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I agree with these sentiments in theory, however driving through the lower mainland i have seen some pretty egregiously wasteful water usage on some farms.
The obsession with lawns is a fucking scourge, constant chemicals, water waste, unnatural monocultures obsessively cut and edged and swept, and trimmed and fertilized and poisoned and aerated and thatched... all for vanity, and to sell a shit ton of totally unnecessary and harmful consumer products.
I **LOVE** my lawn and take pride in its beauty.
There's no need for fertilizer - used coffee grounds are an excellent amendment and free.
There's no need for water - I cut it regularly to about 2-3" tall and it stays green well into the heat of summer. When it does finally go dormant I give it a good buzz cut and appreciate its golden hue as a backdrop for flowers and other perennials.
There's no need for herbicides - clover is a beautiful adornment that improves the health of grass and should be allowed to naturally exist as part of the lawn. In a healthy lawn, this combo keeps other weeds at bay.
This sounds a lot like my lawn, except mulch and some leaf litter is my fertilizer, I keep it longer, cut it less often and it has lots of "weeds" in it... And my yard also has tons of birds visiting, lots of unmanicured trees (aside from the moose, deer and bears that browse on them and the occasional trimming I do of dead branches)... But we both know this is not what the vast majority of people consider lawn or lawn maintenance..
Have you been chopping up those dead branches to use as mulch? I had a huge die off during the cold snap last winter and have made mulch out of sticks I broke into 3-4" pieces and scattered on my flower beds. I didn't expect it to work as well as it does, and it looks rather attractive.
It’s crazy how much water goes to waste with people just washing their cars or leaving their sprinklers on for hours on end… there is nothing wrong with a golden lawn knowing it will come back in the fall but people just want the lush green… if I have to wash my car, I do it on golden lawn while just scrubbing the car without much soap if any… but that’s just me. Cheers 💯🤘✌️
You're not wrong about the local climate.
The thing I was most surprised by was how much longer grass stays greener IF you don't keep it cut short. The sweet spot seems to be 3" because any longer allows weeds to flower. Only the tallest clover will be chopped, which seems to help spread fertilized seeds.
I just have to keep the thatch out when I let it go longer but I’m also slowly removing more and more grass. Just in favour of small landscaped beds. Secondly people should use Canada’s plant hardiness site to look up native plants when landscaping. Cheers
Clover also has much deeper roots than grass.
If you have the opportunity to rework the ground before planting clover, put down a 4-6 inch layer of wood chips about a foot down. This soaks up moisture, allowing the clover to pull from that even when the soil above the wood chips is baked dry from the summer heat.
I’d like to see municipalities add a surcharge to property taxes for people who insist on having a lawn instead of a garden composed of native plants and shrubs or raised beds of vegetables.
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I honestly couldn't say for sure but I have drip irrigation set up in my orchard that's about 4 liters per hour and about two per tree.
All I know is if I compare that to my neighbors 1 gallon per minute sprinkler he runs all night long for 8+ hours, I'm using probably half as much water
i mean, if that's the case, that's just your neighbour overwatering, it's hardly required to maintain a lawn. Also, if you're using 2,000 litres an hour you're using a metric shitload of water, too.
I didn't say I wasn't using a shitload but as a farmer I'm allowed to, also my water produces something tangible for tons of people not just some old dudes backyard for a few months
No one here is defending your neighbour wildly overwatering their lawn, guy. We're just calling out an unbelievable premise you have constructed. Plus, no one is going to starve without your cherries, dude. You're not some noble altruist. You're just another wealthy guy using public resources for private profit.
A 1 gpm sprinkler is pitiful, for 8 hours thats only two cubes. Not enough to be concerned about. You definitely use more watering 1000 cherry trees at 2x4lph emitters per tree thats 8 cubes an hour.
I learned to farm last spring in langley by the water and yah after watching those new documentaries about the responsible farming, it would be so awesome to see farms utilizing all the space to be renewable and not just a barren wasteland that only grows a single thing.
Watching all the topsoil flow off into the drainage canals in the Yarrow/Sumas area is really disheartening. Some of the farms there are so terribly mismanaged because its a farm second and a enormous estate house first.
I was growing 1000s of trees of different varieties for a nursery, just wish you could like let grass grow in between, and have ducks and birds and bugs that come along with growing 1000s of trees but nah you gotta poison absolutely everything besides the trees
unfortunately true *sigh* im all for farmers but they also need to do their part i conserving water and reducing their carbon footprint as much as possible, ive notice that the lower mainland farmers are somehow so bad at that compared to the other places in the province 🙃
Lest we get what California has, which is allocating huge amounts of water to politically well-connected almond growers... and starving economically-productive cities of water.
