California Drought Reveals the Need to Switch to Drip Irrigation
With no end in sight to California’s record drought, state leaders are right to focus most of the $687 million relief package they announced Wednesday on longer-term efforts to conserve and recycle water.
But if we’re really all in this together, leaders must pay far more attention to the biggest user — agriculture, which takes anywhere from 62% to 75% of available water in a given year, depending on how that consumption is measured.
As The Sacramento Bee’s Matt Weiser reported on Sunday, while more farmers are using drip irrigation, which is far more efficient than flooding fields, many are stuck in the old ways. And while urban water systems must reduce per capita water use 20% by 2020 or risk losing state money, state law does not put the agricultural sector under similar conservation requirements.
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