Well, this has been a long time coming. This is what happens when you look forward and let all those yahoos keep their ill-gotten gains, giving them more buying power! Sit down, grab a cup of coffee or whiskey and hear a tale about how almonds are being used as the whipping nut for big money and bigger Pistachios.
First off, why am I going off on pistachios? First off, the water required to grow these nuts makes Almonds look like a cactus. All to feed a growing Chinese-middle class who love American nuts in their face. Much better than those Iranian pistachios, they say, more cultured if you will.
If you ever wondered exactly how much water is required to grow pistachios, let's look to science!
Local science at that!
Water Use Requirements of Pistachio Trees and Response to Water Strress
- University of Califonia
http://ucmanagedrought.ucdavis.edu/...
RESEARCH RESULTS AND
DISCUSSION
Crop Water Use
Using long term average pan evaporation for the San Joaquin Valley and assuming a 17 x 17 ft tree spacing results in crop water use values for a normal year that range from 2
gal/tree/day in early April to 57 gal/tree/ day in early July, decreasing to 4 gal/tree/
day in early November.
Average ET from June through August is 52 gal/tree/day.
For the season, Table 1 shows a cumulative crop water use value of 40.1 inches for an average year.
The information presented in Table 1 can be used to schedule irrigations in pistachio orchards. One must be aware, however, that "normal" year seldom occurs, so using long term historical ET data may not reflect conditions during particularly hot or cold seasons.
And for those who say, but the almonds, the ALMONDS!
Seasonal pistachio ET slightly exceeds published water use values for other deciduous trees. For example, ET for almonds is approximately 38 inches for a normal season. However, it must be emphasized that pistachio leaf out, and therefore, crop water use, begins much later than almond. Seasonal pistachio ET is greater because the peak transpiration rates of the tree are remarkably high. This is reflected by the previously mentioned peak Kp value of 0.96 versus 0.75 for almonds. By comparison cotton has a Kp of 1.0 under full cover, non-limiting soil water conditions. Thus, it's clear that pistachio trees can use large amounts of water relative to other crops.
That should explain why we shouldn't be doing this California. If you read the study and now about biology, check out the net photosynthesis and stomatal conductance chart!
Now, how many acres are we using for pistachio in the Golden State to feed China's snack bar?
Source Administrative Committee For Pistachios:
http://www.acpistachios.org/...
1979 Acreage 25,440
2007 Acreage 115,007
2014 Acreage 220,527
That's madness.
Now, what could have happened in 2007 that would cause a lot rich people to invest in land?
What was it because I am to busy looking forward to remember how a select 1% of population got mad clown rich back then, what was it?
Farmland in demand
Investors snap up California acreage, pushing prices to record highs, as global appetites for almonds and pistachios increase.
December 26, 2012|By Catherine Green
http://articles.latimes.com/...
In the last year, Prudential Financial Inc. has plowed money into lemons and avocados in Ventura County, almonds and mandarins in the Central Valley and strawberries in Santa Cruz County.
The insurance giant is just one of many players, including highly specialized investors and large pension funds, that have snapped up California farmland recently.
The buying spree has helped push farm and ranch land values to record highs, raising questions about how long the boom might last and what effect it might have on the state's important agricultural sector.
A new class of investors is piling into the sector, said Frank Plessmann of Agriworld Fund Inc., a hedge fund based in Greenville, Miss.
Well, it's not like the Banking Class has sway over the top levels of power when comes to water, as opposed to finance right? RIGHT?
Is Dianne Feinstein Crafting a Secret Water Deal to Help Big Pistachio? UPDATED
—By Tom Philpott | Thu Nov. 20, 2014 7:00 AM EST
http://www.motherjones.com/...
UPDATE: Sen. Dianne Feinstein has called off her backroom negotiations to push a California water bill through the current, lame-duck Congressional session, The Fresno Bee reported late Thursday afternoon. But she's not finished trying to make a deal with Big Ag-aligned GOP reps. She vowed to "put together a first-day bill for the next Congress, and it can go through the regular order,” the Bee reported.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is negotiating a behind-closed-doors deal with Republican lawmakers to pass a bill that would ostensibly address California's drought—an effort that has uncorked a flood of criticism from environmental circles.
Feinstein's quiet push for a compromise drought bill that's palatable to Big Ag-aligned House Republicans has been in the works for six months, Kate Poole, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me. And it has accelerated recently, as the Senator hopes to pass it by year end, during the "lame duck" period of the outgoing Democratic-controlled Senate.
...
Meanwhile, Feinstein went to work on a companion Senate "emergency drought" bill. The effort "started out not-so-bad," Poole says. But then, as the sausage-making process went on, it started taking on more agribusiness-friendly provisions, she says—like one that would redirect water from refuges to agricultural water districts, and another that would allow water transfers to farms to occur during critical salmon migration months—despite federal and state protections.
Well, then.
At least you know, how stupid all this sounds and the obvious greed from the usual suspects, it's not like this barrel, this barrel could be scraped lower for idoicracy?
How Growers Gamed California’s Drought
Consuming 80 percent of California’s developed water but accounting for only 2 percent of the state’s GDP, agriculture thrives while everyone else is parched.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/...
“I’ve been smiling all the way to the bank,” said pistachio farmer John Dean at a conference hosted this month by Paramount Farms, the mega-operation owned by Stewart Resnick, a Beverly Hills billionaire known for his sprawling agricultural holdings, controversial water dealings, and millions of dollars in campaign contributions to high-powered California politicians including Governor Jerry Brown, former governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, and U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.
The record drought now entering its fourth year in California has alarmed the public, left a number of rural communities without drinking water, and triggered calls for mandatory rationing. There’s no relief in sight: The winter rainy season, which was a bust again this year, officially ends on April 15. Nevertheless, some large-scale farmers are enjoying extraordinary profits despite the drought, thanks in part to infusions of what experts call dangerously under-priced water.
But agriculture consumes a staggering 80 percent of California’s developed water, even as it accounts for only 2 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. Most crops and livestock are produced in the Central Valley, which is, geologically speaking, a desert. The soil is very fertile but crops there can thrive only if massive amounts of irrigation water are applied.
Soooo. To sum this all up.
Big Bankers have added 100,000 acres of Pistachios bearing land in a desert, consuming 80% of the state's water supply with money they stole from the banking fiasco last decade and still have those same politicians in the same pockets?
Yeah, say what you will about almonds, but Big Pistachios is just nuts in California.