In his commentary in the Wall Street Journal, California Farmers Aren’t the Water Hogs, Ted Sheely discusses the blame farmers are asked to take for the water shortage in California.
Sheely, a farmer himself in California’s San Joaquin Valley, argues that the media is not reporting the full picture.
The second-worst thing about the drought is how farmers are bearing most of the blame. We hear one figure over and over: Agriculture consumes 80% of California’s water.
That statistic makes farmers like me look like gluttons—and it suggests that if we were to reduce our reliance on water just a little, then our state’s predicament would vanish like a puddle on a hot day.
Except that it’s not true. Farmers don’t use 80% of California’s water. While this figure has saturated the media’s coverage of the drought—it’s a fabrication of environmentalists who want to disguise that they “use” even more water than farmers.
Farmland in Los Banos, Calif., in the San Joaquin Valley. PHOTO: LUCY NICHOLSON/REUTERS
Read the entire story in the Wall Street Journal: California Farmers Aren’t the Water Hogs
Mr. Sheely, a farmer in California’s San Joaquin Valley, volunteers as a board member of The Truth About Trade & Technology, a farming-advocacy nonprofit.