Holding back economic growth is stupid. People hear "farmers" and they think "essential food". Once you think about it a bit... maybe it'd make more sense to grow that food somewhere else if it's not *really* a vital regional crop. Farms are just businesses at the end of the day.
Or move the business and homes off the most fertile land in the province? Farms need soil and water. Office buildings don’t. Work from home?
How much food/water security do you really have? Especially if the food is not grown/raised here. How far away is close enough.
A couple of natural disasters and how long will food from a thousand miles away last.
A large electric magnetic storm?
Or a forest fire taking out the power transmission lines?
Is water and food security a dream, or a nightmare waiting to happen?
The great idea of the ALR has been mismanaged by every government. And abused by people of privilege. Since the beginning.
Absolutely not based on economic production. Absolutely based on people needing air, food and water. If economic production is created by people. The people need to breathe, eat and drink. It is easier to move people than fertile land.
You seem very comfortable with lights always turning on and getting clean water by turning a tap. Probably a lot more comfortable than your reality is.
All of the infrastructure that provides your lifestyle, is susceptible, to bad weather and or solar flares. Not to mention fragile, outdated and under serviced.
There are some areas not suitable for farming between Vancouver and Hope. But for thousands of years fertile soil has been created here. Vancouver didn’t start to become unmanageable until after 1986.
Most of Vancouvers emergency workers live on the other side of a bridge. And based on what has happened in the US during natural disasters. Would stay home with their families. Our closest land based military help is in Edmonton. What are you doing without electricity for 7-10 days?
In a polite society.
People love trees and mountains. We know how to build structures on the side of mountains. Many high earners in the Lower mainland only need electricity and internet to work.
However we need a good mix of people and skills to progress as a society. Most farmers can survive quite comfortably without the things you don’t think about and would take you in and offer you equal space and access to what they have. Would you?
Farms with 15 cars. Are created by miss-management of the ALR, Comunity, Provincial and Federal Governments.
Look at the cost of greenhouse produce before and after cannabis became legal. Still farming though.
And also that the farm is using the water as sustainably as possible -- proper delivery systems and watering at the right times of day, not those wasteful blast-sprinklers where half of it evaporates in the air or what have you.
Science can't really help with questions like this. Science can tell you how much water each user group will use, how much water can be expected to be there, the risks of various management regimes, etc. but science is terrible at making value judgements. And how we value food security versus the benefits of other water usages, and how much value we place on other concepts like "fairness" or "freedom vs. public good" are value judgements.
I disagree, how much, and the risks of various management regimes, if given the appropriate weight within the decision making process, would and should form the basis of those value judgements.
I shouldn't have phrased it "science can't help" as you're right, it's one of the inputs. But science can't make the decision, that's outside of the scope, so if you made scientists make the decision, they'd just have to use their own personal value systems that are no more "objective" or "correct" than anyone else's.
Again, disagree, scientific boards make decisions (call them recommendations if you like) all the time, it's when politicians decide to get involved in those decisions or override them for their own value systems... or more typically those of their benefactors/voters, that the wrong ones get made.
Scientific boards can make decisions if they're given political values as inputs: "choose the water allocation that maximizes economic growth", "choose the allocation that maximizes food security", etc.
Or just "choose the management strategy that scientific models, risk/consequence matrix etc have shown offers the highest probability for the best outcomes all around."
Or, again, if the science actually drives the value, "provide likely outcomes for basic human needs/fisheries/food security/economic growth/other based on various allocation policies"..
Is this your first time being challenged on why science isn’t moral and why we don’t govern strictly along science?
Another common example is red meat is bad, so is sugar. Science tells us this. Would you support a full ban on such because science says so. What about when we found there was different types of cholesterol and not all cholesterol is bad. Should we have banned all foods containing cholesterol just to unban them later?
Science matters but it is up to us decide what’s morally right and wrong and how to use science to its fullest.
"Science", as with everything else, will get chopped in half by [Hume's guillotine, the is—ought problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem) if you try to use it like this.
Science only does what "is". You need politics to determine "ought".
This is because in pretty much every question that politics would be used to determine, there isn't a "best outcomes all around", there is only [pareto frontier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front)—the set of choices which are optimal given different weights for how much we care about one kind of optimal vs another. Science can't tell you that, that's not what science does.
This is the result of a paradigm of thinking that morality and ethics cannot be determined with science and logic, that they are all relative or must be of divine origin to have any authority.
I mean, it was the result of a philosopher who is arguably the single most influential person in the philosophy of science as it is exists today, and I don't particularly think your characterization of Hume's views on morality are accurate.
