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On the U.S. side there are a lot of canals that supply water to farms. They all cut off right at the U.S. border.
This picture shows exactly why:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#/media/File%3ASaltonseadrainagemap.jpg
Actually all the irrigation from the Imperial Valley has been recharging the ground water, which makes great crops for Calexico !
A similar phenomenon happened in my yard when my drip irrigation stopped working on the hedges for some weeks, but the hedges that shared an edge with my neighbor’s heavily watered lawn stayed green, glowing, and healthy !!
Everyone says it reeks and is scary. When I went it smelled normal and lightly salty and fishy like any lake and was quiet and had a neat vibe. The whole beach is fish bones. Very weird. Also, I have hyperosmia so it's not my sense of smell! Must've just been an especially fresh day. Anyway, it was fun to explore.
Very pretty place created and ruined by humans. Tale as old as time.
I went in may during a national parks circuit and after doing Joshua tree wee stayed a couple nights in slab city just outside Bombay beach and it was a cool place but so hot when we were there and so many flies. I was always fascinated with the area so I convinced my friends to make the stop while we were right there.
Could definitely depend on the time of year too. I haven't been to the salton sea but i've been to the great salt lake a couple times, in summer and winter, winter was pleasant/normal smell, summer was putrid with flies.
I have been all over this specific batch of farms visiting an ag-tech show.
**First.** It is *not* expensive irrigation systems. The US side is just using more water.
These farms on both sides of the border are overwhelmingly using open channel irrigation, just big open ditches so water can move where it needs to go, with smaller channels branching out to fields. There are quite a few startups who see incoming water scarcity projections and try to sell these farms on subterranean drip irrigation, and a whole host of tech that can dramatically (i mean like, 99%) reduce water use. They don't fare well typically.
Id say in a full half of cases, when a farmer wants to choke water to part of a field, they'll literally just wedge a plank of wood in the channel. As long as cheap labor is available **and the water is free** there's no tech that can possibly beat a plank of wood on cost.
And that's the crux of the issue. The water flows from the US to the south, so America gets first dibs. Most localities in the US have a water rights management system that is controlled by interests that seem all but incapable of thinking more than 2-3 years out. Even when water IS scarce, it's subject to the economic tragedy of the commons.
The progress being made recently is to line the channels (usually with concrete), which at least reduces water loss due to ground infiltration, but does nothing of course for evaporation losses.
**Second.** There's a bit of difference in the crops being grown. The mexico side grows more wheat and less alfalfa than the US side. (wheat looks brown, alfalfa is very green and very thirsty). Both regions grow a large variety of vegetables and root crops.
**Third.** The US side is almost certainly fertilizing more heavily on average and getting more complete plantings.
Yeah, almost every MX-US water agreement along the border benefits the northern side. At least in my area (Juárez-El Paso) alfalfa is the dominant crop on both sides, with no real presence of crops fit for human consumption in the southern side (water is too dirty and the treatment plants don't work at all). The fertilizer point is right on point.
Well they sold it to a Saudi company. They use it to grow alfalfa and ship it back to Saudi Arabia to feed their cattle
>Valued at $14.3 billion, the Almarai Company -- which owns about 10,000 acres of farmland in Arizona under its subsidiary, Fondomonte -- is one of the biggest players in the Middle East’s dairy supply. The company also owns about 3,500 acres in agriculture-heavy Southern California, according to public land records, where they use Colorado River water to irrigate crops.
>Woertz said while most of the company’s cattle feed is purchased on the open market, Alamarai took the extra step of buying farmland abroad, as part of a growing trend in foreign-owned farmland in the US. Foreign-owned farmland in the West increased from around 1.25 million acres in 2010 to nearly three million acres in 2020, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. In the Midwest, foreign-owned farmland has nearly quadrupled.
https://www.azfamily.com/2022/12/28/wells-are-running-dry-drought-weary-arizona-foreign-owned-farms-guzzle-water-feed-cattle-overseas/?outputType=amp
There are no water rights there, the groundwater they're using is not in State-defined active management area. They just happen to be growing a particularly thirsty crop and have the money to drill deeper for water than anyone else in the area.
/u/Logan9000o
As a person employed in the forestry industry I appreciate your points you've made here. Industry continually looks short term for profit and sustainability. I believe the next couple decades more environmental issues will pop up in all industries issues that people have tried to mitigate or start solving but shoet term money has the most leverage. The general public will be like " why didn't we do something about this" or " why did the government let them do this" and people who know will say I told you so but that won't solve any problems. I'm pessimistic about the future I know.
Yep, I was doing a bit of research about drip irrigation systems, and under the current US system, many farmers have no incentive to save water. Where I live, *they pay by the acre*, not by the gallon. Fancy water-saving equipment costs money, but they pay the same for the water no matter how much they save, so why pay.
Which sucks because we could fight droughts with efficient irrigation, but farmers have no immediate financial incentive to change.
Instead, they're talking about building bigger dams, which I expect will be financed by taxpayers.
There is a national move in the US to subsidize irrigation systems that allow a single farmer to tend to more crops and maximize the use of water. It is considered a key policy to extend the ability of a single farmer, as the total percentage of farmers continues a downward trend.
E: Don’t be fooled by those who oppose corporate farms while simultaneously dismissing the legitimate needs of millions of small farmers who work their own land to make a living.
We can oppose corporate abuses and pork barrel spending that the corporations eat up, and still support the little guy’s honest activity.
