Water in the West

As I have said for many years now, agriculture is going to lose out in the water wars of the West. With continued urban growth and the political weight behind water-guzzling energy production, there just isn’t the water and despite agribusiness’ power, the don’t have the political weight because they can’t mobilize the votes (the decentralized nature of agricultural production also matters here since it’s left to these local farmers who are forced to work with Monsanto or Cargill or whoever left to do a lot of the local political work). Of course, short of meaningful water planning that sharply rethinks western water law, there won’t be enough water to go around anyway. And no politician wants to touch this problem.