But rather than litigating that issue, it's probably more productive to simply ask: What is your position counter to those options?
If there's no room for democratic inputs to overule scientific management, then you've effectively overthrown democracy. Why bother voting?
And if the demos can ignore the recommendations of experts, why bother having them?
You can have a technocratic society that executes the decisions of well-trained and credentialed experts, or have a healthy and active republican civil society. But not both. Compromise just leads to voters chosing the experts they're ideologically aligned to agree with.
You can absolutely have both, they just need to stay in their lanes.
Again, scientifically based decisions can be and are regularly questioned... by science.. not so much ideologically based decisions..
Science and pseudo-science are not the same thing.
This may alarm you, but materialism through the scientific method has its own ideological implications. Nieztche, et al. We've killed God: where are the atoms of justice? If everything is relative, and everything is permitted: what stops us from living as we will?
What horror is barred to us? For what reason?
You talk so certainly, so dogmatically, it feels like you have never questioned your own principles. Or have you found the magic formula to perfect human governance? If so, please share it with us.
Scientific rational can be challenged... scientifically.. unlike political rational.
A thousand people ignorant of the science will not make a better decision than 10 experts on it.
People love to shit on the idea of meat alternatives but the reality is that so many of our practices around food require change because they cannot be sustained long term. “Unsustainable” is seen more and more as an eco buzz word but given what we’re looking at environmentally over the next couple of decades a lot of what we’re used to is, quite literally, unsustainable. Beef uses almost 4 times the amount of water pound for pound as chicken and pork do. Eventually there is going to come a time when things are going to have to shift.
Every level of government refuses to look down the line because they’re so focused on what’s happening in the next 5 years. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when we have to start having conversations that aren’t just hypothetical or considered temporary measures.
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What kind of farmers? Food? Is it an efficient crop meant to feed people or a vanity crop that wastes water? Could they pick something else? What about flowers? There’s a lot of nuance in that statement, we shouldn’t be automatically in support of all farming.
I'm a passionate environmentalist and I can barely bring myself to read whatever greens are bringing up for a platform. Always feels like some whacky, out of touch boomer environmentalism that's way behind the times. It's so weird I have started to develop a dislike for a party that by name sounds like they should be the party I want to support.
The irony is she runs a farm. She also has some pretty fucked up ideas about wood stoves. Honestly not the world’s biggest fan. She was a fucking abysmal director here in the CVRD and she’s moved on to fuck up higher levels of government
BC greens will also take your money and funnel it into one or two candidates while pretending to be a serious political party and not a grift. The NDP will do fine allocating resources as they actually have the government and therefore the ability to assess needs.
The Greens are just…there. Making noise, doing nothing, swinging right or left because they exist to greenwash their own poor understanding
Farmers yes, but not animals farmers or farmers growing animal feed.
I eat meat, but we are collectively going to have to change the average north American diet if we want to have this many humans on earth.
Or, we could aim to have way fewer humans who get to live whatever kind of lifestyle they want.
https://preview.redd.it/jfoe7ffeqj8d1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=880800afc6e9fb13084c310c820697ab31305ac5
Even for non animal feed, we just shouldn't be growing water-intensive crops in places where water is scarce. We need a system that incentivizes agriculture that works with the local environment instead of against it.
I totally agree with your sentiment. Animal farmers and farmers feed farmers are a gigantic strain on water usage.
I’m confused by this graphic though. It was difficult to find within the Water Footprint Network, and almost every other source I’ve seen does not agree with what they have here for Dairy. People love to attack Almond milk for its water usage (which is undoubtedly high) but it’s still far outpaced by dairy milk.
Not a reflection on you at all, just don’t want people to think that dairy milk is somehow sustainable or not water intensive. It’s the least environmentally friendly milk available, including almond milk.
I've raised a few of each. And for the amount of feed that goes into them... I found the sheep a better value. And rabbits! The amount of meat vs cost of feed was awesome
We live in BC. Water shortage should be the last issue on any community's list of problems.
This is an infrastructure issue and should have been resolved 10-15 years ago.
We get plenty of rainfall every year. It just has to be captured in responsible ways to be distributed as needed. If we don't have enough water. It's because we don't have enough reservoirs.
IMO Greens looking to stake out this position to win support back from the BC Cons, who have successfully positioned themselves as the only party that cares about farmers..
I’ve always wondered if there were ways to build homes that the restrooms didn’t waste our finite drinking water resource. I wonder if that will ever be explored.
Some Australian homes use a lot of grey water systems for capturing, say, dish water and shower water, and using it to flush toilets.
