07-20-2016, 04:13 PM
[quote fish_or_die]I understand your frustration with all the criticism's of "evil farms", but look at the real data:
All those stupid people living in their stupid homes with green lawns use a total of 10% of our water supply, so drastic life changing water use policies for us home owners isn't going to tip the scale on our state's water problems. We need to eat, so we can't stop farming but if we look at where we need to improve, it's in the big piece of the pie you see above.
by the way, that table is from [url "http://www.utahfoundation.org/reports/flowing-toward-2050-utahs-water-outlook/"]http://www.utahfoundation.org/...utahs-water-outlook/[/url]
Edit: thinking about it a bit more, this shows water use for the whole state. I'm sure the pie would change if we just looked at the Wasatch front.[/quote]
Your edit comment would be a true picture. But remember that ranchers and farmers filed on and have owned our water rights for generations. Our ancestors filed on water to make their land more productive and raise food for themselves and others. It is a fact of life that raising food requires water. Rice or beef, kale of lettuce, they all require H2O. And farms put that water back into the aquifer after the plants take what they need. Unlike water running down the curb and gutter because a suburbanite needs to have a shiny driveway! I would be interested to know where the funding for the website you linked us to comes from? Is Utah Foundation a front for so called environmentalists or is it an actual group of folks trying to make a difference. Their info will only be as good as the money behind the study.
I am not saying everyone who farms or ranches is perfect. But we do more with less than a lot of you would ever imagine.
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All those stupid people living in their stupid homes with green lawns use a total of 10% of our water supply, so drastic life changing water use policies for us home owners isn't going to tip the scale on our state's water problems. We need to eat, so we can't stop farming but if we look at where we need to improve, it's in the big piece of the pie you see above.
by the way, that table is from [url "http://www.utahfoundation.org/reports/flowing-toward-2050-utahs-water-outlook/"]http://www.utahfoundation.org/...utahs-water-outlook/[/url]
Edit: thinking about it a bit more, this shows water use for the whole state. I'm sure the pie would change if we just looked at the Wasatch front.[/quote]
Your edit comment would be a true picture. But remember that ranchers and farmers filed on and have owned our water rights for generations. Our ancestors filed on water to make their land more productive and raise food for themselves and others. It is a fact of life that raising food requires water. Rice or beef, kale of lettuce, they all require H2O. And farms put that water back into the aquifer after the plants take what they need. Unlike water running down the curb and gutter because a suburbanite needs to have a shiny driveway! I would be interested to know where the funding for the website you linked us to comes from? Is Utah Foundation a front for so called environmentalists or is it an actual group of folks trying to make a difference. Their info will only be as good as the money behind the study.
I am not saying everyone who farms or ranches is perfect. But we do more with less than a lot of you would ever imagine.
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