California's Almonds Suck as Much Water Annually as Los Angeles Uses in Three Years

[progressoid]

The thing is, nuts use a whole lot of water: it takes about a gallon of water to grow one almond, and nearly five gallons to produce a walnut. Residents across the state are being told to take shorter showers and stop watering their lawns, but the acreage devoted to the state's almond orchards have doubled in the past decade. The amount of water that California uses annually to produce almond exports would provide water for all Los Angeles homes and businesses for almost three years.

and 2013, US almond exports to China and Hong Kong more than quadrupled, feeding a growing middle class' appetite for high-protein, healthy food."

Yet the center of almond farming—and the farming of lots of the US's fruits and veggies—is exactly where the worst the most extreme drought is taking place. To make up for the water shortage, farmers are pumping groundwater—the underground water that feeds aquifers, serving as a savings account of sorts for the state's water supply.

more: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/01/almonds-nuts-crazy-stats-charts

[villager]

1. I fear for the almond milk that I prefer to dairy milk

n/t

[progressoid]

2. Yeah, me too.

My wife loves raw almonds but the price keeps going up.

[mike_c]

3. not to mention the impact the annual managed pollination has on honey bee colonies....

"What do almond trees have to do with honeybees? It turns out that when you grow almond trees in vast monocrops, pollination from wild insects doesn't do the trick. Each spring, it takes 1.6 million honeybee hives to pollinate the crop—about a million of which must be trucked in from out of state. Altogether, the crop requires the presence of a jaw-dropping 60 percent of the managed honeybees in the entire country, the US Department of Agriculture reports."

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/04/california-almond-farms-blamed-honeybee-die

Hives have to be trucked in AND BACK OUT every year both because of the sheer number of bees necessary to pollinate the almond crop efficiently, but also because the orchards are in an arid semi-desert where surrounding land affords neither forage nor rest for bees after the brief almond flowering is over. The orchards themselves are usually toxic during most of the rest of the year, as is much of the surrounding land if it isn't barren. It's no place for honey bees, other than during the short window when hives are trucked in to do the heavy lifting of pollinating many thousands of thirsty almond trees.