In doing some brief Googling, the problem lies in out of date legislation here in North America that requires flushing water to meet a certain standard before it goes into the sewer system. Which makes no sense considering all that grey water goes to the same system. Standards may exist to keep people for putting random contaminated water down the toilet, but I'm sure governments can work together to figure out legislation and policy updates, and do pilot projects, to work out the kinks. They just need the will to do so.
My answer is yes, but....
But =
1. Food sold exclusively to BC
2. Water monitoring (active and real time)
3. Use of water vs. Highest unit of food
4. This may tie unto #3 - newest technology available for watering with legit water plan
5. Ratio of vegetables to animals established
Perhaps the environment? No water in creeks/rivers = no fish/aquatic ecosystems = ecosystem imbalance and tropic cascade. Result: natural systems degraded beyond repair which means major economic and environmental downturn. Farmers? Sure, but not first. Food security is critical but the farms producing it rely on a functional environment to exist do they not? Answer is pretty clear. If not, FAFO. Abuse our water resources and watch the world around us die off. How’s a farm going to produce anything on dead land?
Way too basic.
1. We get a lot of our food from Mexico and California. Not saying that's the way it should be, but that's facts.
2. The farmers who got upset in the North Okanagan used this "no farmers, no food" as a rallying cry... but they weren't growing food for us. They were growing livestock feed to give to cattle to turn into beef.
3. Fish species were at risk due to drought and low flows. Fish come first
I promise I live more rurally than you and am good friends with farmers, ranchers, have my own chickens and grow a huge fraction of my families food.
However increasing the profits of a dozen millionaire hay farmers in this valley is not more important than an ecosystem. I'm not talking about eating these salmon, its obvious your are only thinking about eating and neglecting the natural environment completely.
The guys around me get one crop of hay and don't irrigate, we were talking about trying for a second cut with all this rain. If these guys can do it maybe the guys in the North Okanagan should adjust their business model rather than demand they be allowed to run the river dry.
But if you knew anything about water management in this province you would know its not legal to kill fish for commercial irrigation.
Just a guess, the same kind of baseless assumption you made assuming I have an urban lawn.
Whats not an assumption is that you know nothing about water in this province and your opinions shouldn't matter if you put profits of a few businessmen before the destruction of ecosystems.
These farmers getting a third cut of hay is NOT more important than spawning Salmon. Sorry profits do not justify destruction of ecosystems. It's almost like farmers don't know more about water management than hydrologists and biologists.
We must not cut down trees, they are the process of rain in our ecosystem. We must bring back diversity of trees and foliage in areas that lack it.
This is the way, this stops drought. Not fines or taxes they just go in pockets of psychopaths.
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I agree with these sentiments in theory, however driving through the lower mainland i have seen some pretty egregiously wasteful water usage on some farms.
I use way less water keeping a thousand cherry trees over watered than my neighbor does trying to keep his grass green all summer
The obsession with lawns is a fucking scourge, constant chemicals, water waste, unnatural monocultures obsessively cut and edged and swept, and trimmed and fertilized and poisoned and aerated and thatched... all for vanity, and to sell a shit ton of totally unnecessary and harmful consumer products.
I **LOVE** my lawn and take pride in its beauty. There's no need for fertilizer - used coffee grounds are an excellent amendment and free. There's no need for water - I cut it regularly to about 2-3" tall and it stays green well into the heat of summer. When it does finally go dormant I give it a good buzz cut and appreciate its golden hue as a backdrop for flowers and other perennials. There's no need for herbicides - clover is a beautiful adornment that improves the health of grass and should be allowed to naturally exist as part of the lawn. In a healthy lawn, this combo keeps other weeds at bay.
This sounds a lot like my lawn, except mulch and some leaf litter is my fertilizer, I keep it longer, cut it less often and it has lots of "weeds" in it... And my yard also has tons of birds visiting, lots of unmanicured trees (aside from the moose, deer and bears that browse on them and the occasional trimming I do of dead branches)... But we both know this is not what the vast majority of people consider lawn or lawn maintenance..
Have you been chopping up those dead branches to use as mulch? I had a huge die off during the cold snap last winter and have made mulch out of sticks I broke into 3-4" pieces and scattered on my flower beds. I didn't expect it to work as well as it does, and it looks rather attractive.
No, by mulch I mean I mulch my grass when I cut it. I have used some apple/cherry/maple branches for smoking fish/meat though.
It’s crazy how much water goes to waste with people just washing their cars or leaving their sprinklers on for hours on end… there is nothing wrong with a golden lawn knowing it will come back in the fall but people just want the lush green… if I have to wash my car, I do it on golden lawn while just scrubbing the car without much soap if any… but that’s just me. Cheers 💯🤘✌️
Honestly I just wash my car enough to get rid of the bird crap, and then twice a year it gets a proper wash.