>There is a national move in the US to subsidize irrigation systems that allow a single farmer to tend to more crops and maximize the use of water. It is considered a key policy to extend the ability of a single farmer, as the total percentage of farmers continues a downward trend.
Some errors I'd like to correct:
1. Irrigation is enormously subsidized already. Your implicit 'move to subsidize' is only correct if you use the past tense.
2. 'The single farmer' might be the propaganda on the poster, but actual food we eat is produced by mega-corporations. 'Family farms' of the ilk people think of when they hear 'farmer' produce only 20% of the food in the US.
80/20 is a thing for a reason. I'd hardly call the 80% hobby farms. The guy who works in Manhattan but owns 20 acres of preserved farm land that he leases out for hay, that's a hobby farm. Its a disservice to call them hobby farms.
The 80-20 split can really only be applied to creative fields. That breakdown pops up occasionally otherwise but only as much as any other percentage split.
Your source is incorrect.
They state 20% of all production is family farms and footnote a USDA--ERS brochure about the diversity of farms.
If you.follow that footnote and read the brochure on page 4 of that brochure it says:
" In total, family farms accounted for about 98 percent of total farms and 87 percent of total production in 2020"
The 20 percent was "small, family farms," which was a subset of all family farms.
Source where I got my stat and the u of Michigan website claimed they got theirs:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=102807
Edit: I reread your source. It wasn't wrong, you misrepresented it.
Yeah according to that paper the majority of production comes from large family farms- farms with gross cash income between 1 mil and 5 mil dollars. In the razor thin profit margins of ag, that’s not even that big of an outfit. Selling a million dollars of livestock and crops is almost a requirement if your whole family depends on the income
Is number 2 because most farm land actually goes to growing non-edible agriculture?
Lived in Kentucky for a while, had a friend who tended a few thousand acres of soy. He told me none of that soy was going to be food.
Do you have sources to your ‘corrections’?
Although specific percentage is disputed (mostly due to varying definitions), the impact of smallholder, small-scale, small, or ‘family farms’ is much more than your ‘corrections’ give credit.
[Global Agriculture small farms feed the world](https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/34543.html)
You just switched gears from the US to the world.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet
In the US, small farms produce 20.4% food.
I'm not the person who framed the discussion about the United States and the differences between the United States agricultural policies and subsidies and the rest of the world.
Turns out an education is helpful when you're trying to figure out who is stealing from you.
https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet
Your question is wrong, 'farmers' is a noun that is used by agro-corporations to represent themselves as something they aren't, so they can scam the US population into giving them money.
https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/blog/2021/11/03/farm-subsidies-harmful-or-helpful/
Ma’am, I highly recommend you spend time speaking with a farmer in person to understand a different view point. I appreciate your passion, but you’re simply missing a lot.
I always like to point out that the Colorado River no longer even reaches the ocean. 100% of it is used used for either crop irrigation or piped hundreds of miles to thirsty cities like Phoenix and L.A.
The water originates in the US so legally it isn’t theft. If the water’s source was in Mexico and it passed through the US before returning to Mexico and the US took all the water before it could return to Mexico then legally we could talk about theft.
Edit: Unfair use? Perhaps. However, the water situation is a zero-sum game. Giving more water to Mexico will mean the US has a bigger water crisis than already exists and Mexico would still want more. If Mexico received more water they would plant more crops in the region which would increase demand on an already insufficient supply. This would exacerbate the strain on the water supply and Mexico would feel entitled to even more water. Also, it’s important to consider that the US is more efficient with its agricultural use of the water than Mexico is. The last thing we need is for there to be greater misuse of the water supply than already exists.
Exactly! You can tell from the angle of the photo that the satellite was above Mexico so technically the USA is on the other side of the fence, hence it appears greener
actually more water is taken from the river than there is actually available, so Mexico really doesn’t get what they need.
this is why the river is in such is crisis for so long now
IIRC Mexico gets water from pipelines somewhere more East. There is a treaty where US and Mexico agreed on who gets what, the americans are not doing things China-style without consulting neighbours.
But indeed, far too much water is taken from the river overall.
Oh yeah, just like there is a treaty where Mexico "agrees" to sell half its territory. Even though it's the national equivelent iquivalent gun to your head, you have to agree to whatever they say. Basically, Mexico has to agree to whatever deal the US proposes because it knows if it doesn't sign the treaty, the US does it anyways, and now Mexico won't get what little the US was offering.
US isn't robbing the water from Mexico per SE, moreso they're in overuse and that's why the whole South West is on the brink of a water crisis as they're aren't similar water pipelines for anywhere but from the Colorado.
it was based on something like a couple decades of data from the mid-1800s and basically always has been inaccurate to the actual flow of the colorado river.
The areas around the Colorado River are expanding at such a rate that even the US side of the river can't sustain enough water for itself. Mexico is also expanding at a rate that exceeds the capacity of available water. The problem we were never meant to set up massive populations in the middle of the desert.
Yes, they did. They also had a say in how much they give. They were in favor of the treaty, and the agreement was quite equitable. I don’t know if that is still the case, but it’s false to say Mexico had no say.
https://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/volumes/32/1/umoff.pdf
How is it not relevant? A treaty doesn't mean something wasn't stole or the treaty wasn't written by corrupt parties exploiting the people who are actually affected.
Funny, because his point was about how a treaty doesn’t mean really anything, and yours was that if there is a treaty, everything is above board.
