When it comes to water, the world generally doesn’t consider that we are in a problem. Unfortunately, only small areas of our country are realizing the crisis that is going on.
California, the nation’s leader in agricultural production also happens to rank as the nation’s top water user. While looking back on history, many different issues have been brought to attention over the years. One we have never really been concerned about until recently is our water. With the United States using approximately 400 billion gallons of water per day, it isn’t any wonder why we are now asking ourselves, “Where will it all come from?”
Out of that 400 billion gallons of water, about half, is allocated to create energy. With using this water for such uses, is then returned to its source be it river or reservoir. This would be classified as renewable energy, but where does the other 200 billion go?
Currently, Agriculture is the nation’s leading user in water consumption. Using more than 80 billion gallons per day, it is our main source that which we should try to cut back from.
Unfortunately many questions still rest unanswered. How can we be more efficient? How can we use less? How can we reuse what we have already used? How can we hold rainfall that isn’t being used affectively? These are all questions on the minds of many government leaders and agricultural dependants.
While looking into history, we can see many things that indicate a quality improvement in water consumption, yet it still is not enough. Between 1980 and 2000 the California Farm Bureau Federation reported that crop production increased by a whopping 35%. Seeing these production increases it would only make sense that water allocation would need to be increased, but this is not the case. With growers moving to more economical and efficient irrigation systems, along with using different types of fertilizer products like Ferticell, it ever increasingly tells us that there are steps to be taken to rid our over dependency on water.
Hopefully we can someday look back and recognize which methods we should have stepped forward to rectify more hastily like we are already doing today.