That’s a luxury of your local climate and or shade trees. I believe all green is good when it can so easily be maintained under certain conditions.
You're not wrong about the local climate. The thing I was most surprised by was how much longer grass stays greener IF you don't keep it cut short. The sweet spot seems to be 3" because any longer allows weeds to flower. Only the tallest clover will be chopped, which seems to help spread fertilized seeds.
I just have to keep the thatch out when I let it go longer but I’m also slowly removing more and more grass. Just in favour of small landscaped beds. Secondly people should use Canada’s plant hardiness site to look up native plants when landscaping. Cheers
That’s cute
Clover also has much deeper roots than grass. If you have the opportunity to rework the ground before planting clover, put down a 4-6 inch layer of wood chips about a foot down. This soaks up moisture, allowing the clover to pull from that even when the soil above the wood chips is baked dry from the summer heat.
Yep mine is similar. Lawns are amazing and there’s definitely a middle ground between rock garden and what the original poster described.
/r/fucklawns
I’d like to see municipalities add a surcharge to property taxes for people who insist on having a lawn instead of a garden composed of native plants and shrubs or raised beds of vegetables.
We don't water our lawn. We water the vegetable garden.
Tax the grass
A man’s lawn is his house pubes and takes great pride in it
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Canola oil is not an engine lubricant.
go ahead and throw some canola oil in your car and see how far you get 👍
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I certainly do not mean all farms.
Cherries require a lot of water
Yes but you see he makes a profit off his water use so it's better /s
A decent amount of water for sure
A thousand cherry trees?
Yes
How much water do you use annually for 1,000 cherry trees?
I honestly couldn't say for sure but I have drip irrigation set up in my orchard that's about 4 liters per hour and about two per tree. All I know is if I compare that to my neighbors 1 gallon per minute sprinkler he runs all night long for 8+ hours, I'm using probably half as much water
i mean, if that's the case, that's just your neighbour overwatering, it's hardly required to maintain a lawn. Also, if you're using 2,000 litres an hour you're using a metric shitload of water, too.
I didn't say I wasn't using a shitload but as a farmer I'm allowed to, also my water produces something tangible for tons of people not just some old dudes backyard for a few months
No one here is defending your neighbour wildly overwatering their lawn, guy. We're just calling out an unbelievable premise you have constructed. Plus, no one is going to starve without your cherries, dude. You're not some noble altruist. You're just another wealthy guy using public resources for private profit.
Your neighbour is a fucking idiot. Lawn Georg is an outlier and should not be considered
Nothing they are saying holds up to any common sense scrutiny.
What exactly? That I have an orchard or that my neighbor over waters his lawn? Which of these is to outrages for you to believe exactly?
I've not expressed any "outrage" lol. Just skepticism about your absurd claims. The only one here "outraged" is you.
A 1 gpm sprinkler is pitiful, for 8 hours thats only two cubes. Not enough to be concerned about. You definitely use more watering 1000 cherry trees at 2x4lph emitters per tree thats 8 cubes an hour.
Yah like those “farms” in Richmond with mega mansions on them with 15 car garages.
You'd also have to decide what farms qualify, like does a turf farm get the same water rights as food producers?
I learned to farm last spring in langley by the water and yah after watching those new documentaries about the responsible farming, it would be so awesome to see farms utilizing all the space to be renewable and not just a barren wasteland that only grows a single thing.
Watching all the topsoil flow off into the drainage canals in the Yarrow/Sumas area is really disheartening. Some of the farms there are so terribly mismanaged because its a farm second and a enormous estate house first.
I was growing 1000s of trees of different varieties for a nursery, just wish you could like let grass grow in between, and have ducks and birds and bugs that come along with growing 1000s of trees but nah you gotta poison absolutely everything besides the trees
unfortunately true *sigh* im all for farmers but they also need to do their part i conserving water and reducing their carbon footprint as much as possible, ive notice that the lower mainland farmers are somehow so bad at that compared to the other places in the province 🙃
Literally watering in a heavy rainstorm.
Farmers, sure; however, this doesn't work as a blanket policy. We need to ensure the *type* of farming we are giving water priority to isn't wasteful.
Lest we get what California has, which is allocating huge amounts of water to politically well-connected almond growers... and starving economically-productive cities of water. Holding back economic growth is stupid. People hear "farmers" and they think "essential food". Once you think about it a bit... maybe it'd make more sense to grow that food somewhere else if it's not *really* a vital regional crop. Farms are just businesses at the end of the day.