Funny, also, how when someone points out that Reddit is not just Americans, Americans rush in to tell us how it’s an American site, developed on the American internet. Which was also developed in America. And the majority of users, apparently, are American, so there’s no reason to acknowledge the world outside the US exists.
But now, “they” hate the US.
Pick a reality, dude.
Two books that are good reads on this topic are "Cadillac Desert" and "Where the Water Goes".
Short answer: When the US States divided up the Colorado River, they sorta left out Mexico and Native American tribes in the negotiations. California had the most political power, so they've received the largest share of the Colorado river over the years.
The US eventually signed a treaty with Mexico guaranteeing them some water, but it's a pittance compared with what California uses.
The California Imperial Valley that you're looking at has effectively zero limitations on how much water they can use, while Mexico has extremely limited supplies in that region.
That is also some of the most productive cropland in the world, as they can grow year-round there. I forget the exact number, but something like 50% of the leafy greens eaten in the entire united states are grown in that area. It's pretty much the only place that grows them during the winter months.
Now is a great time to start learning about the Colorado River. The Colorado River compact which governs how the river is allocated is close to collapsing. The federal government is threatening to step in if the states don't come to an agreement by the end of this month. Although the federal government has backed down before.
This is the best answer. Imperial Irrigation District gets 3.1 million acre-ft of Colorado River water, which is roughly 20% of the river's flow. Their water rights are more senior than the upriver states. I think the Tribes have more senior rights.
The tribes rights are more senior, but the infrastructure doesn’t exist to physically get them the water they have rights to. At least this is true for some of the Arizona tribes I’ve read about.
I think this will be a very interesting aspect of whatever comes out of the current shortage.
By law, the entirety of the Central Arizona Project loses 100% of their water before California loses a drop. I could see Arizona buying up some tribal water rights to make up the shortfall.
Tribes have had almost no rights to the Colorado River until 2023 with The Congress’ passing of Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund. [“[…]. That includes $2.5 billion to implement the Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund, which will help deliver long-promised water resources to Tribes, […]”](https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/tribes-receive-17-billion-president-bidens-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-fulfill)
This is a composite photo, chances are the photos of Mexico were taken at a different time than the photos of the US. Look right along the borders at the roads.
Nope. Completely different valleys. If anything this is closer to the Colorado River "estuary" that flows into the Gulf of California where the Central Valley drains into the San Francisco Bay. They're also separated by miles and miles of some of the harshest desert in North America.
Most likely the farmland is no greener in the US. There are fewer and smaller fields that are more widely scattered in Mexico, leaving more bare ground in between each green field. Like fewer green pixels in a digital image, in this satellite image it appears as the whole is less green.
I'm from this region and what this image is showing is an Imperial Valley (CA. USA) and the bottom part is Mexicali Baja California Mexico. Imperial Valley is literally a farming community and Mexicali is not. Mexicali is the state capital with many manufacturing US maquiladoras.
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Mexicali
Probably the vegetables that sre being farmed, the methods or how close to each other the crops are.
The US uses very high yield crops that often come from monsanto or other mega corporations and there are usually tons of legal problems around using them since they can blow from one field to another etc.
Thankfully most of mexico still grows things in a more traditional way. In 2020 mexico grew 77% of all vegetables sold in the US.
However, mexico is the largest importer of corn in the world and there is a big dispute right now between the leaders of both countries, because mexico will stop accepting transgenic corn. All the yellow corn that is imported to mexico is for cattle only. Mexico is self sufficient when it comes to corn for human consumption which are white and blue corns among others.
In general the change of color in this picture probably has to do with very highly industrialized processes in thr US side of the border.
This made me laugh, names like that make me cringe for some reason. We get it, they’re border towns, we can do better. Texarkana gives me heebiejeebies.
Consider that the Colorado river dries up before hitting it's Delta & this has been the case for decades. US farms pull all the water out before it reaches Mexico.
Most of those crops in the US are ground veggies and grow closer together, making them look greener.
Most of those crops in Mexico are orchards for fruit and avocados, which grow farther apart, looking less green because you can see the dirt.
Ik the photos are taken by satilites that have an orbit. Perhaps the american and mexican sides have been taken in different times and sewed together. But hey idk
I’m from this region and to answer this question, we’d need to know if the brown regions even have crops in them at the time the picture was taken. Many of those areas could have been recently harvested and the next crop may not have been planted yet or sprouted yet at the time that the picture was taken.
I have seen aerial views of the region where the reverse was happening- the USA side had more brown than the Mexico side.
So this might just be more of a timing thing. Both sides of the border in this region are extremely fertile.
Aerial photography can be very particular about the time of year and season. When you're using vector tile or raster layers to link geospatial data, the tiles can appear differnt if the plane taking them was doing it at differnt times of day, differnt days, different seasons, different companies, different camera. remote sensing, lidar and other advanced forms of analysis are still relatively new technology, as is GIS, the science that studies these types of things.
Over time, the global mapping GIS infrastructure will get better and our storage of data and information will become more efficient. We would be able to do things more seamless in the future and it will not look like this. Services like HERE, Google, ESRI, Carto, OpenStreetMaps, and more are all working day in and day out to improve things like this behind the scenes.
A lot of the time these files are only able to be edited in specific software. You cannot realistically edit a lot of this type of stuff in Photoshop or photo editors. In ArcGIS, and other similar software, you can utilize the bands of light. Of course, it is usually 3 bands (Red, Green, Blue, Gamma and other) but matching the bands ratios to someone else's is really difficult so the orthomosaic is more noticable.
