These farmers are disgusting, don’t they know we need that water for
Drinking for all the people in Arizona so we don’t have a fucking drought where people dieData Centers?What is the actual value of that water?
Maybe I’m just hydroponic-brained but I feel like they could grow way more and use fewer resources (water, space) with elevated/multi-story structures and better irrigation.
This article in question is atrocious, and think hydro has its places, but the whole “vertical farming” feels like hopium on par with “lab grown meat” seeing how much energy it requires to just run the grow lights. Of course not all crops have the same DLI requirements, but for reference the Sun gives about 1000w/m² around the equator. So assuming you have to match that to some degree (a solar panel gives you 20-30% of that per m² before other losses. So we’re talking like 5m² solar panels for every 1m² inside the farm) and then you need to remove all the excess heat from the building. So basically a server farm giving you low caloric density crops like salad, berries or mircro-greens with a heavy upstart-cost. And you still need fertilizer and PH buffers and water sterilization and plastic packaging and seedling plugs etc.
I think a simpler solution, and one we already have the technology and infrastructure for, would be to stop feeding soy to animals and just make
Those “pontoon conveyor belt” hydro greenhouses are really cool tho.
Has no one read Catch-22? just pay them not to grow the alfalfa, the more they don’t grow the more you pay them, simple
California does the same in the central valley.
Almonds too.
The whole central valley is sinking at an alarming rate because of how quickly the aquifer is being depleted. No California politician is brave enough to do anything to take on the massive agribusiness using all this water irresponsibly because these companies run a lot of the state’s politics and also they’re afraid of the “ancient water rights” dating back to Spanish colonial water rights.
The water was promised to them 3000 years ago
Oh yeah I know I live here. It fuckin sucks.
Mashallah I no longer live in the great Satan’s great Satan.
sounds like arizona needs a few luigis
We could probably make due with one Stalin
why alfalfa instead of literally anything else
It’s an export to Saudi Arabia IIRC. It’s basically a matter of agribusiness exploiting water rights laws intended to support yeoman farmers over a century ago to cheaply grow a shitty cash crop for export as IIRC horse and camel feed. They get to use functionally unlimited water for nothing/next to nothing and the state can’t stop them or even force them to pay its actual value (which would make the whole thing nonviable).
Wow! That’s really dumb!
Livestock feed to feed the livestock that also should not be raised in a fucking desert (or at all for that matter) because there is no grazing land.
Why not just feed them the soybeans china won’t buy
And have the cows go beta and woke?!
carnism and its consequences
You know, these things are just sitting there, in the middle of the desert, by themselves most of the time. It really is extremely dry and hot here.
So, socialist alfalfa! Keep it coming Arizona!
/s obviously
The Saudis only know how to grow in the desert, duh
