continue to subsidize crops that consume alot of water & Meat with the impending water crisis?

You have greedy farmers operating diary farms out in Arizona, sunk 1000+ foot wells when a few years prior the average well was around 300ft. My question is why does the EPA & Department of Agriculture allow that to happen?

youtu.be...

My argument is that you can give up meat or Almonds, but you can't give up water.



Why are we wasting our limited water resources to grow ethanol for instance instead of say Potatoes & Beans? Why are we allowing farmers to suck up the short in supply ground water to grow alfalfa for the exportation to countries like China and the Saudis? Don't finger point at Biden, these corporate farmers have been doing this kind of greed fueled farming for generations now.

I want to build a few hundred desalinization plants & nuclear power plants, and use that water to stop tens of millions of water refugees from crushing surrounding regions that have more ground water, but not that much more in comparison to the dry south west. If the South west dies the the Midwest will soon follow.

You can drive on gravel roads but you'll need water to survive. We need to be able to produce the water on the west & Texan coasts, to distribute it with pipelines & pump houses.

Instead off being a butt head who wants to insult Californians or who ever, try to realize that if their states were to die off then those people who you hate will soon be your neighbors.

Michigan is not safe as well.

www.chicagotribune.com...

On a rainy day in northeastern Illinois, you might have stepped outside and wondered when the downpour would end, without realizing a centuryold and potentially life-changing deficit was growing hundreds of feet below.

Less than 50 miles away from one of the largest freshwater systems on Earth, groundwater is running out.

www.latimes.com...

ALLENDALE, Mich. —

Dale Buist knew running a commercial greenhouse would pose challenges. He just never expected a water shortage to be among them. Not in Michigan, with its vast aquatic riches.

Yet a couple of irrigation wells yielded only a trickle. And one quickly ran dry.

He installed equipment to capture rainwater for the plants. Then a drinking water well failed. Finally, Buist spent $350,000 connecting to a pipeline that supplies nearby Grand Rapids.

"...give up meat..."

Stopped reading right there.

Non-starter to any conversation regarding ecology or environmentalism. Water conversation and smart agriculture are noble pursuits, but sorry, don't care about your diet preferences, and the current efforts underway to retrofit the goal of eliminating meat from the diets of everyone back to some plausible justification .

It's interesting how "cow farts are causing the polar ice caps to melt!!" and "we're running out of ze water!" and diverse other red herring arguments are brought to bear on this subject.

I have no problem with vegetarianism or veganism, but militant variations of those people, that believe it's their role to change everyone else's diets, are quite irritating. Something tells me when WW3 or the zombie apocalypse or the next asteroid impact make everything go pear-shaped, the limp noodles who were trying to use subterfuge to force society into a vegetarian lifestyle will be at the wrong end of the cannibal train. That would be a karmic end to such a devious pursuit.

There are broad swaths of the midwest where farming crops is not possible which is why they are grazing pasture for livestock. They actually have a better natural ecology for local wildlife than monoculture croplands do.

a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Will the average person be able to afford meat if we stop subsidizing cattle feed crops or ban farmers from sinking wells past a certain depth such as 1000ft?

This isn't a Veganism vs Meat eating thread. This is a "Hey, the small towns have begun to run out of water in your area, should we allow farmers to pull out the limited remaining water so they can grow corn for their meat cattle?" type of thread.

originally posted by: ketsuko
There are broad swaths of the midwest where farming crops is not possible which is why they are grazing pasture for livestock. They actually have a better natural ecology for local wildlife than monoculture croplands do.

ssshhhh! "How will we ever convince the unwashed masses to give up meat by bringing inconvenient facts into the conversation!"

a reply to: blakdart

Do you know what a pasture is?

American farmers have a God given right to do what they see fit on their property. There's still some of us Americans around who believe that way and will fight for it.

originally posted by: blakdart
a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened

Will the average person be able to afford meat if we stop subsidizing cattle feed crops or ban farmers from sinking wells past a certain depth such as 1000ft?

This isn't a Veganism vs Meat eating thread. This is a "Hey, the small towns have begun to run out of water in your area, should we allow farmers to pull out the limited remaining water so they can grow corn for their meat cattle?" type of thread.

Rationalize it and spin it however you want.

My concern is not with the affordability of meat, the impact of raising cattle (!?!?) on the water table, the contributions of cow farts to "zOMG the greenhouse gas problem!", or as I said, any other of the many many guilt trips put out there to modify the dietary behaviors of others.

Where I'm from, family operated dairy farms lasted for generations, and a few still go on today, though smaller in number. If the greedy water habits of large urban areas are having a knock-on effect that is a potential issue for those areas, the family operated dairy farms will make a comeback in places where this lifestyle once flourished. Not to mention, venison can be a tasty way to contribute protein to one's diet.

