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ZorbaTHut t1_iwavhby wrote

Reply to comment by Due_Platypus_3913 in Farmers in China and Uganda move to high-yielding, cost-saving perennial rice by tonymmorley

Keep in mind that the twin problem of rice using lots of water and California not having much water can be easily solved by not growing rice in California.

Not every crop needs to be viable everywhere, and there's honestly probably a market for extra-water-hungry rice as long as it produces even more.

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invent_or_die t1_iwb2lfx wrote

And not only that, the rice is Exported to Asia. We need to grow food for America. Almonds are the same. Shipped to Asia.

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omegasix321 t1_iwbdjde wrote

If you want that to be the case, then government action is needed. Otherwise, businesses will just continue to sell to the highest bidder for maximum profit.

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invent_or_die t1_iwbgdt4 wrote

Exactly! How do we give incentives to create food for America, rather than foreign countries? Or disincentives for overseas sales? Profit, I'm sorry to say, should have limits and it is destroying the world. Seriously, look at the richest guy and the shitstorm called Twitter he just bought. A horrible, selfish purchase that showed he considers us all miners working for him like the slaves in his families emerald mines. Humans mean little to a guy who could have say eliminated all lead pipes in the USA, or significantly reduced homelessness, but no, baby wants a new platinum microphone. Well, I don't want to listen. I liked SpaceX but now Elon will have an asterisk forever next him. Greed needs to die, painfully.

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camatthew88 t1_iwbiipe wrote

What about bill gates. Let's make him donate his money away to end world hunger.

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invent_or_die t1_iwbk2gd wrote

He already is; billion or more spent on vaccines. I heard he bought farms.

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camatthew88 t1_iwbpee5 wrote

The point is we cannot expect one billionaire to solve all of the worlds problems through donating his or her money to charity

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omegasix321 t1_iwbrojo wrote

Frankly we shouldn’t have individual people with that capability anyway. That’s way too much power for any one person.

Saving the world is a collective effort, not the vanity project of a select few.

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OriginalCompetitive t1_iwbsq51 wrote

He tried not to purchase it, but the previous owners of Twitter and the courts wouldn’t let him back out. Maybe they share the blame? When the moment came, they cashed out for profit and abandoned Twitter to someone who didn’t even want it.

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Ulyks t1_iwcsqao wrote

Making water more expensive would quickly make that trade unprofitable.

Water scarcity is real. It's better to make prices reflect It's true value.

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omegasix321 t1_iwd4zf3 wrote

Agreed, though I'd only extend this to water used for agricultural and entertainment purposes. We really shouldn't be charging regular people extra for a daily necessity like water.

Also strict limits and regulations on the import and export of water internationally. To avoid foreign governments from writing blank cheques to keep buying water on a mass scale.

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Ulyks t1_iwft03z wrote

I don't think forbidding the sale of water internationally would be a good idea.

Many places like Hong Kong heavily depend on imports of water.

They could build desalination plants but those are often very polluting as they don't have space for more passive solar powered desalination systems.

But farmers in California for example pay only 70$ for an acre-foot of water. An acre-foot is 1233m³ and is enough for about 10 families for a year (that pay on average 70$ per month).

So farmers are paying less than 1% of the price of the water.

Maybe bringing that up to 100% would be too large of a shock and put all farmers out of business but it's clear they will have to pay a larger share in the future.

Perhaps they can make exceptions for locally consumed foods to incentivize that. But that is a bit hard to track and verify. And I think more expensive food would most likely be consumed locally anyway.

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omegasix321 t1_iwg1dc3 wrote

Not forbid, just heavily regulate. Make sure you settle all domestic uses for water first and then sell abroad. But only to the point where it can be easily replenished in a short amount of time.

Right now we need to focus on our own needs and replenishing our reservoirs more than anything, otherwise ‘nobody’ is getting water.

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