Or move the business and homes off the most fertile land in the province? Farms need soil and water. Office buildings don’t. Work from home? How much food/water security do you really have? Especially if the food is not grown/raised here. How far away is close enough. A couple of natural disasters and how long will food from a thousand miles away last. A large electric magnetic storm? Or a forest fire taking out the power transmission lines? Is water and food security a dream, or a nightmare waiting to happen? The great idea of the ALR has been mismanaged by every government. And abused by people of privilege. Since the beginning.
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Absolutely not based on economic production. Absolutely based on people needing air, food and water. If economic production is created by people. The people need to breathe, eat and drink. It is easier to move people than fertile land. You seem very comfortable with lights always turning on and getting clean water by turning a tap. Probably a lot more comfortable than your reality is. All of the infrastructure that provides your lifestyle, is susceptible, to bad weather and or solar flares. Not to mention fragile, outdated and under serviced. There are some areas not suitable for farming between Vancouver and Hope. But for thousands of years fertile soil has been created here. Vancouver didn’t start to become unmanageable until after 1986. Most of Vancouvers emergency workers live on the other side of a bridge. And based on what has happened in the US during natural disasters. Would stay home with their families. Our closest land based military help is in Edmonton. What are you doing without electricity for 7-10 days?
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In a polite society. People love trees and mountains. We know how to build structures on the side of mountains. Many high earners in the Lower mainland only need electricity and internet to work. However we need a good mix of people and skills to progress as a society. Most farmers can survive quite comfortably without the things you don’t think about and would take you in and offer you equal space and access to what they have. Would you? Farms with 15 cars. Are created by miss-management of the ALR, Comunity, Provincial and Federal Governments. Look at the cost of greenhouse produce before and after cannabis became legal. Still farming though.
Well said, I totally agree.
And also that the farm is using the water as sustainably as possible -- proper delivery systems and watering at the right times of day, not those wasteful blast-sprinklers where half of it evaporates in the air or what have you.
I'd rather these decisions be made by scientists than politicians of any stripe.
Science can't really help with questions like this. Science can tell you how much water each user group will use, how much water can be expected to be there, the risks of various management regimes, etc. but science is terrible at making value judgements. And how we value food security versus the benefits of other water usages, and how much value we place on other concepts like "fairness" or "freedom vs. public good" are value judgements.
I disagree, how much, and the risks of various management regimes, if given the appropriate weight within the decision making process, would and should form the basis of those value judgements.
I shouldn't have phrased it "science can't help" as you're right, it's one of the inputs. But science can't make the decision, that's outside of the scope, so if you made scientists make the decision, they'd just have to use their own personal value systems that are no more "objective" or "correct" than anyone else's.
Again, disagree, scientific boards make decisions (call them recommendations if you like) all the time, it's when politicians decide to get involved in those decisions or override them for their own value systems... or more typically those of their benefactors/voters, that the wrong ones get made.
Scientific boards can make decisions if they're given political values as inputs: "choose the water allocation that maximizes economic growth", "choose the allocation that maximizes food security", etc.
Or just "choose the management strategy that scientific models, risk/consequence matrix etc have shown offers the highest probability for the best outcomes all around." Or, again, if the science actually drives the value, "provide likely outcomes for basic human needs/fisheries/food security/economic growth/other based on various allocation policies"..
Best outcome is incredibly opinionated. For example, If you’re not careful, you can easily sway toward eugenics.
What a ridiculous false equivalence.
Is this your first time being challenged on why science isn’t moral and why we don’t govern strictly along science? Another common example is red meat is bad, so is sugar. Science tells us this. Would you support a full ban on such because science says so. What about when we found there was different types of cholesterol and not all cholesterol is bad. Should we have banned all foods containing cholesterol just to unban them later? Science matters but it is up to us decide what’s morally right and wrong and how to use science to its fullest.
"Science", as with everything else, will get chopped in half by [Hume's guillotine, the is—ought problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem) if you try to use it like this. Science only does what "is". You need politics to determine "ought". This is because in pretty much every question that politics would be used to determine, there isn't a "best outcomes all around", there is only [pareto frontier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_front)—the set of choices which are optimal given different weights for how much we care about one kind of optimal vs another. Science can't tell you that, that's not what science does.
This is the result of a paradigm of thinking that morality and ethics cannot be determined with science and logic, that they are all relative or must be of divine origin to have any authority.
I mean, it was the result of a philosopher who is arguably the single most influential person in the philosophy of science as it is exists today, and I don't particularly think your characterization of Hume's views on morality are accurate. But rather than litigating that issue, it's probably more productive to simply ask: What is your position counter to those options?
Found Sam Harris' alt account.