Any water shortage we see are either a) the fault of poor management by mankind in any number of different ways, raising cattle being one facet of that mismanagement, or b) a cyclical aspect of nature (did you know the Sahara Desert was once a lush, green region? Did dairy farmers and almond growers turn it into the sandy wasteland it is today) that fluctuates on geological timelines that human beings can scarcely track, let alone contribute to.

Either way, while I can sympathize with trying to stop water depletion, bringing in animal husbandry and wAtEr MiGrAnTs into the discussion smacks of a propaganda ploy. Dry places will eventually divest themselves of human beings, and that was either due to mismanagement of water resources by the former occupants of those places, or (more likely) the natural ebb and flow of ecology on this planet, and in this instance trying to couch the water problems as relating to human behavior is at best intellectually dishonest. In either scenario, when the wAtEr MiGrAnTs move themselves to a new location, I predict trouble, and it will likely be more problematic for the newcomers. That is the Law of the Jungle.

I think a more pressing problem than finding water for ol bessie to keep on producing milk, is that we've brought on too many Tom, Dick, Sally and Janes into the homosapien herd for the planet to provide sustenance. Solving the water problem is just one drop in the bucket in that regard.

a reply to: ketsuko

Would you be alright with restricting the beef & diary industry to pastures only?

a reply to: vance

What will you do when cops arrive to pour cement down your well after the local government caught you drilling for water past 1000ft?

On a separate note, I find it funny how the people who mocked those of us who saw this "vegan-vasion" ploy in the making ("dey comin' fer yer MeAt!") while back can now look on with a nervous (but less dismissive) laugh, as this movement picks up steam.

I hope the people who didn't take this vegetarian conversion thing seriously know how to hunt and fish, for the after times, when the meat packing facilities have been sabotaged (physically and ideologically) and brought offline.

a reply to: blakdart

It already is. Your complaint is with cattle feed which is fed to animals on feedlots. Feedlots are not pasture, but every animal on a lot came off pasture.

It shows that you don't understand what you're complaining about.

Meh, just part of the natural cycle of Mother Earth.

We shouldnt subsidize any company that partakes in factory farming. Take away any environmental debate and its jist morally wrong.

Feeding cattle or growing food is not wasting water usually, but some foods like Avacados take a real lot of water and they should not be promoted too much. These foods that take excessive amounts of water to grow should not be promoted.

Watering grass and washing your car twice a week, that is wasting water. So is watering the flowers every day. I like using rain barrels to collect water from the gutters to water the garden, but I have a well, and if I do not use the water from the underground river it is at the edge of, the water just comes out in the springs lower on down by the swamp area anyway...but still I do not like to take away water that feeds the stream there and the little ponds too much which drain into the river that goes out into Lake Superior.

People waste a lot of water. I see people constantly hosing dust off of their homes or washing their sidewalks when I drive around. In Arizona and Texas they are doing a lot of cloud seeding in the richer areas which causes the clouds to drop their water and the grass and trees in those cities stay green...robbing it from other areas.

The worst thing is that they water corn for corn gas and the runoff is full of fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides. This gets into the stream and it was not caused by animals needing food, it was caused by adding it to fuel.

a reply to: blakdart

The planet's been teaming with life for a billion years and the bucket's still full from my perspective. We didn't as a species drink one of the larger planets in the solar system dry nor are we ever likely to..

no meat?

i smell an all out range war in the future.

do cattle eat soy?



i don't understand the significance of the well depth.

originally posted by: blakdart


I want to build a few hundred desalinization plants & nuclear power plants, and use that water to stop tens of millions of water refugees from crushing surrounding regions that have more ground water, but not that much more in comparison to the dry south west. If the South west dies the the Midwest will soon follow.

Way to go man, I really appreciate rich people finally giving something back. You'll be remembered as a saviour.

a reply to: blakdart

I agree with your statement about depleting the aquifers for irrigation corn and soybeans. Lots of water for ethanol. Not including the amount of pesticides used, using water as the carrier. Essentially using up water and poisoning it at the same time.

Cows, on the other hand, don’t use up water like you would think, not the grazing ranches I’ve been on out west. No more than a horse uses. The alfalfa and grass hay grown around here uses the Pecos River water.

And true, the amount of corn and soybeans grown, we could plant edible crops for food and still feed the world. Reverse osmosis plants for some reason isn’t being designed and engineered for mass water supply which is mind boggling. Yet we send billions like paper money to other countrys.

originally posted by: blakdart
a reply to: SleeperHasAwakened



This isn't a Veganism vs Meat eating thread. This is a "Hey, the small towns have begun to run out of water in your area, should we allow farmers to pull out the limited remaining water so they can grow corn for their meat cattle?" type of thread.

Corn is used by meat packers to fatten up hogs and beef before slaughter. Most ranches I’ve worked on out west don’t practice this. Field Corn is not good for cows to eat.

Btw support your local rancher and buy beef locally grown in your area. Not the meat packers.

Not just corn growers, but Almond and nut farm use tremendous amounts of irrigation water. Many homes in northern Cali have had to redrill their wells because of these nut farms. No joke.