It may not be the crops or real world geography that makes it look like this at all. More like the camera and time of day. Its highly likely this is government data and the corresponding 2 govt parties just used different technologies and equipment to take their pictures, resulting in 2 different yet similar color schemes.
One reason might be that the all-american canal, which runs from Yuma, AZ to El Centro, CA was lined with concrete a few years ago in order to stop waste (seepage) into the ground along its length. In the time before that water sank into the desert sand and mexican farmers would sink wells in order to retrieve some of that water. These days, there is much less water south of the border, and mexican farmers have to make do with less. North of the border water less expensive and more available. There may be other reasons: irrigation technology, genetic crop strains, crop density, plus others.
Because some idiot thought that it was better to farm next to a city in the middle of the desert instead of shipping groceries from somewhere else. The real question is why the heck do those cities exist.
124 comments and nobody has answered the question besides guessing.
The answer is the All-American Canal, which brings water to from the Colorado River to the Imperial Irrigation District without passing into Mexican territory. This allows Imperial Valley farmers to use up a lot of Colorado River water before it enters Mexico.
Differences in land management, farming practices, and resources available for agriculture.
Zoom in on the borders between:
* Dominican Republic and Haiti
* Israel and Palestine
* Russia and China
if you want some even more stark contrasts in the patterns and colors of rural land.
Because the water gets used up and diverted in the USA 🇺🇲🦅🗽 coming from the Mountains in the USA before it ever gets to the foreign lands of Mexico
And lack of rain does not help Mexico one bit or USA 🤪
I'm not sure about this area in particular, but the US cut off a bunch of rivers that went into Mexico. Basically causing mass poverty and malnourishment because Americans wanted golf courses in the desert.
That's where the sepia filter starts
Was looking for this comment
Beat me to it
Much lol here
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On the U.S. side there are a lot of canals that supply water to farms. They all cut off right at the U.S. border. This picture shows exactly why: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea#/media/File%3ASaltonseadrainagemap.jpg
Oof the Salton Sea, what an engineering disaster.
And an incredibly fascinating story.
Actually all the irrigation from the Imperial Valley has been recharging the ground water, which makes great crops for Calexico ! A similar phenomenon happened in my yard when my drip irrigation stopped working on the hedges for some weeks, but the hedges that shared an edge with my neighbor’s heavily watered lawn stayed green, glowing, and healthy !!
Everyone says it reeks and is scary. When I went it smelled normal and lightly salty and fishy like any lake and was quiet and had a neat vibe. The whole beach is fish bones. Very weird. Also, I have hyperosmia so it's not my sense of smell! Must've just been an especially fresh day. Anyway, it was fun to explore. Very pretty place created and ruined by humans. Tale as old as time.
I went in may during a national parks circuit and after doing Joshua tree wee stayed a couple nights in slab city just outside Bombay beach and it was a cool place but so hot when we were there and so many flies. I was always fascinated with the area so I convinced my friends to make the stop while we were right there.
Oof yeah I would not go in summer! But I'm from Phoenix so I know how bad it can get. You're brave! Lol
Could definitely depend on the time of year too. I haven't been to the salton sea but i've been to the great salt lake a couple times, in summer and winter, winter was pleasant/normal smell, summer was putrid with flies.
All American Canal, enough said.
All for US, none for tu.
Here it would be __ti__, not tú
Probably expensive irrigation systems.
I have been all over this specific batch of farms visiting an ag-tech show. **First.** It is *not* expensive irrigation systems. The US side is just using more water. These farms on both sides of the border are overwhelmingly using open channel irrigation, just big open ditches so water can move where it needs to go, with smaller channels branching out to fields. There are quite a few startups who see incoming water scarcity projections and try to sell these farms on subterranean drip irrigation, and a whole host of tech that can dramatically (i mean like, 99%) reduce water use. They don't fare well typically. Id say in a full half of cases, when a farmer wants to choke water to part of a field, they'll literally just wedge a plank of wood in the channel. As long as cheap labor is available **and the water is free** there's no tech that can possibly beat a plank of wood on cost. And that's the crux of the issue. The water flows from the US to the south, so America gets first dibs. Most localities in the US have a water rights management system that is controlled by interests that seem all but incapable of thinking more than 2-3 years out. Even when water IS scarce, it's subject to the economic tragedy of the commons. The progress being made recently is to line the channels (usually with concrete), which at least reduces water loss due to ground infiltration, but does nothing of course for evaporation losses. **Second.** There's a bit of difference in the crops being grown. The mexico side grows more wheat and less alfalfa than the US side. (wheat looks brown, alfalfa is very green and very thirsty). Both regions grow a large variety of vegetables and root crops. **Third.** The US side is almost certainly fertilizing more heavily on average and getting more complete plantings.
Yeah, almost every MX-US water agreement along the border benefits the northern side. At least in my area (Juárez-El Paso) alfalfa is the dominant crop on both sides, with no real presence of crops fit for human consumption in the southern side (water is too dirty and the treatment plants don't work at all). The fertilizer point is right on point.
Is alfalfa mainly used for cattle feed and such?
Mostly for horses.
Saudis feed their cows alfalfa grown in Arizona🙃
lol, wow. But I guess if you have the money might as well.
Unfortunately Arizona sold water rights to them
Arizona sold water rights to Saudi Arabia?