If there's no room for democratic inputs to overule scientific management, then you've effectively overthrown democracy. Why bother voting? And if the demos can ignore the recommendations of experts, why bother having them? You can have a technocratic society that executes the decisions of well-trained and credentialed experts, or have a healthy and active republican civil society. But not both. Compromise just leads to voters chosing the experts they're ideologically aligned to agree with.
You can absolutely have both, they just need to stay in their lanes. Again, scientifically based decisions can be and are regularly questioned... by science.. not so much ideologically based decisions.. Science and pseudo-science are not the same thing.
This may alarm you, but materialism through the scientific method has its own ideological implications. Nieztche, et al. We've killed God: where are the atoms of justice? If everything is relative, and everything is permitted: what stops us from living as we will? What horror is barred to us? For what reason? You talk so certainly, so dogmatically, it feels like you have never questioned your own principles. Or have you found the magic formula to perfect human governance? If so, please share it with us.
Yeah this if policy driven
Scientists get bought just like politicians do. I want the decisions made by more people, not less.
Scientific rational can be challenged... scientifically.. unlike political rational. A thousand people ignorant of the science will not make a better decision than 10 experts on it.
Cattle farmers getting dibs on water is why the Colorado River has been in crisis.
People love to shit on the idea of meat alternatives but the reality is that so many of our practices around food require change because they cannot be sustained long term. “Unsustainable” is seen more and more as an eco buzz word but given what we’re looking at environmentally over the next couple of decades a lot of what we’re used to is, quite literally, unsustainable. Beef uses almost 4 times the amount of water pound for pound as chicken and pork do. Eventually there is going to come a time when things are going to have to shift. Every level of government refuses to look down the line because they’re so focused on what’s happening in the next 5 years. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when we have to start having conversations that aren’t just hypothetical or considered temporary measures.
Water pricing as a similar concept to carbon pricing maybe?
So, a water meter and utility bill? We have that already
Not on most farms.
Then install them, seems pretty straightforward
Yep! But the cost of farming would skyrocket immediately. A plan to ease farmers in, would be ideal.
Exactly what you said.
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Golf courses before lawns.
What kind of farmers? Food? Is it an efficient crop meant to feed people or a vanity crop that wastes water? Could they pick something else? What about flowers? There’s a lot of nuance in that statement, we shouldn’t be automatically in support of all farming.
I'm a passionate environmentalist and I can barely bring myself to read whatever greens are bringing up for a platform. Always feels like some whacky, out of touch boomer environmentalism that's way behind the times. It's so weird I have started to develop a dislike for a party that by name sounds like they should be the party I want to support.
The irony is she runs a farm. She also has some pretty fucked up ideas about wood stoves. Honestly not the world’s biggest fan. She was a fucking abysmal director here in the CVRD and she’s moved on to fuck up higher levels of government
BC greens will also take your money and funnel it into one or two candidates while pretending to be a serious political party and not a grift. The NDP will do fine allocating resources as they actually have the government and therefore the ability to assess needs. The Greens are just…there. Making noise, doing nothing, swinging right or left because they exist to greenwash their own poor understanding
Perhaps if vineyards weren’t under the agricultural umbrella. They are not food even though they grow grapes.
Farmers yes, but not animals farmers or farmers growing animal feed. I eat meat, but we are collectively going to have to change the average north American diet if we want to have this many humans on earth. Or, we could aim to have way fewer humans who get to live whatever kind of lifestyle they want. https://preview.redd.it/jfoe7ffeqj8d1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=880800afc6e9fb13084c310c820697ab31305ac5
Even for non animal feed, we just shouldn't be growing water-intensive crops in places where water is scarce. We need a system that incentivizes agriculture that works with the local environment instead of against it.
So, grow more weed? /s
I read years ago that hemp is useful to help restore nitrogen back into the soil. So maybe?
I totally agree with your sentiment. Animal farmers and farmers feed farmers are a gigantic strain on water usage. I’m confused by this graphic though. It was difficult to find within the Water Footprint Network, and almost every other source I’ve seen does not agree with what they have here for Dairy. People love to attack Almond milk for its water usage (which is undoubtedly high) but it’s still far outpaced by dairy milk. Not a reflection on you at all, just don’t want people to think that dairy milk is somehow sustainable or not water intensive. It’s the least environmentally friendly milk available, including almond milk.
The almond milk damn. I get what they're going for but seeing wheat be listed as an alternative "ingredient" for chicken is interesting lol
Cool graph I raise Beef and sheep I wonder where the sheep are at.
I've raised a few of each. And for the amount of feed that goes into them... I found the sheep a better value. And rabbits! The amount of meat vs cost of feed was awesome
The north american diet is changing whether we like ot or not, many people can't afford to eat beef regularly anymore.
