaged, back to the earth’s ecosystem then we will have entered a dangerous downwards spiral. When we use water in our home, about 90% is returned to the environment for reuse; of the water used for irrigation, only about one half is reusable.
Without irrigation,
crops couldn't be grown in our deserts
Agriculture is by far the largest player in the world’s water market, with irrigation farming in the pivotal role. Almost 60% of all the world's freshwater withdrawals go towards irrigation uses. Large-scale farming could not provide food for the world's populations without the irrigation of crop fields by water gotten from rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and wells.
In order to grow cotton, Pakistan draws from the River Indus almost a third of the river’s total flow, enough to prevent any water reaching the Arabian Sea. Australia does much the same on the River Murray, which is drying up as a result. When Russia transformed the deserts of Central Asia into a vast cotton plantation, it began the destruction of the Aral Sea. The U.S. sends irrigation water to produce cotton in the Arizona desert.
5000 liters of water to grow 1 kilo of rice.
Growing cotton in the desert may seem a careless use of water. Many food crops such as rice are thirstier; rice is an irrigation crop. But we must look to desert livestock to find the primary exercise in economic wizardry. It takes 3000 liters of water to make 1 liter of milk and 11,000 liters of water to grow enough cow to make one hamburger. Cows require thirsty grazing land and are fed low value but thirsty food crops such as alfalfa. Ideally, cows would live near lakes and streams and in climates with lots of rain; they would not live in deserts. In the U.S, cows can be raised on rainfall water in 35 U.S. states. Nevertheless, the near-desert state of California is home to nearly 2 million cows, most living on industrial-scale dairy farms.
In California, enough water for greater LA is used to raise irrigated pasture for livestock. The same amount of irrigation water goes to alfalfa, the biggest water user of any California crop; the alfalfa is used as cow feed, thus sustaining California’s largest agricultural industry - dairy farming. You can irrigate low-value thirsty crops such as alfalfa and pasture grass only if you have cheap water.
The mathematics of water subsidies
If you need 11,000 liters water to raise $1 worth of cow, then the water had better not cost $4, which would be about what a California resident might pay for household water. But, if a government sells this water to the farmer for $ 0.20, then the farmer is looking at an interesting business.
The Central Valley Project in California, for example, subsidizes the farmer with very cheap water, paid for with tax money. Crops such as alfalfa, with a market value probably less than that of the water used to raise it, is then fed to cows. The whole process makes for some very rich ‘hillbillies’.
The taxpayer pays for the water. Big business takes the profits. Farmers in areas rich in natural water lose to unfair trade conditions. Some of the subsidies granted to farmers run contrary to international trade laws. And because the water is so cheap, there is no incentive to pursue efficient agricultural methods. So what is the argument for subsidizing the water used for irrigation farming?
Water subsidies – for the small farmer or big business?
Most countries that subsidize farmers profess to be looking out for the small farmer. Till recently, subsidy data has been among the secrets most strongly guarded by national governments, who have used privacy and data protection laws to keep the names of agricultural subsidy recipients under lock and key. According to network of European journalists, researchers and activists focusing on EU farm subsidies, the reason for the concealment is seldom to protect the poverty-stricken hill farmer but rather to shield huge multinationals, powerful politicians, and royals from the Queen of England to the Grimaldis in Monaco (www.farmsubsidy.org ).
In the U.S., the Environmental Working Group has analyzed federal and state subsidy records. Interested in sustainable use of resources, the EWG compiled a list of the top recipients of subsidized agricultural water from the Central Valley Project, the huge federal water delivery system that supplies roughly one-fifth of the state's domestic and irrigation water. They found that 10 percent of the farmers get about 67 percent of the water; based upon the market value of water, the average subsidy for the top ten recipients was $350,000 and the total water subsidy going to those CVP farmers was about $416 million per annum. Large agribusiness operations — not the small family farmers that federal water projects were intended to benefit — are reaping a windfall from taxpayer-subsidized cheap water (www.ewg.org ).
The politically well-organized farmer
Such ‘farmers’ are found the world over: politically well organized, they have the money and the know-how to lobby for their subsidies and to keep a meaningless system intact for many years. Feeding irrigated grass to cows defies both economic and ecological logic but from the perspective of the large agribusiness farmers it makes both money and sense. Without cheap subsidized water for big business, perhaps desert farming would work its way towards an economical reality, namely, that water is worth something and that this worth must be reflected in the costs and prices of the resultant produce. Otherwise, the world may eat itself towards a thirsty death.