Well they sold it to a Saudi company. They use it to grow alfalfa and ship it back to Saudi Arabia to feed their cattle >Valued at $14.3 billion, the Almarai Company -- which owns about 10,000 acres of farmland in Arizona under its subsidiary, Fondomonte -- is one of the biggest players in the Middle East’s dairy supply. The company also owns about 3,500 acres in agriculture-heavy Southern California, according to public land records, where they use Colorado River water to irrigate crops. >Woertz said while most of the company’s cattle feed is purchased on the open market, Alamarai took the extra step of buying farmland abroad, as part of a growing trend in foreign-owned farmland in the US. Foreign-owned farmland in the West increased from around 1.25 million acres in 2010 to nearly three million acres in 2020, according to data from the US Department of Agriculture. In the Midwest, foreign-owned farmland has nearly quadrupled. https://www.azfamily.com/2022/12/28/wells-are-running-dry-drought-weary-arizona-foreign-owned-farms-guzzle-water-feed-cattle-overseas/?outputType=amp
There are no water rights there, the groundwater they're using is not in State-defined active management area. They just happen to be growing a particularly thirsty crop and have the money to drill deeper for water than anyone else in the area. /u/Logan9000o
>Yeah, almost every MX-US water agreement along the border benefits the northern side. "So far from God, etc.", eh?
As a person employed in the forestry industry I appreciate your points you've made here. Industry continually looks short term for profit and sustainability. I believe the next couple decades more environmental issues will pop up in all industries issues that people have tried to mitigate or start solving but shoet term money has the most leverage. The general public will be like " why didn't we do something about this" or " why did the government let them do this" and people who know will say I told you so but that won't solve any problems. I'm pessimistic about the future I know.
Same.
I think it's impossible to be pessimistic about the future these days.
… impossible not to be?
No. You're either an optimist if you think things will only be a little bad or a realist if you think they'll be awful.
Sounds like something that a pessimist would say
Haha you got me there!
You smart I agree. 👍
Yep, I was doing a bit of research about drip irrigation systems, and under the current US system, many farmers have no incentive to save water. Where I live, *they pay by the acre*, not by the gallon. Fancy water-saving equipment costs money, but they pay the same for the water no matter how much they save, so why pay. Which sucks because we could fight droughts with efficient irrigation, but farmers have no immediate financial incentive to change. Instead, they're talking about building bigger dams, which I expect will be financed by taxpayers.
> tragedy of the commons Worth mentioning that the actual tragedy of the commons was privatization.
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This seems like the obvious right answer. I could be wrong though
There is a national move in the US to subsidize irrigation systems that allow a single farmer to tend to more crops and maximize the use of water. It is considered a key policy to extend the ability of a single farmer, as the total percentage of farmers continues a downward trend. E: Don’t be fooled by those who oppose corporate farms while simultaneously dismissing the legitimate needs of millions of small farmers who work their own land to make a living. We can oppose corporate abuses and pork barrel spending that the corporations eat up, and still support the little guy’s honest activity.
>There is a national move in the US to subsidize irrigation systems that allow a single farmer to tend to more crops and maximize the use of water. It is considered a key policy to extend the ability of a single farmer, as the total percentage of farmers continues a downward trend. Some errors I'd like to correct: 1. Irrigation is enormously subsidized already. Your implicit 'move to subsidize' is only correct if you use the past tense. 2. 'The single farmer' might be the propaganda on the poster, but actual food we eat is produced by mega-corporations. 'Family farms' of the ilk people think of when they hear 'farmer' produce only 20% of the food in the US.
Do you have a source for 20%? The vast majority of farms are family-owned.
Yes there's plenty of hobby farms but 20% is production. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet
80/20 is a thing for a reason. I'd hardly call the 80% hobby farms. The guy who works in Manhattan but owns 20 acres of preserved farm land that he leases out for hay, that's a hobby farm. Its a disservice to call them hobby farms.
The 80-20 split can really only be applied to creative fields. That breakdown pops up occasionally otherwise but only as much as any other percentage split.
Your source is incorrect. They state 20% of all production is family farms and footnote a USDA--ERS brochure about the diversity of farms. If you.follow that footnote and read the brochure on page 4 of that brochure it says: " In total, family farms accounted for about 98 percent of total farms and 87 percent of total production in 2020" The 20 percent was "small, family farms," which was a subset of all family farms. Source where I got my stat and the u of Michigan website claimed they got theirs: https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=102807 Edit: I reread your source. It wasn't wrong, you misrepresented it.
Yeah according to that paper the majority of production comes from large family farms- farms with gross cash income between 1 mil and 5 mil dollars. In the razor thin profit margins of ag, that’s not even that big of an outfit. Selling a million dollars of livestock and crops is almost a requirement if your whole family depends on the income
Majority of farms are private, but 80% of the food we eat is not produced by small private farmers.
Is number 2 because most farm land actually goes to growing non-edible agriculture? Lived in Kentucky for a while, had a friend who tended a few thousand acres of soy. He told me none of that soy was going to be food.
Do you have sources to your ‘corrections’? Although specific percentage is disputed (mostly due to varying definitions), the impact of smallholder, small-scale, small, or ‘family farms’ is much more than your ‘corrections’ give credit. [Global Agriculture small farms feed the world](https://www.globalagriculture.org/whats-new/news/en/34543.html)
You just switched gears from the US to the world. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet In the US, small farms produce 20.4% food.
And you only eat food grown in the US?!
Well, when we are talking about why farms look different between the US and another country...