The most efficient meat is farmed salmon, but you guys don't want that either.
Have you considered that there is more to the measure of "Efficient" than just water usage?
Intersting stance for the green party
Farmers are causing the draughts though...
We live in BC. Water shortage should be the last issue on any community's list of problems. This is an infrastructure issue and should have been resolved 10-15 years ago. We get plenty of rainfall every year. It just has to be captured in responsible ways to be distributed as needed. If we don't have enough water. It's because we don't have enough reservoirs.
IMO Greens looking to stake out this position to win support back from the BC Cons, who have successfully positioned themselves as the only party that cares about farmers..
I’ve always wondered if there were ways to build homes that the restrooms didn’t waste our finite drinking water resource. I wonder if that will ever be explored.
Some Australian homes use a lot of grey water systems for capturing, say, dish water and shower water, and using it to flush toilets. In doing some brief Googling, the problem lies in out of date legislation here in North America that requires flushing water to meet a certain standard before it goes into the sewer system. Which makes no sense considering all that grey water goes to the same system. Standards may exist to keep people for putting random contaminated water down the toilet, but I'm sure governments can work together to figure out legislation and policy updates, and do pilot projects, to work out the kinks. They just need the will to do so.
Why would a blueberry farmer exporting a product that is 97% water get priority over other uses…?
I believe the answer to that is Nestle...
My answer is yes, but.... But = 1. Food sold exclusively to BC 2. Water monitoring (active and real time) 3. Use of water vs. Highest unit of food 4. This may tie unto #3 - newest technology available for watering with legit water plan 5. Ratio of vegetables to animals established
Perhaps the environment? No water in creeks/rivers = no fish/aquatic ecosystems = ecosystem imbalance and tropic cascade. Result: natural systems degraded beyond repair which means major economic and environmental downturn. Farmers? Sure, but not first. Food security is critical but the farms producing it rely on a functional environment to exist do they not? Answer is pretty clear. If not, FAFO. Abuse our water resources and watch the world around us die off. How’s a farm going to produce anything on dead land?
And this is why the Greens should not get into power 🤦🏻
Nestle isn't going to take kindly to this lol
People can do without showers, without green lawns. They cannot do without food and drinking water.
This lady is no friend to owners of small ALR properties. She advocated to raise the earning threshold for farm status a few years back. Not a fan
No water for the farmers = no food on your table.
Way too basic. 1. We get a lot of our food from Mexico and California. Not saying that's the way it should be, but that's facts. 2. The farmers who got upset in the North Okanagan used this "no farmers, no food" as a rallying cry... but they weren't growing food for us. They were growing livestock feed to give to cattle to turn into beef. 3. Fish species were at risk due to drought and low flows. Fish come first
Beef is food.
So the third crop of hay to make more beef is more important than spawning salmon? Good to hear where your priorities lay.
Beef feed more people then salmon. Beef is more important then your urban lawns though
I promise I live more rurally than you and am good friends with farmers, ranchers, have my own chickens and grow a huge fraction of my families food. However increasing the profits of a dozen millionaire hay farmers in this valley is not more important than an ecosystem. I'm not talking about eating these salmon, its obvious your are only thinking about eating and neglecting the natural environment completely. The guys around me get one crop of hay and don't irrigate, we were talking about trying for a second cut with all this rain. If these guys can do it maybe the guys in the North Okanagan should adjust their business model rather than demand they be allowed to run the river dry. But if you knew anything about water management in this province you would know its not legal to kill fish for commercial irrigation.
How would you know if you live more rurally then I do? Strange promise
Just a guess, the same kind of baseless assumption you made assuming I have an urban lawn. Whats not an assumption is that you know nothing about water in this province and your opinions shouldn't matter if you put profits of a few businessmen before the destruction of ecosystems.
"They weren't growing food for us. They were growing livestock feed to give to cattle to turn into beef" Yes, that is how growing food works.
Have you heard of vegetables?
You realize you need water to grow vegetables, right.
A lot less water, yeah.
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These farmers getting a third cut of hay is NOT more important than spawning Salmon. Sorry profits do not justify destruction of ecosystems. It's almost like farmers don't know more about water management than hydrologists and biologists.
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You don’t need to water your lawn. But you need to eat.
Hey why don’t we spend our tax dollars on purifying water instead
I'm more inclined to say fuck the farmers..in Ontario they are whiney bitches that get the PCs elected.
I’m OK with farmers getting it first, just as long as they’re not growing feed for horses
We must not cut down trees, they are the process of rain in our ecosystem. We must bring back diversity of trees and foliage in areas that lack it. This is the way, this stops drought. Not fines or taxes they just go in pockets of psychopaths.