Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation?

Comments

• LiterallyLMAO@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Or, hear me out, what if we try growing food in the Midwest, rather than the biofuels, industrial lubricants, and cattle feed we grow there now?

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  • Sewer_King@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean… That all just sounds like corn, which, in my opinion, is a pretty good food.

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    • LiterallyLMAO@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Lol, you should try eating feed corn sometime.

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• Sewer_King@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Maybe trying to farm in swathes of arid land using massively inefficient watering techniques and refusing to innovate for decades wasn’t the best idea.

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• invertedspear@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Holy hell, I swear people who write opinion pieces like this have no idea what a mountain is.

  It takes about 30 Watts to move a gallon of water up one meter. Start running the numbers on what it would take to move water from the Great Lakes (500 ish feet ) over the Rocky Mountains and you should quickly realize how terrible this idea is.

  Same calculations should be used to determine that farming at 1-2 thousand feet in elevation makes desalination a bad choice as well. But desalination can be used for all the people living near the coast and allow farms to use more of the water at the higher elevations.

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  • silence7@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Desalination tends not to be used by the coast because it’s far more expensive than anything other than going without water.

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    • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s far cheaper than it used to be

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• ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Everybody saying farm in different areas and I’m saying get rid of every golf course or any other excessively wasteful recreational use of water.

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• match@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  what if they stop growing cow food

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  • silence7@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That would be a very big deal; as would ending the use of food as a motor fuel.

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• baggins@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wanna go to war with Canada?

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  • Leeks@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Yeah the Great Lakes Commission would never allow this.

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  • floofloof@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s clear that this will become an issue and the USA will just help itself. Canada is completely unprepared to resist this, and the USA knows it.

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    • baggins@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      We’re going to light the White House on fire again

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    • jaxxed@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s because John Candy isn’t around anymore to form an invasion party

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  • silence7@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That’s pretty much where this goes if there’s any meaningful pumping.

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• Reality_Suit@lemmy.one ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Desalination and verticle farming. The tech has been around for a while, but the poor rich people don’t want to miss out buying this year’s model yacht.

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  • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Desalination is expensive energy intensive and vertical farming is to expensive labor intensive. We could do them but they are massive inefficiencies when other options are available.

    For better resource utilisation we could go vegan, except for animals exclusively eating grass/hay and waste products. But doing that would increase the price of meat and milk products, while making other foods cheaper and more available.

    Sadly we can’t have people only eating meat on some days, like in the “good old days”, better use up all of earth before handling it of to the next generations.

    PS: Sorry, I’m feeling argumentative today.

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    • Reality_Suit@lemmy.one ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No, you’re good. And that right there is the basis of the problem: costeffectiveness. There is so much more that the world could have, but those that have the money to make things only want to make those things if they can make a certain amount of profit. Making a profit isn’t good enough if it isn’t a lot of profit.

      For example: solar. When I was a kid, all I would hear is how solar is so inefficient that it would be cost prohibitive to power everything off solar. Now it’s just a matter of time.

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  • Jake_Farm@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Vertical farming is not actually efficient. youtu.be/8BXHu_yXVQk?si=3-xdPPgce3xRmbpu

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• MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  You will feel the wrath of canadian geese if you even dare think of stealing one single drop.

  And we will not be sorry.

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  • Pilferjinx@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Um where I’m at, we sold the rights to our water reservoirs. Last year the lakes were the lowest in 50 years or more. I wish we released the attack geese.

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• reddig33@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Nope. Just need to invest in desalination.

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