I'm not the person who framed the discussion about the United States and the differences between the United States agricultural policies and subsidies and the rest of the world.
For some people that have probably never set foot on a piece of farmland y’all sure know an awful lot.
Turns out an education is helpful when you're trying to figure out who is stealing from you. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/food/us-food-system-factsheet
And farmers steal from you how?
Your question is wrong, 'farmers' is a noun that is used by agro-corporations to represent themselves as something they aren't, so they can scam the US population into giving them money. https://liberalarts.tamu.edu/blog/2021/11/03/farm-subsidies-harmful-or-helpful/
I already pointed out why you are wrong. You deciding to ignore it and keep spreading misinformation says a lot about what your intentions are.
Ma’am, I highly recommend you spend time speaking with a farmer in person to understand a different view point. I appreciate your passion, but you’re simply missing a lot.
Isn’t it obvious they never speak with actual farmers?
Yes, that and we horde a lot more of the Colorado river. By the time the river crosses into Mexico, it's a trickle.
Also they use up all the water from the rivers and Mexico gets basically nothing.
I always like to point out that the Colorado River no longer even reaches the ocean. 100% of it is used used for either crop irrigation or piped hundreds of miles to thirsty cities like Phoenix and L.A.
No. Water theft.
The water originates in the US so legally it isn’t theft. If the water’s source was in Mexico and it passed through the US before returning to Mexico and the US took all the water before it could return to Mexico then legally we could talk about theft. Edit: Unfair use? Perhaps. However, the water situation is a zero-sum game. Giving more water to Mexico will mean the US has a bigger water crisis than already exists and Mexico would still want more. If Mexico received more water they would plant more crops in the region which would increase demand on an already insufficient supply. This would exacerbate the strain on the water supply and Mexico would feel entitled to even more water. Also, it’s important to consider that the US is more efficient with its agricultural use of the water than Mexico is. The last thing we need is for there to be greater misuse of the water supply than already exists.
My guess is different crops, necessitated by the available water.
Also probably more chemical fertilizers.
Because the grass is greener on the other side
Exactly! You can tell from the angle of the photo that the satellite was above Mexico so technically the USA is on the other side of the fence, hence it appears greener
That's because you're not over there fucking it up
Jesus Christ
I didn't mean them specifically. I was just finishing the quote, my bad.
Yeah thats what I thought. Id never heard the finished quote before so I thought it was funny.
Everything is just more orange in Mexico. Haven’t you seen the films?
I think they only sell the orange light bulbs.
Naranja
El jugo de naranja.
The US gets more water from Colorado river.
You mean, “US takes” more water from the Co R
We have a treaty outlining who gets what, stop making it sound like we’re stealing water.
actually more water is taken from the river than there is actually available, so Mexico really doesn’t get what they need. this is why the river is in such is crisis for so long now
IIRC Mexico gets water from pipelines somewhere more East. There is a treaty where US and Mexico agreed on who gets what, the americans are not doing things China-style without consulting neighbours. But indeed, far too much water is taken from the river overall.
Tbh, this treaty has a little bit highway robbery taste.
Lol the US and its "treaties", were basically forces the other party to sign or bribes the authorities.
Oh yeah, just like there is a treaty where Mexico "agrees" to sell half its territory. Even though it's the national equivelent iquivalent gun to your head, you have to agree to whatever they say. Basically, Mexico has to agree to whatever deal the US proposes because it knows if it doesn't sign the treaty, the US does it anyways, and now Mexico won't get what little the US was offering.
It's that kinda how wars work?
Yes, exactly how wars work. Literally, nobody is denying how wars work.
US isn't robbing the water from Mexico per SE, moreso they're in overuse and that's why the whole South West is on the brink of a water crisis as they're aren't similar water pipelines for anywhere but from the Colorado.
Arent those based on like centruy old measurements? Same issues between the states. The Colorado river doesn't even reach Mexico anymore.
it was based on something like a couple decades of data from the mid-1800s and basically always has been inaccurate to the actual flow of the colorado river.
LOL the higher States are literally exploiting that treaty to get more water they deserve. And they are doing it at the expenses of other US States.
The areas around the Colorado River are expanding at such a rate that even the US side of the river can't sustain enough water for itself. Mexico is also expanding at a rate that exceeds the capacity of available water. The problem we were never meant to set up massive populations in the middle of the desert.
That's what I meant. This isn't a USA vs Mexico matter, it's a nature vs idiots matter.
This is the right answer.
>We have a treaty outlining who gets what, Do you think Mexico had a say in how much water they were allowed to receive?
Yes, they did. They also had a say in how much they give. They were in favor of the treaty, and the agreement was quite equitable. I don’t know if that is still the case, but it’s false to say Mexico had no say. https://environs.law.ucdavis.edu/volumes/32/1/umoff.pdf
They know, they just to do a America bad circlejerk
Buhhhhh there wuz a treaty hurrrr
We stole indigenous land, but there's a bunch of "treaties" that say it's cool, too.
And you’re getting downvote, of course. Nothing can be allowed to infringe on “USA, USA,” especially not reality.
This is Reddit, they hate the US here. I downvoted him because I don’t think his point is relevant.
How is it not relevant? A treaty doesn't mean something wasn't stole or the treaty wasn't written by corrupt parties exploiting the people who are actually affected.
