“Farming uses 70%+ of the water in Utah. Farming is 2% of Utah’s GDP. This is stupid.”
Somebody actually gets it. You have to do a cost benefit analysis.
Don’t farm crops in a desert that need FEET of water per sq foot per season. Alfalfa needs FIVE FEET of water per square foot per season this is ludicrous it’s even allowed.
Drip irrigation should be the mandate and never alfalfa,cotton or any other water hungry none desert crop. If not drip irrigation then low level central pivot using low pressure sprayers never ever flood irrigation. No rice,no almonds none of those crops that should be grown in the Eastern USA where you have 40+ inches of rain per year not 10 or under.
Cows can and do eat paddle cactus if you burn the spines off or plant the spineless varieties. Drip irrigation to cactus is the most efficient way to feed cattle in the arid and semi arid lands I wrote a white paper on it for UTD hydro geo. Second most efficient is Agave specifically Agave Weber which must be ground up and fermented into silage first for 30 days before you feed cattle ,sheep or goats with it. Once insilage it is so sweet you can’t stop them from eating it you actually have to limit access or they will over eat. We did trials in Mexico with cattle and goats on a 5 year rotation you get well over 100 tonnes of mass per year per hectare. Each mother plant puts out up to 30 pups too each one ready to be planted and expanded on other lands.
Those two plants should replace alfalfa in any semi arid lands for cattle feed ops they out yield it 10 to 100 to 1 on equal water amounts. Big agri doesn’t care about water use when you subsidise their water and make it cheap for them. Cactus and agave take labor not water and that hurts big agri profits which is their only goal feeding people is secondary to profits.
Nobody wants to eat cactus-fed cows, remember the grain/grass ratio.
Don’t forget a lot of our most productive ag areas in the country-The San Joaquin Valley, the San Bernardino/Riverside area, the LA Basin-were deserts. It took water from the nearby mountains to grow crops. You get year round varieties of fruits and vegetables. The alternative is having nothing but potatoes and root vegetables during the wintertime.