So when you talk about a farmer having to choose between spending a lot of money that isn’t his in the form of water subsidies, or bear the true cost himself, I say let the farming be allocated on it’s own to a region (or perish the thought, another country!) that has the comparative advantage to do so. The opportunity cost to the private sector lost in taxes taken to pay for this scheme (or any other) is so oft overlooked, I honestly think the concept is completely lost on anyone in government.

AND – we are not going to run out of food, as long as free people can choose to trade goods and services at the prices they agree on. For example, if too many people abandon farming and food becomes more scarce and therefore more expensive, some people would go back into farming because they would see an opportunity for profit. EVERY market has an equilibrium point, as long as it’s not being effed up by micro-managing technocrats.

I like the Sun City approach – the home owners are not permitted to plant a grass lawn, it has to be rock or gravel. Elsewhere you have the sprinklers, the drip systems to sustain the trees, or in older neighborhoods, flood irrigation for the yard and pasture. I lived for a time near the Waddell post office, north of Goodyear. There was a seldom-enforced restriction set by the state to some number of acre-feet of water per year per acre. We got water every two weeks, that worked good for Bermuda pasture and lawn. Many of us tried to get by with as little as needed – others wanted a foot of water each time.

Just consider when you criticize farming use of water, it is similar to criticizing use of farm chemicals. Reducing farm output doesn’t push the farmer to someplace more appropriate – it pushes the farmer into some other business, and less food, less cotton, or less animal feed is produced in the state and the nation. At some point, long after the situation is easily reexamined, more people will start going hungry because this food or that item isn’t available, or costs too much to purchase. Raising costs to farm accomplishes the same thing, there are very few really obvious choices, providing you care about feeding the people that are being fed today.

However, all we really need to do to clear up our water issues here is to remove the subsidies from the farmers. Their use of water is so high that land converted to urban uses has lower water usage (with all those people living on it) than when it was growing cotton or whatever.