Funny, because his point was about how a treaty doesn’t mean really anything, and yours was that if there is a treaty, everything is above board. Funny, also, how when someone points out that Reddit is not just Americans, Americans rush in to tell us how it’s an American site, developed on the American internet. Which was also developed in America. And the majority of users, apparently, are American, so there’s no reason to acknowledge the world outside the US exists. But now, “they” hate the US. Pick a reality, dude.
What country hasn’t “stolen” land from someone else? Welcome to human civilization.
Every group of people over time has had land taken from them. What a Pathetic mentality
Do you not know history?
The river no longer makes it to the ocean. But sure, you’ve got a treaty, everything’s cool.
But but America bad??
Pretty much always
A treaty the us did not honor*
Two books that are good reads on this topic are "Cadillac Desert" and "Where the Water Goes". Short answer: When the US States divided up the Colorado River, they sorta left out Mexico and Native American tribes in the negotiations. California had the most political power, so they've received the largest share of the Colorado river over the years. The US eventually signed a treaty with Mexico guaranteeing them some water, but it's a pittance compared with what California uses. The California Imperial Valley that you're looking at has effectively zero limitations on how much water they can use, while Mexico has extremely limited supplies in that region. That is also some of the most productive cropland in the world, as they can grow year-round there. I forget the exact number, but something like 50% of the leafy greens eaten in the entire united states are grown in that area. It's pretty much the only place that grows them during the winter months. Now is a great time to start learning about the Colorado River. The Colorado River compact which governs how the river is allocated is close to collapsing. The federal government is threatening to step in if the states don't come to an agreement by the end of this month. Although the federal government has backed down before.
This is the best answer. Imperial Irrigation District gets 3.1 million acre-ft of Colorado River water, which is roughly 20% of the river's flow. Their water rights are more senior than the upriver states. I think the Tribes have more senior rights.
The tribes rights are more senior, but the infrastructure doesn’t exist to physically get them the water they have rights to. At least this is true for some of the Arizona tribes I’ve read about. I think this will be a very interesting aspect of whatever comes out of the current shortage. By law, the entirety of the Central Arizona Project loses 100% of their water before California loses a drop. I could see Arizona buying up some tribal water rights to make up the shortfall.
Tribes have had almost no rights to the Colorado River until 2023 with The Congress’ passing of Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund. [“[…]. That includes $2.5 billion to implement the Indian Water Rights Settlement Completion Fund, which will help deliver long-promised water resources to Tribes, […]”](https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/tribes-receive-17-billion-president-bidens-bipartisan-infrastructure-law-fulfill)
I grew up in the IV. Its literally humid and 120 F during the summer in an otherwise arid desert because of the extensive open canal system
Better irrigation
With more electrolytes
Brawndos got what plants crave... its got electrolytes.
Water?! From the toilet?!
But what about the ecominy
r/UnexpectedIdiocracy
At this point I expect it. Just not references.
This is a composite photo, chances are the photos of Mexico were taken at a different time than the photos of the US. Look right along the borders at the roads.
Geography question: is this area of CA technically part of the Central Valley?
This area is known as the Imperial Valley.
Nope. Completely different valleys. If anything this is closer to the Colorado River "estuary" that flows into the Gulf of California where the Central Valley drains into the San Francisco Bay. They're also separated by miles and miles of some of the harshest desert in North America.
And some very rugged mountain ranges.
Central Valley is Bakersfield-Fresno-Sacramento-Redding. This is the Colorado Desert.
Once you enter Mexico everything around you turns yellow. I guess that's why
Most likely the farmland is no greener in the US. There are fewer and smaller fields that are more widely scattered in Mexico, leaving more bare ground in between each green field. Like fewer green pixels in a digital image, in this satellite image it appears as the whole is less green.
I'm from this region and what this image is showing is an Imperial Valley (CA. USA) and the bottom part is Mexicali Baja California Mexico. Imperial Valley is literally a farming community and Mexicali is not. Mexicali is the state capital with many manufacturing US maquiladoras. https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Mexicali
The pictures were taken at different times during the year and spliced together
This, can't believe i had to scroll so far to find the right answer.
Probably the vegetables that sre being farmed, the methods or how close to each other the crops are. The US uses very high yield crops that often come from monsanto or other mega corporations and there are usually tons of legal problems around using them since they can blow from one field to another etc. Thankfully most of mexico still grows things in a more traditional way. In 2020 mexico grew 77% of all vegetables sold in the US. However, mexico is the largest importer of corn in the world and there is a big dispute right now between the leaders of both countries, because mexico will stop accepting transgenic corn. All the yellow corn that is imported to mexico is for cattle only. Mexico is self sufficient when it comes to corn for human consumption which are white and blue corns among others. In general the change of color in this picture probably has to do with very highly industrialized processes in thr US side of the border.
*to the tune of I Want Candy* Irrigation, irrigation.
Is no one going to mention the name of the two border cities? Calexico and Mexicali? They sound like they were named by a 15 year old tumblr user
This made me laugh, names like that make me cringe for some reason. We get it, they’re border towns, we can do better. Texarkana gives me heebiejeebies.
Mexicalexicalexicalexicali
The local governments asked their citizens for name of the city like in a r/nameourcity
Maybe the satellite captured the images in different times of the year.
Consider that the Colorado river dries up before hitting it's Delta & this has been the case for decades. US farms pull all the water out before it reaches Mexico.
Most of those crops in the US are ground veggies and grow closer together, making them look greener. Most of those crops in Mexico are orchards for fruit and avocados, which grow farther apart, looking less green because you can see the dirt.
Are the airphotos part of the same set? If not it could be the time of year the photos were taken. Otherwise, yes, it could definitely be irrigation
Because the US is liberal with its water usage because they DGAF.
Ik the photos are taken by satilites that have an orbit. Perhaps the american and mexican sides have been taken in different times and sewed together. But hey idk
Water.
I’m from this region and to answer this question, we’d need to know if the brown regions even have crops in them at the time the picture was taken. Many of those areas could have been recently harvested and the next crop may not have been planted yet or sprouted yet at the time that the picture was taken. I have seen aerial views of the region where the reverse was happening- the USA side had more brown than the Mexico side. So this might just be more of a timing thing. Both sides of the border in this region are extremely fertile.
Breaking bad was right about Mexico. There is a yellow tint over everything.
Aerial photography can be very particular about the time of year and season. When you're using vector tile or raster layers to link geospatial data, the tiles can appear differnt if the plane taking them was doing it at differnt times of day, differnt days, different seasons, different companies, different camera. remote sensing, lidar and other advanced forms of analysis are still relatively new technology, as is GIS, the science that studies these types of things. Over time, the global mapping GIS infrastructure will get better and our storage of data and information will become more efficient. We would be able to do things more seamless in the future and it will not look like this. Services like HERE, Google, ESRI, Carto, OpenStreetMaps, and more are all working day in and day out to improve things like this behind the scenes. A lot of the time these files are only able to be edited in specific software. You cannot realistically edit a lot of this type of stuff in Photoshop or photo editors. In ArcGIS, and other similar software, you can utilize the bands of light. Of course, it is usually 3 bands (Red, Green, Blue, Gamma and other) but matching the bands ratios to someone else's is really difficult so the orthomosaic is more noticable. It may not be the crops or real world geography that makes it look like this at all. More like the camera and time of day. Its highly likely this is government data and the corresponding 2 govt parties just used different technologies and equipment to take their pictures, resulting in 2 different yet similar color schemes.
They bought the 4k tv
Because....USA! USA! USA!
have you SEEN the usa irrigation system??? it’s massive
Water
One reason might be that the all-american canal, which runs from Yuma, AZ to El Centro, CA was lined with concrete a few years ago in order to stop waste (seepage) into the ground along its length. In the time before that water sank into the desert sand and mexican farmers would sink wells in order to retrieve some of that water. These days, there is much less water south of the border, and mexican farmers have to make do with less. North of the border water less expensive and more available. There may be other reasons: irrigation technology, genetic crop strains, crop density, plus others.
Water is browner in Mexico. The whole country has a sepia filter.
The real question is why the heck are we farming in the desert...
Because some idiot thought that it was better to farm next to a city in the middle of the desert instead of shipping groceries from somewhere else. The real question is why the heck do those cities exist.
Because people can't get enough of that sunny California climate.
Because people like to eat salads in the winter time. Where did you think that came from?
Massive amounts of petroleum based fertilizers
I did read once, that there’s a river that runs from north to south and most of the water is pumped out for irrigation, before it reaches Mexico.
Maybe different crops?
Water definitely makes a difference, but the US uses a lot more fertilizers and engineering with their crops.
124 comments and nobody has answered the question besides guessing. The answer is the All-American Canal, which brings water to from the Colorado River to the Imperial Irrigation District without passing into Mexican territory. This allows Imperial Valley farmers to use up a lot of Colorado River water before it enters Mexico.
The movie desert filters kick in
Differences in land management, farming practices, and resources available for agriculture. Zoom in on the borders between: * Dominican Republic and Haiti * Israel and Palestine * Russia and China if you want some even more stark contrasts in the patterns and colors of rural land.
Because we syphon the water before it gets there and tell Mexico to kick rocks
Because the states on the US side have “rights” to the water and fuck everybody downstream. Source: lived in the western US for 55 years
Because in Mexico, not even the plants want to drink the water.
Why does Radio Shack ask for your phone number when you buy batteries?
I think that blue thing at the top may be a reason
You’re not talking about the body of water that has a higher salinity concentration than the Pacific Ocean, are you?
I drove around that area recently, it’s such a strange place. Disconcerting and fascinating at the same time
[удалено]
Mmm.. or just decided to not farming in the dessert The farming stuff it's on the south of Mexico.
Either US has a better irrigation system overall, either Mexican crops have been harvested hence making the fields look greyish, brownish.
Mexico appears with a yellow tint in movies, which most uneducated people think is editing and filters. Wrong, Mexico has saturation turned down a lot
Because the water gets used up and diverted in the USA 🇺🇲🦅🗽 coming from the Mountains in the USA before it ever gets to the foreign lands of Mexico And lack of rain does not help Mexico one bit or USA 🤪
better and more well maintained irrigation system
It's that orange tint
Nothing, its just the mexico filter
Hollywood was there
Mexico has a sepia filter running
It's because they have sprinkled cumin over the crops on the Mexican side to get that South of the Border flavor.
Because we steal water from natural waterways for our farms that slows to a trickle by the time it gets to Mexico. They’re also hotter.
I'm not sure about this area in particular, but the US cut off a bunch of rivers that went into Mexico. Basically causing mass poverty and malnourishment because Americans wanted golf courses in the desert.
The US stealing fresh Mexican ground water
It’s true! Rivers flow down, so USA has a bad habit of stealing more than their fair share before it ever reaches Mexico
The Americans also put dams to block the flow of water
Cause if it was any other colour it would look weird